January 30: President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor (Prime Minister) of Germany.

March 23: First concentration camp at Dachau is set up for political opponents of the Nazis.

April 1: Nazis proclaim a general boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in a state-sponsored campaign to deprive Jews of their livelihood.

April 7: Jews dismissed from civil service and denied admission to the bar

April 26: Nazis form Gestapo to terrorize opponents of the State.

May 2: Dissolution of free trade unions

May 10: Books written by Jews and other enemies of Nazism are burned in a state-sponsored attempt to keep German minds "untainted."

July 14: A law is passed permitting the forced sterilization of Gypsies, the mentally and physically disabled, African Germans, and others the Nazis considered "inferior."

December 1: Hitler declares legal unity of the German State and Nazi Party

August 2: German President Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.

October: First mass arrests of German homosexuals begin.

April: Jehovah's Witnesses are banned from all civic service jobs and are arrested throughout Germany.

August 1: Juden Verboten ("NO JEWS") signs appear everywhere forbidding Jews from public facilities, stores and restaurants.

September 15: Reichstag (parliament) passes anti-Semitic "Nuremberg Laws."

July 12: First mass arrests of German Gypsies take place throughout Germany.

August 1-16: Olympic Games held in Berlin. Anti-Jewish signs are removed until the end of the games.

October 25: Rome-Berlin Axis is signed by Mussolini and Hitler.

November 25: Germany and Japan sign military pact

July 16: Buchenwald concentration camp opens

March 13: Germany annexes Austria.  Nazis apply anti-Semitic laws

July 6-15: Evian Conference to discuss refugee policies. Most of the countries of Western Europe and the U.S. refuse to let in more Jewish refugees.

September 29: Munich Agreement: Britain and France appease Hitler by allowing Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

October 5: Passports of Jews are marked with the letter "J"

November 9: Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Anti-Semitic riots erupt in Germany and Austria. Synagogues are burned, shops are damaged and looted. Many Jews are arrested and sent to concentration camps.

November 12: 26,000 Jews are arrested and sent to concentration camps

November 15: All Jewish children are expelled from German public schools.

December 13:  Decree on "Aryanization" (compulsory expropriation of Jewish industries, businesses and shops) is enacted

March 15: German troops invade all of Czechoslovakia.

July 26: Adolf Eichmann is placed in charge of Prague branch of the emigration office

August 23: Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact is signed by Hitler and Stalin.

September 1: German Army invades Poland. World War II begins.

September 3: Britain and France declare war on Germany

September 17: Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland

October: Euthanasia program is instituted within Germany and Austria. Mentally and physically disabled persons are gassed.

October 12:  First deportation of Jews from Austria and Moravia to Poland

November 23: Wearing of Judenstern (Jewish six-pointed Star of David) is made compulsory throughout occupied Poland

Spring: Germans invade and conquer Denmark, Norway, Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium and France.

April 30:  Ghetto at Lodz, Poland, is sealed off

June 22: France surrenders to the Germans

September 27:  Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis is established

November 15: Warsaw Ghetto is sealed off

March 22: Gypsy and African-German children are expelled from German public schools.

April 6: Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.

June 22: Germans attack the Soviet Union and begin to murder all Jews in their path.

July 8: Wearing of the Jewish star is decreed in the German-occupied Baltic states

July 31: Hermann Goering appoints Reinhard Heydrich to carry out "The Final Solution" (extermination of all Jews in Europe).

September 15: Wearing of the Jewish star is decreed throughout the Greater Reich

September 28-29: Russian and Polish prisoners of war are gassed in tests conducted at Auschwitz death camp.

October-December: Mobile Killing Squads perform mass shootings of Jews in Baltic States, Ukraine and former Soviet Union.

October 10: Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia is established

October 14: Deportation of German Jews begins

October 23: Massacre in Odessa -- 34,000 dead

October 28: Massacre in Kiev -- 34,000 dead

November 6: Massacre in Rovno -- 15,000 dead

December 7: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and the United States enters the War.

December 8: Chelmno extermination camp on the Ner River in Poland is opened

December 8: Massacre in Riga -- 27,000 dead

December 22: Massacre in Vilna -- 32,000 dead

January 20: Nazi leaders meet at Wansee, a section of Berlin, to formulate the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."

January 21: Unified resistance organization is established in Vilna Ghetto. Jewish resistance groups expand in number throughout Eastern Europe

June 1: Treblinka death camp opens. Wearing of the Jewish star is decreed in Nazi-occupied France and Holland

July 22: Germans begin deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto are  to Treblinka. Eventually more than 300,000 are deported.

July 28: Jewish resistance organization is established in the Warsaw Ghetto

October 17: Allied nations pledge to punish Germans for their policy of genocide.

January 18: Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto launch uprising against Nazi deportations. Street fighting lasts for four days

February 2: The German Sixth Army surrenders at Stalingrad. This marks a turning point in the war. The Allies take the advantage.

April 19: Jews revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto. Fighting continues for weeks. 

May 16: Liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto

June 11: Himmler orders liquidation of all Polish Jewish ghettos

June-September: Hundreds of Jewish partisans leave the Vilna Ghetto for the forest where they continue their resistance to the Nazis

August 2: Revolt at Treblinka death camp

August 16: Revolt in Bialystok Ghetto

September 23: Liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto

October 20: United Nations War Crimes Commission is established

March 19: Germans occupy Hungary.

May-June: 430,000 Jews are deported from Hungary to Auschwitz death camp.

June 6: D-Day, Allied invasion of Nazi- occupied Western Europe begins in Normandy, France

July 24: Soviet troops liberate Maidanek death camp

October 7: Prisoners at Auschwitz revolt and blow up one crematorium.

June 6: D-Day marks the Allied invasion of Europe.

July 24: Soviet troops liberate Maidanek death camp

November 24: Heinrich Himmler orders destruction of Auschwitz crematoria to hide evidence of the death camps.

January 7: Soviet troops liberate survivors at Auschwitz.

April 11: American troops liberate  Buchenwald concentration camps.

April 15: British troops liberate Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

April 30: Hitler commits suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin.

May 7: Germany surrenders and the war ends in Europe.

August 15: Japan surrenders unconditionally; end of World War II.

November 22:  Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal start. The Nuremberg Trials concluded on October 1, 1946, which happened to be the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), with a judgment in which 12 defendants were sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment, four to various prison terms, and three acquitted.