| 1920 | Nazi Party Platform Drafted |
| 1921 | Occupation of the Ruhr by France - results is general strike until Fall of 1923 |
| 1923 | Hyperinflation - German Economy Collapses Failed Beer Hall Putsch - Hitler imprisoned - writes Mein Kampf |
| 1929 | Beginning Worldwide Economic Crisis Collapse of Great Coalition in German Government |
| 1933 | |
| January 30 | Hitler is appointed Reich Chancellor of Germany by Hindenburg |
| January 30 | Sterilization (of inferiors) Laws enacted; implemented three weeks later |
| February 27 | Reichstag fire |
| February 28 | Leading communists arrested Constitutional rights "temporarily" suspended (until 1945) |
| March 20 | Dachau concentration camp established |
| March 23 | Enabling Act passed by the Reichstag |
| April 1 | General boycott of all Jewish businesses - One day |
| April 1 | All religious literature printed by Jehovah's Witnesses banned from circulation in Germany |
| April 7 | Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service enacted All Jews removed from civil service Jews denied admission to the bar |
| April 24 | First SA and police raid on the Magdeburg branch office of Jehovah's Witnesses; literature confiscated |
| April 26 | Gestapo formed |
| May 2 | Trade unions dissolved |
| May 10 | Burning of books written by Jews and political opponents |
| June 24 | Prussian State Police ban the work and organization of Jehovah's Witnesses |
| June 25 | Declaration of Facts is sent to Hitler, explaining the politically neutral position of the Witnesses and insisting on their right to teach the Bible to the German people. Two million copies are distributed. Some witnesses are arrested and sentenced to terms in labor and concentration camps. |
| June 28 | Second raid and closure of Watch Tower office in Magdeburg |
| July 14 | Law for the Prevention of Progeny of Hereditary Disease mandates the sterilization of patients with hereditary diseases e.g. feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, schizophrenia. Some 300,000 to 400,000 people are sterilized under this law |
| July 20 | Concordat signed with the Roman Catholic Church
|
| August | At the opening ceremony for the state medical academy in Munich, Walter Schultze, Bavarian Commissioner of Health, declares sterilization insufficient and argues for euthanasia. He adds, "This policy has already been initiated in our concentration camps." |
| August 16 | The Golden Age magazine (published by Jehovah's Witnesses) mentions the existence of concentrations camps within five months of Dachau's opening |
| August 21-24 | Burning of 25 truckloads of confiscated Watch Tower publications |
| November 12 | Jehovah's Witnesses fired from jobs and arrested for refusing to participate in mandatory vote |
| November 24 | Nazis pass a Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals, which allows beggars, the homeless, alcoholics and the unemployed to be sent to concentration camps. |
| 1934 | |
| June 30 | The blood purge/The Night of the Long Knives |
| August 2 | Hindenburg dies Hitler becomes Head of State and Commander-in-Chief |
| Beginning in 1934 | Mental hospitals encouraged to neglect patients - funding and inspections either made perfunctory or suspended. 181 Genetic Health Courts and Appellate Health Courts to decide cases concerning sterilization established |
| 1935 | |
| March 11 | Nazi race hygienists and civil servants plan the sterilization of the "Rhineland Bastards" |
| April 1 | Jehovah's Witnesses are banned from all civil service jobs and arrested throughout Germany. Pensions and employment benefits confiscated. Being married to a Witness becomes legal grounds for divorce. Witness children are banned from attending school. Some children are taken from Witness parents to be raised in Nazi reeducation homes. |
| May 21 | Jews removed from military |
| Summer | Juden Verboten (No Jews) signs increase in businesses and elsewhere |
| July 26 | Justice Minister Frick orders marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans be stopped |
| September 15 | First of Nuremburg Laws (Anti-Semitic) passed |
| September | Hitler expresses intention to eliminate the "incurably ill" at Nuremberg Party rally to Dr. Gerhard Wagner |
| October 18 | Addendum to the sterilization law forbids marriages between "hereditary ill" and "healthy" people. In addition, forces the abortion of children of the "hereditary ill" up to the sixth month of pregnancy. |
| 1936 | |
| Sachsenhausen concentration camp established | |
| March 7 | German army marches into the Rhineland |
| May 10 | Burning of books written by Jews |
| June | Central Office to "Combat the Gypsy Nuisance" opened in Munich
|
| July 12 | German Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) are arrested and deported to Dachau |
| August | Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women). |
| August 1 | Olympic Games in Berlin opened Anti-Semitic signs temporarily removed |
| August 28 | Mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses. Several thousand are sent to concentration camps and many stay there until 1945 |
| October 25 | Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis |
| November 25 | Military pact signed between Germany and Japan |
| December 12 | Jehovah's Witnesses secretly distribute 200,000 copies of the Lucerne Resolution, a protest of Nazi atrocities |
| 1937 | |
| Spring | Sterilization of the "Rhineland Bastards" begins |
| April 22 | Gestapo order directs that all of Jehovah's Witnesses released from prisons are to be taken directly to concentration camps
|
| June 20 | Jehovah's Witnesses secretly distribute an open letter supplying detailed accounts of Nazi atrocities |
| July 16 | Concentration camp Buchenwald opens |
| 1938 | |
| Neuengamme and Mauthausen concentration camps established | |
| March 13 | Anschluss: The annexation of Austria |
| April 26 | Decree on the Reporting of Jewish Assets |
| June 15 | Arrest of all "previously convicted Jews" |
| July 6 | Evian Conference: Results in no international intervention on behalf of Jews |
| July 23 | Announcement that Jews will need identity cards beginning in 1939 |
| July 25 | Jewish doctors will only be allowed to treat Jewish patients |
| August 17 | Jews required to insert "Sara" or "Israel" as middle name |
| September 29 | Munich Agreement: Britian and France accept German annexation of Sudetenland |
| September 30 | Jewish physicians lose their licenses |
| October 2 | Watch Tower Society President, J. F. Rutherford, speaking over a network of 60 radio stations, denounces Nazi persecution of the Jews |
| October 6 | Passports of Jews marked with a "J" |
| October 26 | Approximately 17,000 Polish Jews expelled from Germany |
| November 7 | Herschel Grynspan assassinates Nazi Embassy worker in Paris in response to parents deportation from Germany to Poland |
| November 9 | Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) |
| November 12 | 26,000 Jews arrested and sent to concentration camps |
| November 15 | Expulsion of Jewish children from German schools
|
| December 13 | Compulsory expropriation of all Jewish businesses and industries |
| Late 1938/Early1939 | First German government sanctioned/authorized "Mercy Killing" of deformed infant named Knauer |
| 1939 | |
| Ravensbruck concentration camp established | |
| January 30 | Hitler predicts that Jews will be "exterminated" in the event of another war
|
| March 15 | Occupation of Czechoslovakia
|
| May | The S.S. St. Louis, a ship crowded with 930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the United States and other countries and returns to Europe. |
| August 18 | Directive sent ordering Euthanasia program for deformed/retarded children
|
| August 23 | Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact
|
| September 1 | German invasion of Poland WWII begins |
| September 3 | Britain and France declare war on Germany |
| September | Mental patients first shot to make room for soldiers throughout Greater Reich |
| October 1939 (back-dated to September 1) | "Fuhrer Decree - medical killing became official policy An estimated 275,000 people become victims of "euthanasia" |
| October 1939 | Children's Specialty Institution (euthanasia center) at Gorden established
|
| October 1939 | T4 Project for adult "euthanasia" established |
| October 15 | First gassing of Polish mental patients at Posen |
| October 1939 - 1941 | Over 30 Children's Specialty Institutions/Therapeutic Convalescent Institutions (adult euthanasia centers) were established and operated |
| October 12 | First deportations to Poland of Austrian and Moravian Jews |
| November 23 | All Jews in Poland mandated to wear Judenstern (Jewish Star of David) |
| 1940 | |
| Early 1940 | Gas first used as killing method as part of T4 project |
| April 9 | Germans invade Denmark and Norway
|
| April 30 | Lodz (Poland) ghetto sealed off |
| May 10 | Germans invade France, Holland, and Belgium |
| May - June | Gas vans first used to kill mental patients |
| June 22 | France surrenders to Germany |
| September 27 | Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis formed |
| November 15 | Warsaw (Poland) ghetto sealed off |
| 1941 | |
| June 22 | Germans attack Soviet Union Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) follow the German army and commit mass slaughter throughout Eastern Europe. By the spring of 1943, these special killing units kill more than one million Jews and tens of thousands of others. |
| July 8 | Jews in Baltic States forced to wear the Star of David |
| July 31 | Heydrich appointed by Goering to carry out the "Final Solution"
|
| August | Due to public protests led by Catholic Bishop Count von Galen, the killing of mental patients is temporarily stopped - continues in less centralized manner |
| September | Explosives tried as method of mass killing on mental patients |
| September 15 | Wearing of Jewish Star mandated throughout the Greater Reich |
| September 23 | First gassing experiments at Auschwitz |
| September 28-29 | Over 33,000 Jews are massacred during a two-day period at Babi Yar near the Ukranian capital, Kiev |
| October 10 | Theresienstadt (Czechoslovakia) ghetto established |
| October 14 | Deportation of German Jews begins |
| October 23 | Massacre in Odessa - 34,000 Jews dead |
| October 28 | Massacre in Kiev - 34,000 Jews dead |
| November 6 | Massacre in Rovno - 15,000 Jews dead |
| December 7 | Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor |
| December 8 | U.S. enters WWII |
| December 8 | Chelmno (Poland) extermination site opens |
| Beginning in December | Some 5000 Austrian Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) killed at Chelmmno in mobile gassing vans. Estimates for the total numbers of deaths of Roma and Sinti range from 200,000 to 300,000 |
| December 8 | Massacre in Riga - 27,000 Jews dead |
| December 12 | The ship "Struma" leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is later denied permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, it sails back into the Black Sea where it is intercepted by a Soviet submarine and sunk as an "enemy target." |
| December 22 | Massacre in Vilna - 32,000 Jews dead |
| 1942 | |
| January 15 | First group of Lodz Ghetto residents transported to Chelmno |
| January 20 | Wannsee Conference on Nazi "Final Solution" |
| January 21 | Unified resistance organization formed in Vilna Ghetto |
| January/February | First experiments on prisoners in low pressure chambers in Dachau
|
| March 16 | Belzec death camp opened |
| May 1 | Sorbibor death camp opened |
| June 1 | Treblinka death camp opened French and Dutch Jews must wear the Star of David |
| June 23 | Auschwitz opens as death camp and work center |
| June 30/July 2 | The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis. |
| July 22 | 300,000 Jews deported to Treblinka from Warsaw Ghetto |
| July 28 | Resistance organization formed in Warsaw Ghetto |
| August 15 | Cold shock experiments on prisoners begin at Dachau |
| October 17 | Allied pledge to punish Germans for genocide |
| December 16 | Himmler orders the "final solution of the Gypsy question" |
| 1943 | |
| January 18 | Jews of Warsaw Ghetto revolt against deportations |
| February 2 | German Army surrenders at Stalingrad |
| April 19 | Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins; fighting lasts for weeks
|
| May 16 | Warsaw Ghetto liquidated |
| May 30 | Josef Mengele becomes camp doctor at Auschwitz |
| June 11 | Himmler orders the liquidation of all Polish Jewish ghettos |
| Summer | Hundreds of Jewish Partisans escape Vilna Ghetto to continue resistance |
| August 2 | Revolt at Treblinka Death Camp |
| August 16 | Revolt at Bialystok Ghetto |
| September 23 | Vilna Ghetto liquidated |
| October 14 | Revolt at Sorbibor Death Camp |
| October 20 | U.N. War Crime Commission established |
| November 3 | Erntefest (Harvest Festival) operation launched to kill all remaining Jews in the central and southern region of Poland, call the Generalgouvernement. About 40,000 Jews are shot to death on this one day. |
| 1944 | |
| March 19 | Germany occupies Hungary |
| May 15 - June 8 | 476,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz from Hungary to be murdered by gassing
|
| Summer | Death marches and camp evacuations inside the Reich begin |
| June 6 | D-Day |
| July 20 | Attempted assassination of Hitler |
| July 24 | Maidanek death camp liberated |
| October 7 | Prisoner revolt at Auschwitz resulting in destruction of Crematoruim 4 and damage to Crematorium 2 & 3 |
| October 23 | Paris liberated |
| November 24 | Himmler orders destruction of Auschwitz crematoria |
| 1945 | |
| January 17 | Soviets liberate Warsaw |
| January 26 | Soviets liberate Auschwitz |
| February 4-11 | Yalta Conference in the Crimea |
| April | American troops liberate Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps |
| April 15 | British troops liberate Bergen-Belsen death camp |
| April 20 - May 3 | Twelve-day death march from Sachsenhausen. Some 26,000 prisoners began the march of 200 kilometers. Barely more than 15,000 survive and are liberated by Allied forces |
| April 30 | Hitler commits suicide |
| May 7 | Germany surrenders unconditionally |
| May 28 | Acting Secretary of State J. Grew informs President Truman that Japanese are willing to surrender if emperor's safety guaranteed |
| July 13 | President Truman informed that Japanese Emperor has joined effort to negotiate surrender |
| August 6 | United States drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan |
| August 9 | United States drops the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan |
| August 15 | Japan surrenders unconditionally
|
| November 22 | Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal commences
|
Another compehensive chronology can be found at The History Place