1939-1941:
Invasion and ghettoisation
1939
1 January: From now on, all Jews must carry a special ID card.
24 January: Plans begin for the removal of all Jews from Germany through emigration.
15–16 March: Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia (Jewish population: 350,000).
19 April: Slovakia adopts its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.
June: Cuba and the US refuse to accept any of the 937 Jewish refugees aboard the SS St Louis, which is forced to sail back to Europe.
Nazi–Soviet Pact, 23 August 1939: Josef Stalin (left) shakes hands with German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop after Ribbentrop and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed the non-aggression pact.
LP Pics
23 August: The non-aggression Nazi-Soviet Pact is signed between Germany and the Soviet Union.
September: The Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher, states: 'The Jewish people ought to be exterminated root and branch. Then the plague of pests will have disappeared in Poland at one stroke.'
1 September: The Nazis invade Poland (Jewish population: 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). World War II begins.
21 September: Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's deputy, issues instructions to SS Einsatzgruppen ('special groups' – i.e. mobile killing squads) in Poland regarding the treatment of Jews. He orders that all Jews are to be confined in ghettos near railways pending the future 'final goal'. He also orders a census and the establishment of Jewish administrative councils (Judenrat) within ghettos to implement Nazi policies and decrees.
27 September: Warsaw surrenders.
29 September: The Nazis and the Soviets divide up Poland. Over 2 million Jews reside in Nazi-controlled areas, leaving 1.3 million in the Soviet zone.
October: Hitler extends the power of doctors to kill institutionalised people with mental and physical disabilities in the euthanasia programme.
12 October: The Jews are evacuated from Vienna.
23 November: Polish Jews over the age of 10 are required to wear yellow stars.
1940
12 February: First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.
9 April: The Nazis invade Denmark (Jewish population: 8,000) and Norway (2,000).
30 April: The Lodz ghetto in occupied Poland, containing 230,000 Jews, is sealed off from the outside world.
12 May: The Nazis invade France (Jewish population: 350,000), Belgium (65,000), Holland (140,000) and Luxembourg (3,500).
14 June: The Nazis occupy Paris.
27 September: The Tripartite (Axis) Pact is signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.
2 October: A Berlin conference agrees to expel 30,000 Gypsies (Roma) from Germany to occupied Poland.
3 October: Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.
7 October: The Nazis invade Romania (Jewish population: 34,000).
22 October: Deportation of 29,000 German Jews from Baden, the Saar valley and Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy France.
November: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia become Nazi allies.
The Kraków ghetto in Poland, containing 70,000 Jews, is sealed off.
15 November: The Warsaw ghetto, containing more than 400,000 Jews, is sealed off.
1941
January: At Buchenwald, 250 Gypsy children are used as guinea pigs to test Zyklon-B gas crystals.
March: Hitler's Commissar Order authorises the execution of those suspected of being Communist officials in territories about to be seized from the Soviets.
In the Lodz Jewish ghetto in Poland, a separate camp is set up for 5,000 Gypsy inmates.
2 March: The Nazis occupy Bulgaria (Jewish population: 50,000).
6 April: The Nazis invade Yugoslavia (Jewish population: 75,000) and Greece (77,000).
In Croatia, the Jasenovac concentration camp is opened. Its principal victims are Serbs, Gypsies and Jews.
31 May: In Serbia, the German Military Command orders that all Gypsies are to be treated the same as Jews.
Summer: Himmler summons Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss to Berlin and tells him that the Führer has ordered the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question' and that Auschwitz has been chosen for this purpose.
22 June: Nazis invade the Soviet Union (Jewish population: 3 million) in Operation Barbarossa
In Serbia, the German Military Command arrests Communists and people who fought in the Spanish Civil War.
July: As the German Army advances, SS Einsatzgruppen follow along and conduct the mass murder of Jews and Gypsies in seized lands.
Ghettos are established at Kovno, Minsk, Vitebsk and Zhitomer.
The government of Vichy France seizes Jewish-owned property.
21 July: In occupied Poland, Majdanek concentration camp, later a death camp, becomes operational.
August: Jews in Romania are forced into Transnistria, a narrow area along the border between Romania and Ukraine. By December, 70,000 perish.
Ghettos are established at Bialystok in Poland and Lvov in Ukraine.
1 September: German Jews are ordered to wear yellow stars.
3 September: The first test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.
6 September: The ghetto in the Lithuanian capital Vilna is established, containing 40,000 Jews.
17 September: The general deportation of German Jews begins.
27–28 September: 23,000 Jews are killed at Kamianets-Podilskyi in Ukraine.
29–30 September: SS Einsatzgruppen murder at least 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev.
October: 35,000 Jews from Odessa are shot.
24 November: Theresienstadt ghetto is established near Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Nazis will use it as a model ghetto for propaganda purposes.
30 November: Mass shootings of Latvian and German Jews near Riga.
7 December: The Japanese attack the US at Pearl Harbor. The following day, the US and the UK declare war on Japan.
8 December: In occupied Poland, near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational. Prisoners (mainly Jews) are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment. The first gassing victims include 5,000 Gypsies who have been deported from Germany.
11 December: Germany and Italy declare war on the US.