The Holocaust and World War II: Key Dates

January 30, 1933President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.

March 20, 1933SS opens the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich.

April 1, 1933Boycott of Jewish-owned shops and businesses in Germany.

April 7, 1933Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

July 14, 1933Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases.

September 15, 1935Nuremberg Race Laws.

March 16, 1935Germany introduces military conscription.

March 7, 1936German troops march unopposed into the Rhineland.

August 1, 1936Summer Olympics begin in Berlin.

March 11-13, 1938Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss (Union).

November 9/10, 1938Kristallnacht (nationwide pogrom in Germany).

May 13, 1939The St. Louis sails from Hamburg, Germany.

World War II: Maps

September 29, 1938Munich Agreement. Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia must surrender its border regions and defenses (the so-called Sudeten region) to Nazi Germany. 

August 23, 1939Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Agreement.

September 1, 1939Germany invades Poland, starting World War II in Europe.

September 17, 1939The Soviet Union occupies Poland from the east.

October 8, 1939German officials establish what is likely the first Nazi ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland.

April 9, 1940German forces invade Denmark and Norway.

May 10, 1940Germany attacks western Europe (France and the Low Countries).

July 10, 1940The Battle of Britain begins.

April 6, 1941German forces invade Yugoslavia and Greece.

June 22, 1941Germany invades the Soviet Union.

July 6, 1941Einsatzgruppen (so-called mobile killing units) shoot nearly 3,000 Jews at the Seventh Fort (Fort VII), one of the 19th-century fortifications surrounding Kovno.

August 3, 1941Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Muenster denounces the “euthanasia” killing program in a public sermon.

September 29-30, 1941Einsatzgruppen shoot about 34,000 Jews at Babyn Yar, outside Kyiv (Kiev).

November 7, 1941Einsatzgruppen round up 13,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto and kill them in nearby Tuchinki (Tuchinka).

November 30, 1941Einsatzgruppen shoot at least 11,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto in the Rumbula Forest. The massacre continues on December 8-9. In total, at least 25,000 Jews are killed. 

December 6, 1941Soviet winter counteroffensive.

December 7, 1941Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and the United States declares war on Japan the next day.

December 8, 1941The first killing operations begin at Chelmno in occupied Poland.

December 11, 1941Nazi Germany declares war on the United States.

January 16, 1942Germans begin the mass deportation of Jews from Lodz to the Chelmno killing center.

January 20, 1942The Wannsee Conference is held near Berlin, Germany.

March 27, 1942German officials begin the deportation of more than 65,000 Jews from Drancy, outside Paris, to the east (primarily to Auschwitz).

June 28, 1942Germany launches a new offensive towards the city of Stalingrad.

July 15, 1942Germans begin mass deportations of nearly 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to the east (primarily to Auschwitz).

July 22, 1942Germans begin the mass deportation of over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center.

September 12, 1942Germans complete the mass deportation of about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka.

November 23, 1942Soviet troops counterattack at Stalingrad, trapping the German Sixth Army in the city.

April 19, 1943The Jews of the Warsaw ghetto initiate their final act of armed resistance against the Germans. The Warsaw ghetto uprising begins.

July 5, 1943Battle of Kursk.

October 1, 1943Danish citizens initiate the mass rescue of Denmark's Jews.

November 6, 1943Soviet troops liberate Kyiv.

March 19, 1944German forces occupy Hungary.

May 15, 1944Germans begin the mass deportation of about 440,000 Jews from Hungary.

June 6, 1944D-Day: Allied forces invade Normandy, France.

June 22, 1944The Soviets launch an offensive in eastern Belorussia (Belarus).

July 25, 1944Anglo-American forces break out of Normandy.

August 1, 1944The Polish Home Army initiates the Warsaw uprising.

August 15, 1944Allied forces land in southern France.

August 25, 1944Liberation of Paris.

December 16, 1944Battle of the Bulge.

January 12, 1945Soviet winter offensive is launched.

January 18, 1945Death march of nearly 60,000 prisoners begins from the Auschwitz camp system in the southern part of German-annexed Poland.

January 25, 1945Death march of nearly 50,000 prisoners begins from the Stutthof camp system in the northern part of German-annexed Poland.

January 27, 1945Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz camp complex.

March 7, 1945US troops cross the Rhine River at Remagen.

April 16, 1945The Soviets launch their final offensive, encircling Berlin.

April 29, 1945American forces liberate the Dachau concentration camp.

April 30, 1945Adolf Hitler commits suicide.

May 7-8, 1945Germany signs an unconditional surrender at the headquarters of US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of Allied forces in northwest Europe, at Reims on May 7. The surrender takes effect on May 8 at 11:01 PM Central European time (CET).

May 8, 1945Germany signs a second, very similar, document of surrender in Berlin. It also comes into effect on May 8 at 11:01 PM CET. In Moscow, this was already after midnight on May 9.