TIMEBASE1935-39

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1935 January 1 The Soviet Union discontinues food rationing cards.

1935 January 2 The Zurich city council requests the Swiss government to prohibit anti-Jewish demonstrations and publication of antisemitic literature.

1935 January 3 Abyssinia (Ethiopia) requests the assistance of the League of Nations in its conflict with Italy.

1935 January 4 The German bishops rule that since the main purpose of marriage is procreation, sterilized people may not partake of the sacrament of matrimony (see January 15, 1936).

1935 January 6 The American Jewish committee reports that the Jewish situation in Austria has worsened since Kurt von Schuschnigg took over the Chancellorship.

1935 January 7 An agreement is signed between France and Italy.

1935 January 8 Columbia Haus prison in Berlin becomes a concentration camp under direct control of the Gestapo.

1935 January 13 The League of Nations supervises the plebiscite (referendum) in the Saar. Ninety percent of the electors vote for a union with Germany. Only ten percent vote for union with France.

1935 January 17 The League of Nations formally awards the Saar region to Germany.

1935 January 20-21 The National Conference on Palestine is held in Washington, D.C.

1935 January 24 Hitler again meets with Josef Lipski, the Polish ambassador. Hitler tells Lipski that "the moment will come when Poland and Germany will be forced to defend themselves from Soviet aggression."

1935 January 30 The SS-Hauptamt (Main Office) is established.

1935 January-February During the 17th Party Congress, disaffection with Stalin is demonstrated when former Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov (assassinated December 1, 1934) receives an ovation equal to Stalin's. Nevertheless, Stalin crushes the peasant resistance and collectivization proves a success in terms of facilitating rapid industrial growth.

1935 February Wewelsburg castle, which began its SS service as an SS museum and officer's college for ideological education, is placed under the direct control of Himmler's personal staff. Himmler's decision to transform the castle into an SS order-castle, comparable to Marienburg of the medieval Teutonic Knights, almost certainly came from K.M. Weisthor (Wiligut). (Roots; Mund)

1935 February 1 The Anglo-German Conference begins in London. Its main topic is German rearmament.

1935 February 1 Italy sends troops to East Africa.

1935 February 6 Eva Braun celebrates her 23rd birthday and begins a new diary. Twenty-two hastily written pages were found after the war. (Eva's Diary)

1935 February 9 Unity Mitford, dining alone at the Osteria Bavaria restaurant in Munich, is invited by Hitler to join him and his party for lunch. This is their first meeting, but according to her diaries, they will meet or talk 140 times during the next five years. (Guiness)

1935 February 10 Jean Szembeck, Polish Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, tells Josef Beck, Poland's Foreign Minister, that Lipski told him Goering and his generals are "developing great plans for the future, suggesting almost a German-Polish alliance against Soviet Russia."

1935 February 15 Germany publishes a decree creating the Reichsstelle fuer Raumordnung (Agency for Space Arrangement).

1935 February 17 A workers congress organized by the Polish Socialist Party and the Polish Communist Party, attended by numerous Jews, meets in Warsaw.

1935 February 27 Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg denies that his government intends to expel eastern-European Jews or reduce the number of professional Jews. (Edelheit)

1935 February 28 The Swiss Supreme Court prohibits formation of uniformed, Nazi-like stormtroopers.

1935 March 1 The Saar is reunited with Germany and becomes an integral part of the Third Reich. The Nazis quickly apply their anti-Jewish legislation to the region.

1935 March 3 Britain publishes the Defence White Paper, detailin its plans for rearmament.

1935 March 9 Germany begins to secretly rearm (See March 3). (Edelheit)

1935 March 11 Hitler announces the existence of the new German air force (Luftwaffe).

1935 March 11 A meeting takes place of Workgroup II of the Expert Advisory Council for Population and Race Policy. Professors Fischer, Günther, and Lenz discuss with civil servants from the Ministry of the Interior the illegal sterilization of German coloured children. Professor Rüdin calls for the sterilization of psychopaths. (Science)

1935 March 13 German Jews are prohibited from reorienting their lives as artisans with the intent of remaining in the country. (Edelheit)

1935 March 14 The New York Times quotes President Roosevelt as saying, " In the distant past my ancestors may have been Jews. All I know about the origin of the Roosevelt family is that they are apparently the descendents of Claes Martenszen van Roosevelt who came from Holland. (See March 7, 1934)

1935 March 15 The Soviet Union announces creation of a fifth Jewish autonomous region at Larindorf in the Crimea.

1935 March 15 France extends compulsory military service for two more years.

1935 March 16 Germany reintroduces compulsory military service and repudiates the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty. The democracies do not react, and Britain will soon conclude a naval agreement with Germany that permits greater German naval strength than allowed by Versailles. (See June 18)

1935 March 22 The German Ministry of Education reports that not a single Jewish student was admitted to German universities in the academic year 1933-34. (Edelheit)

1935 March 24 The Anglo-Jewish Council of Trades and Industries, the World Alliance for Combatting Antisemitism and the British Anti-War Council proclaim an anti-Nazi boycott.

1935 March 25-26 Britain and Germany hold bilateral talks.

1935 March 28 Greece orders all anti-Jewish organization within its borders closed.

1935 March 31 An antisemitic manifesto published in Romania calls for racial restrictions in all areas of national life.

1935 April Sir Oswald Mosley meets with Hitler in Munich. (Guiness)

1935 Wewelsburg Castle becomes home to the Ahnenerbe, the ancestral heritage branch of the S.S. (It was called by some the Nazi Occult Bureau. (Pauwels;Roots)

1935 Spring Karl Maria Weisthor (K.M. Wiligut) is transferred from Munich to Berlin where he continues his work in the Chief Adjutant's office of Himmler's personal staff. Weisthor's villa is in exclusive Grunewald at Kaspar Theyss Strasse 33. Frequent social visitors included Himmler, Otto Rahn, Joachim von Leers, Edmund Kiss, Richard Anders and Friedrich Schiller. (Mund)

1935 April 1 Austria violates the Treaty of St. Germain by reinstituting compulsory military service.

1935 April 8 Adolph S. Ochs dies in Chattanooga, Tennesee. Ochs is soon succeeded as publisher of The New York Times by his son-in-law, Arthur Hayes Sulzberger, husband of Och's daughter, Iphigene, his only child. (Today, the newspaper remains largely the family business of the Sulzberger family.)

1935 April 11-14 The prime ministers of Britain, France and Italy meet at Stresa, Italy, to discuss Austrian independence and discuss establishing a common front against its unification with Germany.

1935 April 17 The League of Nations censures Germany's rearmament policy.

1935 April 23 The Nazi Race Bureau declares that Jewish children will be excluded from German public schools.

1935 April 23 A new Polish constituion is adopted that severely limits minority rights, especially for Jews.

1935 April 24 The American Union for Social Justice, Father Couglin's organization, holds its first meeting in Detroit.

1935 April 24 A Nazi decree orders that publishers and newspaer editors must prove their "Aryan" descent to 1800, or lose their jobs.

1935 April 30 A Nazi decree prohibits Jews from displaying the German flag.

1935 May The silver jubilee of King George V's reign is celebrated in England and throughout the empire.

1935 May Otto Rahn joins Weisthor (Wiligut's) department as a civilian employee.

1935 May 1 University students in Bucharest are required to fill out special forms describing their ethnic origins.

1935 May 2 Prussia's Administrative Court rules that the Gestapo is no longer subject to judicial control.

1935 May 2 France and the Soviet Union sign the Pact of Mutual Assistance. Hitler says it is obviously directed at Germany.

1935 May 12 Marshal Josef Pilsudski dies in Warsaw and buried in Krakow Cathedral. He is succeeded by Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz.

1935 May 14 A Swiss court, after almost two years of testimony and deliberations, rules that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a forgery and demoralizing literature. (See June 26, 1933 and November 1, 1937)

1935 May 16 The Czecho-Soviet Pact of Mutual Assistance is signed.

1935 May 20 The Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia, led by Konrad Heiden, an ally of the outlawed Nazi Party, wins 45 out of 300 seats in the national parliament, receiving more tham 250,000 votes.

1935 May 21 The "Army Law" is passed and "Aryan descent" becomes a prerequisite for active service in the German army. (Days)

1935 May 21 Hitler once again declares himself a man of peace and disavows any imperialist designs during a speech to the Reichstag.

1935 May 25 The SA stirs up anti-Jewish riots in Munich.

1935 May 27 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Roosevelt's National Recovery Act (NRA) is unconstitutional.

1935 May 27 The International Congress of Sephardic Jewry is established.

1935 May 29 Chancellor Schuschnigg rejects Austrian union with Germany.

1935 May 31 All Jews are excluded from conscription in the German army.

1935 June Stalin extends his purges to the leadership of the Red Army.

1935 June 4 Pierre Laval forms a new French cabinet.

1935 June 7 German representatives assure the International Olympic committee that "Aryans" and "non-Aryans" will be treated equally during the upcoming Olympic games.

1935 June 7 Stanley Baldwin becomes prime minister of Britain.

1935 June 9 Sixty Jews are injured in anti-Jewish riots at Grodno in Poland.

1935 June 10 Albania announces that only Jews with capital to invest are welcome.

1935 June 12 Germany withdraws from the International League of Nations Society in protest of the League's anti-Nazi resolution.

1935 June 15 Chinese Communists Mao Tse-tung calls for a united front against Japan, but excludes Chiang Kai-shek.

1935 June 18 The German-British Naval Treaty is signed. It permits much greater German naval strength than allowed by the Versailles Treaty.

1935 June 19 The German consulate in Palestine warns Jews not to return to Germany, even for a short visit, because the Gestapo will arrest them and put them in concentration camps for "special education."

1935 June 19 Abyssinia (Ethiopia) asks the League of Nations to send observers into disputed areas of East Africa.

1935 June 20 The Soviet Union recognises the right of Jews to own private property in Birobidjan.

1935 June 21 The German state of Franconia cancels the citizenship of all Jews naturalized between 1922 and 1929. (Edelheit)

1935 June 23 Polish officials close the Anti-Nazi Boycott Committee of Poland claiming its funds are being mismanaged.

1935 June 23 Mussolini rejects British concessions concerning Abyssinia.

1935 June 24 More than 10,000 members of the Hitler Youth take a formal oath "to eternally hate the Jews."

1935 June 26 The German Labor Service (Arbeitdienst) is established and excludes all "non-Aryans" from national labor service.

1935 June 30 The Swiss state of Zurich prohibits the sale of Julius Streicher's Der Stuermer.

1935 July 1 The Gestapo arrests protestant pastor, Martin Niemoeller.

1935 July 1 Himmler officially founds the Society for Research into the Spiritual Roots of Germany's Ancestral Heritage (Ahnenerbe) in Berlin. He soon turns the Ahnenerbe into an official organization attached to the SS. Its declared aims are: "To make researches into the localization, general characteristics, achievements and inheritance of the Indo-Germanic race, and to communicate to the people the results of this research. This mission must be accomplished through the use of strictly scientific methods." (Pauwels)

1935 July 2 Switzerland officially bans three German anti-Jewish publications: Der Stuermer, Reichsdeutsche and Allemane.

1935 July 7 In Belgium, the Catholic daily newspaper, La Libre Belge, states that Catholics in Germany are treated worse than Jews.

1935 July 12 Alfred Dreyfus dies in France.

1935 July 15 The Wehrmacht chief of staff issues orders banning all German soldiers from shopping in "non-Aryan" shops and stores.

1935 July 16 Violent anti-Jewish demonstrations break out on Berlin's Kurfuerstendam.

1935 July 19 Alfred Rosenberg's latest book An die Dunkelmanner unserer Zeit, written as an answer his critics in the Catholic Church, is also put on the Church's Index of Forbidden Books. (Lewy)

1935 July 20 The Gestapo closes down Jewish-owned shop on the Kurfuerstendam in Berlin.

1935 July 23 Lithuanian police in Kovno suppress the Jewish anti-Nazi boycott.

1935 July 27 Nazi leaders forbid individual anti-Jewish actions. All anti-Jewish measures must emanate from the Fuehrer's chancellery. (Edelheit)

1935 July 31 The Berlin city council bars provincial Jews from entering the city.

1935 August 6 The Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Unions, established by the Reich Chamber of Culture, are placed under the control of Goebbel's propaganda ministry.

1935 August 9 Huey P. Long, U.S. Senator from Louisiana and Roosevelt's number one rival in the upcoming presidential elections, makes a speech in the Senate, telling his colleagues that the "Black Hand," led by Jews, has ordered his assassination at a meeting in a New Orleans hotel. (Congressional Record)

1935 August 15 Julius Streicher organizes an anti-Jewish rally at the Berlin Sportspalast.

1935 August 15 The U.S. Congress passes the Social Security Act.

1935 August 18 President Roosevelt implores Mussolini to preserve the peace in East Africa.

1935 August 20 The Catholic bishops send a lengthy memorandum to Hitler complaining that because of the support and publicity given by the party to Rosenberg's books, the public could only conclude that neopaganism and National Socialism were identical. (Lewy)

1935 August 20 The Nineteenth World Zionist Congress opens in Lucerne, Switzerland. It will close on September 14.

1935 August 20 The Seventh World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) calls for a popular front to combat Fascism and support the struggles and wars of national liberation around the world.

1935 August 26 Half-Jewish Berlin psychiatrist, Dr. Kallmann, is allowed to speak for the last time at a meeting inGermany. At the International Congress of Population Problems, he claims: "...it is desirable to extend prevention of reproduction to relatives of schizophrenics who stand out because of minor anomalies, and, above all, to define each of them as being undesirable from the eugenic point of view at the beginning of their reproductive years." (Science)

1935 August 31 Italy increases the size of its army to more than one million men.

1935 September 1 Chaim Weizmann becomes president of the World Zionist Organization at the Nineteenth World Zionist Congress in Lucerne.

1935 September 4 The League of Nations meets to discuss Mussolini's agression against Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1935 September 6 Street sales of Jewish newspapers is prohibited in Germany. (Persecution)

1935 September 7-12 The New Zionist Organization (HA-ZACH) is officially founded at its first congress in Vienna. Jabotinsky presents a 10-year plan to settle 1.5 million Jews on both sides of the Jordan River. The Revisionist constitution is adopted.

1935 September 8 Huey P. Long is shot in the State Capitol at Baton Rouge by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, a doctor of Jewish descent, less than a month after his speech in the Senate. More than 10,000 people attend Weiss' funeral in Baton Rouge. (See August 9)

1935 September 10 Huey P. Long dies from his wounds in Baton Rouge.

1935 September 11 Hitler, at the Seventh Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, announces that German scientists have solved the problem of synthetic rubber (buna) production.

1935 September 11 Britain urges the League of Nations to resist agressive actions. (Edelheit)

1935 September 14 Italy rejects a League of Nations compromise on the Abyssinian (Ethiopian) crisis.

1935 September 15 At the Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg, Hitler officially proclaims the antisemitic "Nuremberg Laws." These repressive laws are designed to biologically isolate the Jewish people legally, politically, and socially. One law restricts German citizenship to those of "German or related blood," thus stripping the Jews of their few remaining rights as German citizens. Another prohibits marriage and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans, making it a crime punishable by imprisonment.

1935 September 15 The swastika becomes part of the official flag of the Third Reich. (Edelheit)

1935 September 16 The central office of the German episcopate in Berlin reports that previously Catholic couples of racially mixed descent had travelled to England to get married, but now even those marriages have become illegal. (Lewy)

1935 September 20 Nazi party ideologists give their official interpretation of the Nuremberg Laws. (Edelheit)

1935 September 20 Himmler issues an order forbidding members of the S.S. to take any leading role in religious organizations, including the German Faith movement, and strictly forbidding all manifestations of religious intolerance or scorn of religious symbols. (Lewy)

1935 September 27 Otto Rahn writes a letter to Weisthor (Wiligut) excitedly describing the places he has been visiting in his hunt for grail traditions in Germany. Rahn asks for complete confidence in the matter with the exception of Himmler. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

1935 September 27 Waldemar Gurian, a German Catholic writer in exile, writes that the Nuremberg ordinances are "only a stage on the way toward the complete physical destruction of the Jews." (Lewy)

1935 September 30 All Jewish civil servants in Germanymare placed on leave. (Persecution)

1935 October 1 Goebbel's Propaganda Ministry explains that Nazism is anti-Jewish rather than antisemitic -- probably to avoid offending their Arab allies.

1935 October 2 German banks are prohibited from issuing loans and giving credit to Jews.

1935 October 3 - 4 Mussolini's Italian troops invade the African nation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), sending in forces from Italian Eritrea and Somaliland. Italy had unsuccessfully attempted to conquer Ethiopia in 1896, and that defeat still rankled many Italians.

1935 October 5 The U.S. places an embargo on all arms shipments to Italy and Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1935 October 5 Columbia Haus concentration camp in Berlin is closed.

1935 October 6 Nazis stage anti-Jewish actions throughout Germany. (Edelheit)

1935 October 10 The monarchy is restored in Greece under King George II.

1935 October 15 The Reich War Academy (Kriegsakademie) is reopened in Berlin.

1935 October 18 Germany promulgates the Marriage Protection Law, forbidding person with hereditary diseases to marry.

1935 October 19 The Institute for the History of the New Germany opens.

1935 October 19 The League of Nations imposes sanctions on Italy for invading Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1935 October 24 Catholic and Protestant leaders urge America not to participate in the Berlin Olumpics.

1935 October 27 An anti-Nazi rally in Hyde Park, London, draws 18,000 people.

1935 October The Order of the New Templars (ONT) presbytery at Hertesburg, near Prerow on the Baltic Sea coast is compulsorily expropriated by Hermann Goering's Reich Forestry Commission as part of the Darrs National Park. Hauerstein then establishes a new presbytery of Petena at the Püttenhof near Waging in Bavaria. (Roots)

1935 November 1 The German citizenship of Jews is officially revoked. The Nazi government announces that the Nuremberg Laws apply to all Jews, German or foreign, without exception.

1935 November 3 Leon Blum, a Jew, forms the French Popular Front government.

1935 November 11 David Ben-Gurion is named chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive.

1935 November 14 A supplement to the Nuremberg Laws is published to clarify and define who is now considered a Jew. It decrees that anyone with at least three Jewish grandparents is deemed to be a Jew. Half-Jews, those with two Jewish grandparents are to be counted as Jews only if they belong to the Jewish religion or are married to a Jew. Half-Jews and one-fourth Jews -- those descended from one Jewish grandparent -- who do not practice the Jewish faith are lumped together into a new "non-Aryan" racial category: the Mischlinge (mixed race). (Apparatus)

1935 November 15 Germany publishes regulations to execute the Nuremberg Laws.

1935 November 15 The U.S. grants commonwealth status to the Philippines.

1935 November 18 A League of Nations embargo goes into effect against Italy.

1935 November 20 The Church of England unanimously condemns Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany.

1935 November 26 Clement Atlee becomes leader of the British Labour Party.

1935 November 26 The Nazi racial office rules that the prohibition of racially mixed marriages incorporated in the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor," applies equally to Gypsies. (Edelheit)

1935 November 28 Advocates for Jewish refugees reject a proposed liquidation bank for German Jewry. (Edelheit)

1935 December 1 Chiang Kai-shek is elected president of the Kuo Min Tang, the Chinese Nationalist government.

1935 December 2 An order is issued by the Bavarian Gestapo forbidding all public meetings and lectures of Ludendorff's "heathen" movement. The edict is later extended to cover Professor Jakob Wilhelm Hauer's German Faith movement as well. (NA; Lewy)

1935 December 2 A number of American colleges and universities urge U.S. athletes to boycott the Berlin Olympics.

1935 December 7 A resolution by the National Amateur Athletic Union demands that American teams refuse to participate in the Berlin Olympics.

1935 December 13 Germany publishes additional restrictions for German Jews in the legal and medical professions.

1935 December 23 The Italian air force begins using mustard gas against Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1935 December 24 Congress passes the United States Neutrality Act.

1935 December 26 Germany revokes the licenses of Jewish traveling salespeople throughout Germany. (Edelheit)

1935 December 31 James G. McDonald resigns as League of Nations High Commissioner for the Relief of Refugees.

1935 Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, attempts suicide.

1935 Edouard Benes succeeds Tomas Masaryk as president of Czechoslovakia.

1935 Leni Riefenstahl directs the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will.

1935 The writings of Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels begin to be published by a firm in Vienna, which will continue to be involved until late 1937. No more of his writings will appear until after 1945 in Switzerland. (Roots)

1935 Scottish physicist Robert Watson-Watt patents the first practical radar system.

1935 Michael Prawdin (Michael Charol) publishes The Legacy of Genghis Khan, a sequel to his 1934 book on the same subject. Both are avidly read by Heinrich Himmler, who strongly recommends them to all those around him, including Hitler. (Architect)

1935 The Moscow subway (named for Kaganovich) is opened with great publicity.

1935 Between 1935 and 1937, 75 Polish Jews are killed and more than 500 injured in widespread attacks. Many are attacked in the streets and their homes and schools broken up and looted. (Atlas)

1936 The Duke of Kent, King Edward VIII's brother and closest family supporter, dies; some historians say under mysterious circumstances.

1936 January The German government begins a series of trials of members of the religious orders accused of violating the foreign currency laws. Press coverage is hostile to the accused in almost all cases. (Lewy)

1936 January An article in the Catholic Klerusblatt justifies the Nuremberg Laws as indispensable safeguards for the qualitative makeup of the German people.

1936 January 1 The United Palestine Appeal is founded.

1936 January 4 Ambassador Bergen in Rome writes to German foreign minister von Neurath that the Pope is protesting the violations of the Concordat by the Hitler government, and has several times threatened to bring his complaints into the open. It has taken the moderation of Secretary of State Pacelli to prevent a rupture of relations. (Lewy)

1936 January 11 An attempt is made on the life of Romanian Chief Rabbi Jacob Isaac Niemirower.

1936 January 15 Vicar General Riemer of Passau issues instructions allowing sterilized Catholics to receive the sacraments of matrimony, reversing the decision of January 4, 1935. (Lewy)

1936 January 15 Japan withdraws from the London Naval Conference.

1936 January 20 Edward VIII is crowned king of Great Britain.

1936 January 21 British King George V dies.

1936 January 23 Utah Senator William H. King urges the U.S. to open its doors as a haven for Jews fleeing Germany.

1936 January 25 The Catholic Agency of Poland officially condemns antisemitic acts. (Edelheit)

1936 January 29 The funeral of King George V.

1936 January - February Moderate Republicans and leftist parties in Spain form a "Popular Front" in opposition to the conservatives.

1936 February 4 Swiss Nazi Party leader Wilhelm Gustloff is assassinated by David Frankfurter, a Jew.

1936 February 6 The German Ministry of the Interior decrees that a system of records be set up to cover hereditary biological data on all patients in mental hospitals and institutions. (Science)

1936 February 6-16 The Winter Olympics are held in the German resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

1936 February 16 The "Popular Front" of moderate Republicans and leftists in Spain drives the conservatives out of office in national elections.

1936 February 18 Goebbels issues a decree muzzling the religious press.

1936 February 18 British Major General Sir Neill Malcolm is appointed League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from Germany.

1936 February 18 Switzerland bans NSDAP propaganda activities nationwide.

1936 February 26 A military dictatorship is established in Japan.

1936 February 27 The French Parliament ratifies the Franco-Soviet military alliance.

1936 February 27 Mussolini protests the Five-Power Mediterranean Pact.

1936 February 28 London police are ordered to arrest all antisemitic agitators.

1936 February 29 Cardinal Hlond declares in a public letter that "It is true that the Jews are committing frauds, practicing usury, and dealing in white slavery. It is true that in schools, the influence of Jewish youth upon Catholic youth is generally evil, from a religious and ethical point of view. But let us be just. Not all Jews are like that. One does well to prefer his own kind in commercial dealings and to avoid Jewish stores and Jewish stalls in the markets, but it is not permissable to demolish Jewish businesses, break windows, torpedo their houses..." (Lewy)

1936 March Writer and researcher Otto Rahn officially joins the SS. (Roots)

1936 March 3 Italy abolishes private banking.

1936 March 7 German troops re-enter the de-militarized Rhineland in defiance of the Treaty of Locarno.

1936 March 7 German Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath informs the other signatories to the Locarno Treaties that Germany now considers those Treaties to have been broken by France. The French military alliance with Russia, von Neurath says, is obviously directed at Germany and consequently Germany will reoccupy the Rhineland. Germany offers to sign a pact of nonaggression with Belgium and France, to sign an Air Force agreement with all Western Powers, and to reenter the League of Nations if its Charter is independent of the Versailles Treaty. None of these proposals are acted upon by the Western Powers.

1936 March Britain, Italy and Belgium at the League of Nations 12-18 Council in London make it clear to France that even if Germany's reoccupation of the Rhineland is a violation of Versailles, it is not cause enough for war.

1936 March 7 Jews in Germany lose their right to vote in elections for the Reichstag. (Persecution)

1936 March 9 Three Jews are murdered at Przytyk in Poland, and a few days later, five more are killed in the village of Stawy. (Atlas)

1936 March 13 Jewish labor groups call for a one day general strike to protest Polish antisemitism.

1936 March 14 Socialists, Communists and Syndicalists burn churches in the center of Madrid.

1936 March 15 The Council for German Jewry is established in London.

1936 March 18 Catholic leaders in Austria demand a numerus clausus against Jews.

1936 March 22 Sir Oswald Mosley makes an antisemitic speech that almost causes a riot in London's Albert Hall.

1936 March 22 Italy, Austria amd Hungary sign an anti-Nazi mutual defense treaty in Rome.

1936 March 23 British troops evacuate Jews from Hebron in Palestine.

1936 March 25 The U.S., Britain and France sign the London Naval Convention.

1936 March 25 Nazis confiscate property belonging to German and Jewish writers who voluntarily went into exile.

1936 March 29 Hitler receives 99% of the votes in a referendum, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters.

1936 March 29 SS guard formations are renamed SS-Totenkopfverbande and their number increases to 3,500. (Edelheit)

1936 March 30 Britain announces that it will build 38 new warships.

1936 April Otto Rahn is promoted to SS-Unterscharfuehrer, a noncommissioned officer (NCO).

1936 April 7 Abyssinia again appeals to the League of Nations for aid against Italy.

1936 April 7 A Socialist vote in the Spanish parliament outs President Alcala Zamora.

1937 April 17 The Polish parliament passes a bill outlawing Jewish ritual slaughter (Shechita).

1936 April 17 Leftist unions stage a general strike in Madrid.

1936 April 22 The Lithuianian government announces that all Jewish teachers institutes will be closed.

1936 April 24-27 Anti-Jewish demonstrations break out in Czechoslovakia after screenings of the film Golem.

1936 April 28 King Farouk is coronated in Egypt.

1936 May The German government steps up its drive against the religious orders, instituting a number of trials for sexual perversity. The proceedings are given detailed and lurid coverage by the German press. Catholic monasteries are described as breeding places of filth and vice. (Lewy)

1936 May 2 Haile Selassie flees Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Addis Ababa is looted and set afire by mobs.

1936 May 3 Italian troops capture Addis Ababa.

1936 May 3 A fundraiser for Jewish refugees at Madison Square Garden draws 16,000 people.

1936 May 5 Mussolini announces total victory over Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Although the League of Nations had imposed an embargo against Italy, it failed to include a vital item, oil, thereby discrediting itself once again.)

1936 May 7 Britain proposes a plan for regulating worldwide arms traffic.

1936 May 8 Haile Selassie arrives in Palestine.

1936 May 8 Oswald Spengler, renowned German historian and philosopher best known for his pessimistic philosophy of history, dies in Munich.

1936 May 9 Abyssinia (Ethiopia) is annexed into the Italian empire under King Victor Emanuel II.

1936 May 10 The League of Nations votes to leave its sanctions against Italy in place.

1936 May 10 Manuel Azana is elected president of the Spanish Republic.

1936 May 11 Pope Pius XI describes Communism as the "greatest evil to men."

1936 May 13 Britain accuses Italy of encouraging the Arab revolt in Palestine.

1936 May 16 General Felicjan Skladkowski becomes prime minister of Poland.

1936 May 18 The British Colonial Office announces formation of the Peel Commission to investigate the disturbances in Palestine.

1936 May 18 Haile Selassie thanks Jews for their support in defending Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1936 May 21 Britain warns Italy not to meddle in the affairs of Palestine and Egypt.

1936 May 21 Kurt von Schuschnigg is elected leader of the Austrian Fatherland Front.

1936 May 23 Catholic bishops in Holland demand a ban on the Dutch Nazi party. (Edelheit)

1936 May 24 The Belgian Fascist party, the Rexists, win 21 seats in parliament.

1936 May 26 Austria announces its intention not to attend the Geneva conference on German refugees.

1936 June A Swiss Catholic reportedly asks children to pray for the death of Hitler. The German press quickly accuses all Catholics of being in sympathy with sedition. (Lewy)

1936 June 1 Chancellor Schuschnigg meets with Mussolini, who persuades him to agree to a German-Austrian pact.

1936 June 2 One hundred nineteen Nazis are indicted in Warsaw for conspiring to overthrow the Polish government.

1936 June 4 Leon Blum becomes the first socialist and the first Jew to serve as premier of France. Presiding over the Popular Front coalition of Socialists, Communists, and liberals, he responds to worker unrest with reforms such as paid vacations, collective bargaining, and the 40-hour work week.

1936 June 6 Xavier Vallat, a member of the French Chamber of Delegates, attacks Leon Blum for his Jewish origin.

1936 June 7 Cardinal Faulhaber, in a sermon, declares "A lunatic abroad has had an attack of madness -- does this justify wholesale suspicion of German Catholics? We feel offended on account of this questioning of our loyalty to the state. We will today give an answer, a Christian answer: Catholic men, we will now pray together, a paternoster for the life of the Fuehrer. This our answer." (AB Munich; Lewy) (See June 1936 above)

1936 June 9 Mussolini appoints Count Galeazzo Ciano Italian foreign minister.

1936 June 12 The first Arab attack is made on British troops in Palestine. (Edelheit)

1936 June 13 Britain is forced to declare martial law in Palestine.

1936 June 17 Himmler is appointed chief of the German police, both uniformed and civilian.

1936 June 20 The Bavarian Political Police issue orders to take into custody all priests who dare to criticize an order dismissing all nuns teaching in the public schools, which is scheduled to be announced the following day. Vicar General Buchwieser of Munich (in charge of the diocese in the absence of Cardinal Faulhaber) instructs the clergy to read a joint pastoral letter of the Bavarian bishops criticizing this order.That same evening the government gives in and instructs the police to merely record the names of priests who read the pastoral letter. (Lewy)

1936 June 20 Austria bans all political meetings and street demonstrations.

1936 June 21 The Bavarian government publicly reads the order dismissing all Catholic nuns teaching in the public schools.

1936 June 21 Anti-Jewish riots break out in Bucharest, Romania.

1936 June 27 Germany declares its support for Danzig's independence.

1936 June 30 A Jewish general strike is held to protest Polish antisemitism

1936 June 30 France outlaws the French Fascist Party.

1936 June 30 Haile Selassie addresses the League of Nations.

1936 July 8 The Polish government declares that the German-sponsored movement for Danzig independence is belligerent act (causa belli) that could lead to war.

1936 July 8 Arabs send a memorandum to the British government demanding an end to Jewish immigration to Palestine.

1936 July 8 Hitler guarantees Austrian independence.

1936 July 9 Goebbels orders a halt to anti-Jewish propaganda until after the Berlin Olympics.

1936 July 10 The British House of Commons debates the activities of Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.

1936 July 11 A German-Austrian friendship treaty is signed.

1936 July 12 Sachsenhausen concentration camp is opened.

1936 July 15 The League of Nations and Western Powers lift economic sanctions against Italy.

1936 July 15 Professor Mollison, an anthropologist at the University of Munich, recommends to the Ministry of the Interior that the costs of expert reports on "Aryan" or Jewish origins should be recovered from the applicants. "It is not advisable to provide such a time-consuming investigation free for those who claim Aryan origins when they know they are not entitled to do so." (Science)

1936 July 17 The Spanish Civil War begins. A number of generals led by General Francisco Franco provoke revolts against the Republican (Socialist) governments in Spain and Spanish Morocco. Franco is strongly supported by the Catholic Church, the nobility, the military and the Fascists. Hitler and Mussolini immediately sent arms and men to help Franco. Several months later Stalin begins shipping arms to the "loyalists." The U.S. adheres to a policy of strict neutrality, but thousands of Communists and anti-Fascists volunteers from the United States and Britain go to Spain to serve with the republicans and are organized with the aid of the Soviet Comintern.

1936 July 17 France nationalizes its munitions industry.

1936 July 18 The Nazi-controlled Danzig Senate nullifies the Free City's constitution, prohibits Jewish ritual slaughter and prevents Jews from renewing leases and business licenses.

1936 July 21 Members of the Peel Committee (British Royal Committee on Palestine) are named.

1936 July 23 Representatives of Britain, France and Belgium meet in London to discuss German violation of the Locarno Pact in the Rhineland.

1936 July 26 Italy and Germany begin assisting General Franco's forces in Spain.

1936 July 26 Father Charles Coughlin, in an address to 5,000 American farmers claims that the Roosevelt administration is a tool of the Rothschild banking dynasty.

1936 July 26 The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) announces that during 1935 it contributed $300,000 to Jewish welfare in Germany.

1936 Summer Hitler finds a strange rock he calls Wotan's Hand and mounts it in a special glass case, displaying it as though it were a holy relic.

1936 August A gathering organized by the American Forward Movement in Asheville, N.C., collapses when a rabbi attempts to attend the conference.

1936 August 1 The 1936 Olympic Games begin in Berlin. A Black American, Jesse Owens, wins 4 gold medals. For propaganda reasons, most anti-Jewish measures are avoided for the duration of the games, and slogans are removed from the streets.

1936 August The Messerschmitt ME-109, a highly successful single-seat fighter, is first publically displayed at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. It was subsequently tested and proven during the Spanish Civil War.

1936 August 1 France declares a policy of non-intervention in the Spanish civil war.

1936 August 6 The U.S. declares its strict neutrality in the Spanish civil war.

1936 August 14 Arthur S. Leese, publisher of the Fascist, a periodical of the Imperial Fascist League, is tried in London on charges of seditious libel against British Jews.

1936 August 14 Count Jean Szembeck reports that during a recent conversation with Joachim von Ribbentrop that the German Foreign Minister "insisted upon the necessity of Polish-German collaboration." Both Poland and Germany," Ribbentrop said, "are under the threat of a very great danger. Bolshevism plans to destroy all of the fruits of Western civilization"

1936 August 15 Arab groups in Palestine attack 38 Jewish settlements.

1936 August 19 The first Stalinist trials of "counterrevolutionaries" opens. All defendents will be sentenced to death.

1936 August 23 The German Evangelical Church publishes its manifesto.

1936 August 24 Two-year mandatory military service becomes compulsory in Germany.

1936 August 24 Lev Kamenev is executed after being found guilty of treason in the first Stalinist "show trial" of the Great Purge.

1936 August 25 Grigory Zinoviev is executed after being arrested and falsely charged with having organized a "terrorist counterrevolutionary group allied with the Gestapo."

1936 August 26 Britain and Egypt sign a twenty-year alliance in Cairo, ending the British military occupation of Egypt, except for the Canal Zone (Suez).

1936 September Karl Maria Weisthor (Wiligut) is promoted to SS-Brigadefuehrer (Brigadier) on Himmler's personal staff. An undated typescript in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz is a blueprint for the reestablishment of the Irminist religion in Germany, with detailed provisions for restrictions on the priesthood, the nationalization of all ecclesiastical property, and the restoration and conservation of ancient monuments. (Roots)

1936 September 4 The Berlin Labor Court rules that German employees who marry Jews or other "non-Aryans" may be dismissed from their jobs.

1936 September 8 France places an embargo on all military exports to Spain.

1936 September 9 Goebbels accuses Czechoslovakia of providing secret bases for Soviet aircraft.

1936 September 14 After a majority of the Spanish Catholic hierarchy has sided with General Franco and called for a crusade against Communism, Pope Pius XI gives his blessing to "those who have assumed the difficult and dangerous task of defending and restoring the rights and honor of Church and religion." (Lewy)

1936 September 18 David Lloyd George publicly expresses enthusiam for Hitler and his regime after visiting the Fuehrer in Germany.

1936 September 20 The Gestapo arrests a number of well-known rabbis and Zionist leaders without charging them with any crimes.

1936 September 21 Arthur Leese and two other British Fascists are found guilty of libeling and slandering British Jews.

1936 September 24 Jewish-owned employment agencies in Germany are ordered to cease operation.

1936 September 27 The Gestapo closes the Association of Independent Artisans of the Jewish Faith, a German Jewish mutual aid society.

1936 October 1 General Franco is declared Spanish head of state at Burgos.

1936 October 4 Hans Frank draws up a program to remove all Jewish influence from German jurisprudence. (Edelheit)

1936 October 4 The Reich Chamber of Culture orders all Jewish art dealers in Berlin to close their galleries by the end of the year.

1936 October 13 Special courts are set up by the German Ministry of Justice to try cases covered by the Nuremberg Laws

1936 October 15 Jewish teachers in Germany are forbidden to tutor "Aryan" children.

1936 October 20 Polish officials close the Warsaw Trade School after anti-Jewish riots.

1936 October 21 Julius Streicher initiates a new anti-Jewish campaign with an exhibition entitled "World Enemy Number One: Jewish Bolshevism."

1936 October 22 Belgium declares martial law to combat Rexist violence.

1936 October 22-25 Spanish Republicans (Socialists) transfer Spain's gold reserves to the Soviet Union. (Edelheit)

1936 October 25 The Rome-Berlin Axis is established. Cooperation between Germany and Italy in Spain has helped cement a vague understanding, which is now formally concluded.

1936 November At Petrovaradim in Yugoslavia, the editor of an antisemitic newspaper modelled on Streicher's "Der Stürmer" is tried and acquitted. (Atlas)

1936 November Dr. Ritter, a psychologist and psychiatrist, begins his work on Gypsies in the Section for Research on Race-hygiene and Population Biology in the Reich Department of Health in Berlin, funded by the DFG. (Science)

1936 November 4 President Roosevelt is relected, carrying every state except Maine and Vermont.

1936 November 5 The Iron Guard (Legionaries) denounces the Romanian government as a tool of Jews and Freemasons.

1936 November 7 The so-called International Brigade, composed primarily of Socialists and Communists, arrives in Madrid and a battle for the city begins.

1936 November 8 The National Christian Party stages the largest antisemitic demonstration in Romanian History.

1936 November 12 The opening session of the Peel Commission begins in Palestine.

1936 November 13 The Research Department for the Jewish Question (Forschungsabteilung judenfrage) opens in Munich.

1936 November 15 The Romanian Ministry of Labor announces that Jewish refugees will not be allowed to establish themselves in Romania. (Edelheit)

1936 November 18 Germany and Italy officially recognize General Franco as head of the Spanish state.

1936 November 23 The Nazis blacklist some 2,000 works written by Jewish authors.

1936 November 25 The Anti-Comintern Pact is signed by Germany and Japan. They will soon be joined by Italy

1936 November 25 Chaim Weizmann testifies before the Peel Commission in Palestine.

1936 November 29 The National Council for Palestine, located in New York, urges the Peel Commission to insist on Britain honoring its obligation to establish a Jewish homeland in Palesine.

1936 November 29 Soviet Prime Minister Vlacheslav Molotov denounces the Nazi persecution of German Jews. Antisemites claim Molotov and Stalin are both married to Jewesses.

1936 November 30 Moshe Shertok, head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, testifies before the Peel Commission, blaming the Colonial Office and its restrictive immigration policy as the reason for "illegal" Jewish immigration to Palestine. (Edelheit)

1936 December 1 The Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) becomes an official agency of the Reich.

1936 December 3 All Jewish charitable organizations in Germany lose their tax exempt status.

1936 December 6 A new Nazi press campaign aimed at totally eliminating Jews from German economic life is begun.

1936 December 7 The last Jewish department store in Germany is "Aryanized."

1936 December 9 The trial of David Frankfurter, the Jew accused of assassinating Swiss Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff, begins in Grisons state court (S).

1936 December 9 King Edward VIII sends a coded telegram to Baron Eugene de Rothschild requesting permission to stay at Rothschild's Castle Enzesfeld near Vienna. (Cowles)

1936 December 11 King Edward VIII abdicates the British throne and becomes the Duke of Windsor. He quickly leaves the country and begins an extended stay at Rothschild's castles in Austria. (Cowles)

1936 December The Duke of York (father of Queen, Elizabeth) becomes King George VI of England.

1936 December 12 Chiang Kai-shek declares war on Japan.

1936 December 14 David Frankfurter is sentenced to 18 years in a Swiss prison for killing Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff.

1936 December 18 The Nazis proclaim an anti-Jewish boycott limited to Breslau.

1936 December 20 Walter Gross, chief of the Nazi Racial Bureau, announces a nationwide racial propaganda campaign.

1936 December 25 The U.S. announces new agreements that facilitate trade with Germany. (Edelheit)

1936 December 27 The Basque autonomoius government, headquartered in Guernica, seizes a German vessel in Spainish waters. It will be released two days later.

1936 December 27 Britain and France agree on a mutual policy of non-intervention in the Spanish civil war.

1936 Action Francaise is officially dissolved by the French government for complicity in a physical attack on Leon Blum. (Surviving clandestinely, Action Francaise contributes to the ideology of the Vichy Government during World War II. It disintegrates in 1944 when France is liberated and Maurras, its leader, is imprisoned for collaboration.)

1936 Ioannis Metaxas establishes a Greek dictatorship.

1936 In Lithuania, where severe restrictions had been imposed on the number of Jews allowed to enter universities, not a single Jewish student is granted admittance to study medicine. (Atlas)

1936 The influential Jesuit magazine Civilta Cattolica published in Rome emphasizes that opposition to Nazi racialism should not be interpreted as a rejection of anti-semitism, and argues, as the magazine had done since 1890, that the Christian world (though without un-Christian hatred) must defend itself against the Jewish threat by suspending the civic rights of Jews and returning them to the ghettos. (Lewy)

1936 The German government gives the National Association of German Catholics Abroad a sum of more than 139,000 marks, in 1936 alone, for its pro-German and pro-Nazi activities among the German minorities of Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. (Lewy)

1936 A Polish Jesuit periodical asserts that it is necessary "to provide separate schools for Jews, so that our children will not be infected with their lower morality." (Atlas)

1936 The Iron Guard, an influential antisemitic organization in Romania, bombs a Jewish theater in Timisoara, killing two Jews and injuring many more. (Atlas)

1936 Diana Mitford, Unity Mitford's sister, marries Sir Oswald Mosley in Berlin. Their wedding reception is held at the home of Joseph Goebbel's. (Guiness)

1937 January 1 The Polish law banning Jewish ritual slaughter (Shechita) goes into effect.

1937 January 1 All Jewish-owned employment agencies in Germany are ordered closed.

1937 January 6 The Zionist Organization in Poland votes to support the Polish Socialist parties in all future elections. (Edelheit)

1937 January 7 Heiress to the Dutch throne, Princess Juliana, marries Prince Bernhard.

1937 January 10 The Polish government dissolves the Warsaw Jewish kehilla.

1937 January 12 The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem testifies before the Peel Commission in Palestine.

1937 January 15 The Schuschnigg government proclaims amnesty for Austrian Nazis.

1937 January 16 The Gestapo orders all Jewish youth organization in Germany dissolved.

1937 January 17 Germany prohibits foreign warships from free passage through the Kiel Canal.

1937 January 20 President Roosevelt is inaugurated for a second term.

1937 January 22 German citizens are asked not to patronize Jewish doctors.

1937 January 23 The second Stalinist trial of counterrevolutionaries opens in Moscow. Thirteen of the fifteen defendents receive death sentences.

1937 January 24 Goering sorders Heydrich to organize emigration of Jews still residing in Germany.

1937 January 30 The Peel Commission returns to Britain.

1937 January 31 The Danzig Senate creates a secret police force modelled on the Gestapo.

1937 January Hitler formally abrogates the Treaty of Versailles.

1937 February 1 The Nazis issue a decree prohibiting Herman citizens from accepting any form of Nobel Prize.

1937 February 2 In reply to a question from the Reich Minister of Science, Education, and National Culture about the number of Jews and half-Jews supported by the DFG, its president reports: "None at all." (Science)

1937 February 4 President Roosevelt begins an effort to "pack" the Supreme court.

1937 February 10 Nazi officials close all Catholic schools in Bavaria.

1937 February 16-22 Hermann Goering visits Poland.

1937 February 18 Under a new German conscription law, half and quarter Jews will be eligible for military and labor service.

1937 February 18 Czechoslovakia signs an agreement with Sudeten Germans guaranteeing them broader minority rights.

1937 February 27 France establishes a ministry of defense.

1937 February 27 Anti-Jewish violence again breaks out in Romania.

1937 March The Duke of Windsor leaves the Rothschild's castle in Austria. (Cowles)

1937 March 5 German officials announce that the nation's film industry is completely cleansed of Jews.

1937 March 14 A papal encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow) is published, dealing with the condition of the Catholic Church in Germany and condemning Nazi racism.

1937 March 21 Mit brennender Sorge, is read from the pulpits of all Catholic Churches in Germany on Palm Sunday. It has been smuggled into Germany, secretly printed and distributed by messenger throughout the nation. "With deep anxiety and with ever-growing dismay" Pius XI says he has watched the tribulations of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Concordat of 1933 is now being openly violated, and the conscience of the faithful oppressed as never before. True belief in God, the Pope declares, is irreconcilable with the deification of earthly values such as race, people or the state. Important as these are in the natural order, they can never be the ultimate norm of all things. Belief in a national God or a national religion, similarly is a grave error. The God of Christianity cannot be imprisoned "within the frontiers of a single people, within the pedigree of one single race." (Lewy)

1937 March 21 The Polish Senate passes a law making it illegal for Jews to manufacture, distribute or sell Catholic religious materials.

1937 March 22 The Gestapo confiscates all copies of the Pope's encyclical it can find. Twelve print shops are soon closed and dispossessed without compensation for having printed the encyclical letter. Strong protests are lodged with the bishops and the Vatican. (Lewy)

1937 March 26 The Pope publishes an encyclical entitled Divini Redemptoris, condemning atheistic Communism.

1937 Spring A decision is made that all German colored children are to be illegally sterilized. After the prerequisite expert reports are provided by Dr. Abel, Dr. Schade, and Professor Fischer, the sterilizations are carried out. (Science)

1937 April The Duke of Windsor visits Germany at the invitation of Adolf Hitler. Windsor meets privately at least twice with Rudolf Hess. (Wolff Hess, Missing Years)

1937 April 6 Hitler orders the resumption of the immorality and foreign exchange trials against Catholic clergymen, which had been halted shortly before the Olympic Games in the summer of 1936.

1937 April 9 The Gestapo seizes all B'nai B'rith lodges in Germany.

1937 April 11 A new order from the German Ministry of the Interior deprives all Jews of municipal citizenship.

1937 April 12 The German Foreign Ministry sends a note of protest to Papal Secretary of State Pacelli describing the Pope's encyclical as a call to battle against the leadership of the German state and a grave violation of the Concordat (See March 21). (Lewy)

1937 April 13 The Gestapo prohibits all Jewish public meetings for 60 days with the exception of synagogue services.

1937 April 16 Swiss officials announce that they are refusing to grant permanent resident permits to German Jewish refugees to avoid flooding the labor market.

1937 April 20 General Franco declares Spain a totalitarian state and assumes dictatorial power.

1937 April 20 The International Order of B'nai B'rith is banned throughout Germany.

1937 April 26 German warplanes from the Luftwaffe's Condor Legion destroy the Spanish (Basque) town of Guernica during what is described as the first air bombardment of an undefended town in history. More than 1,600 civilians are killed.

1937 April 30 Pacelli replies to Germany's note of protest. "The Holy See," the Papal Secretary declares, "which has friendly, correct, or at least tolerable relations with states of one or another constitutional form and orientation, will never interfere in the question of what concrete form of government a certain people chooses to regard as best suited to its nature and requirements. With respect to Germany also, it has remained true to this principle and intends so to continue." (Lewy)

1937 May On his arrival in America, Walter Krivitsky, Stalin's chief of Military Intelligence, reveals to the U.S. State Department the full details of Stalin's purges. Krivitsky claims Stalin is determined to forge a pact with Hitler and has turned against the old Bolsheviks and officers of the Red Army because they are opposed to any alliance with Hitler. "Stalin, in the name of anti-fascism, destroyed the anti-fascists," Kivitsky says.

1937 May The curriculum vitae of Karl Maria Weisthor (Wiligut) is sealed after confidential scrutiny. Weisthor's psychiatric history remains a closely guarded secret. (Roots)

1937 May Anarchists and radical Marxists in Spain stage an abortive revolution in Barcelona that is opposed by the Socialists and Communists. The Communists, who as the conduit for Soviet aid had become increasingly influential on the Loyalist side, lead a drive to repress the ultra-leftist elements. Many are tortured and murdered.

1937 May 1 President Roosevelt signs the third U.S. Neutrality Act.

1937 May 6 The airship Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed while maneuvering to land at Lakehurst, N.J. Claims and speculation that it was sabotaged have never been supported by solid evidence.

1937 May 9 A Nazi decree bars Jews from receiving university degrees.

1937 May 14 German Jews are forbidden to play music by Beethoven or Mozart during Jewish cultural concerts.

1937 May 20 Professor von Verschuer, now at the University of Frankfurt, mentions in a letter to Professor Fischer his report for Rosenberg, "Proposals for the Registration of Jews and Part-Jews". (Science)

1937 May 28 Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is elected leader of the Conservative Party of Britain, forms a new cabinet and becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain, replacing Stanley Baldwin.

1937 May 30 Anti-Franco Spanish forces bomb the German battleship Deutschland off Ibizia, killing 26 and injuring 71.

1937 May 31 The German fleet shells the Spanish city of Almeira in retaliation for the attack on the Deutschland.

1937 June 3 Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson (Warfield) in Tours, France.

1937 June 8-9 Air raids on Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia cause heavy damage and loss of life.

1937 June 11 The Soviet "Generals' Trials," the third Stalinist purge trial, opens in Moscow.

1937 June 12 Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski is executed in Moscow. It is said that Tukhachevski had confided his plan for a coup against the Communist regime to military officials while visiting London and Paris and that Moscow was immediately informed by its agents. (Sturdza)

(Note: Others claim Tukhachevski was set up by Reinhard Heydrich who used forged documents from WWI to frame Tukhachevski in an effort to disrupt the Soviet military and weaken its leadership.) (Secrets)

1937 June 12 Heydrich issues a secret directive ordering Jewish "race-violators" into "protective custody" after they have served their prison sentences.

1937 June 13 The Swiss state of Geneva bans the Communist Party.

1937 June 16 General Lucjan Zieligowski in a speech to the Polish Senate declares, " there is no place in Poland for the Jews."

1937 June 16 The German People's Church (Deutsche Volkskirche) is accredited as the official Nazi church.

1937 June 16 New Stalinists purges are held in Belorussia.

1937 June 20 The Czech government institutes compulsory military training for all citizens from six to sixty. Actual military call-up is from seventeen to thirty.

1937 June 21 Leon Blum resigns as premier of France. Camille Chautemps forms a radical Socialist government, with Blum as vice premier.

1937 June 28 The Ninth Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce opens in Berlin.

1937 June 30 The French legislature votes to give emergency powers to the Chautemps government.

1937 Summer Otto Rahn makes a second expedition to Montsegur.

1937 July 1 The Gestapo again arrests Pastor Martin Niemoeller, leader of the German Confessional Church in Berlin.

1937 July 2 Severe limitations are put on the number of Jewish pupils (already partially restricted in 1933) allowed to attend German schools. (Persecution)

1937 July 2 Aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her copilot Fred Noonan disappear over the Pacific Ocean during the last leg of an attempted flight around the world.

1937 July 6 A German decree forbids Jews from studying medicine.

1937 July 7 A Chinese-Japanese military conflict at Marco Polo Bridge near Peking provides the pretext for an all-out Japanese campaign of conquest in China.

1937 July 7 The Peel Commission publishes its plan for the partitioning of Palestine into two separate states: one Arab and the other Jewish.

1937 July 15 The German-Polish Convention of May1922 expires along with its protection of Jewish minority rights in Upper Silesia. The Jews of Upper Silesia are now exposed to the full rigors of Nazi rule. (Atlas)

1937 July 19 Ettersberg, a new concentration camp, originally designed for professional criminals, is opened in central Germany. Its name is changed to Buchenwald on July 28. (Edelheit)

(Note: Other sources say it was opened on July 16.)

1937 July 24 An order segregating Jews from "Aryans" in German health resorts and public baths is issued.

1937 July 27 The trial of five German Jews accused of a 1929 ritual murder (blood libel) opens in Bamburg.

1937 July 28 Japanese troops occupy the Chinese capital of Peking.

1937 July 30 The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission discusses the Peel Commission's plan for partitioning Palestine.

1937 August Jews are accused of sacrilege at Humenne in Czechoslovakia. (Atlas)

1937 August 3 Italy bars foreign Jews from universities and institutions of higher learning.

1937 August 3-16 The Twentieth World Zionist Congress meeting in Zurich debates the partitioning of Palestine as proposed by the Peel Commission.

1937 August 4 Most Jewish teachers are barred from teaching in Italian schools.

1937 August 5 The Nazi Propaganda Ministry forbids any further mention of Leo Schlageter or Horst Wessel in the Catholic press. This is another attempt by Goebbels and his staff to put an end to the Catholic practice of "borrowing" Nazi heroes.

1937 August 8 The World Zionist Congress debates the partitioning of Palestine. Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion defend the plan.

1937 August 8 The Romanian government prohibits the singing of Hatikvah (the Zionist national anthem) in Jewish schools.

1937 August 11 Hjalmar Schacht has a loud argument with Hitler at Obersalzberg. (Schacht was one of the few people who dared to shout at Hitler.) After a closed-door meeting, Schacht tenders his resignation. Hitler, obviously upset, insists he must reconsider.

1937 August 13 The German Ministry of Education orders all Germans knowing a foreign language to register with the government.

1937 August 18 The Romanian Orthodox Church urges the Romanian people to fight the "Jewish parasite."

1937 August 23 The Radical Peasants Party criticizes the antisemitism of the Romanian Orthodox Church. (Edelheit)

1937 August 29 China and the Soviet Union sign a treaty of nonagression.

1937 September Brothers of the Hungarian branch of the Order of the New Templars (ONT) found the small priory of Szent Kereszt below Vaskapu Hill at Pilisszentkereszt in northern Hungary. (Roots)

1937 September 4 Nazi officials order all Rotary Club chapters in Germany dissolved.

1937 September 5 Hjalmar Schacht takes a leave of absence from the Economics Ministry. That same month he tells Max Warburg he can no longer keep M.M. Warburg in the Reich Loan Consortium. (Warburgs)

1937 September 9 Sachsenburg concentration camp is closed.

1937 September 12 The Romanian National Soldiers Front calls on Romanian citizens to deal with the "Jewish Plot."

1937 September 13 An Anti-Jewish month is proclaimed by Polish antisemitic groups.

1937 September 25-28 Mussolini and Hitler meet in Berlin.

1937 September 27 The Romanian government prohibits Zionist fundraising nationwide.

1937 October 4 Amin al-Huseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, flees Palestine for Lebanon.

1937 October 5 President Roosevelt, in a major speech in Chicago, warns Americans against continued isolationism, speaking of the need to "quarantine the aggressors." A strong negative response to this call indicates the strength of isolationist sentiment in the U.S.

1937 October 13 Germany guarantees Belgian independence.

1937 October 14 Professor von Verschuer protests to Reich Minister of Justice Gürtner that his expert opinion incriminating the defendant in a "race dishonour trial," has not been accepted and that, as a result, the defendant has been set free. (Science)

1937 October 16 The Hungarian National Socialist Party is founded in Hungary.

1937 October 16 Police in Czechoslovakia disrupt a Sudeten German Party rally at Teplitz. Party leader Konrad Henlein demands that ethnic Germans receive autonomy.

1937 October 20 Felix Warburg, international banker, philanthropist and Jewish communal leader dies in the United States. (Edelheit)

1937 October 20 Jewish market stalls and shops are picketed by Nazi police.

1937 October 21 The Catholic Center Party is eliminated and the Nazis take absolute control of the city.

1937 October 23 Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in Danzig stage a massive pogrom.

1937 October 27 Jewish access to public bathhouses in Danzig is limited to specified hours, one day a week.

1937 October 28 The Spanish Loyalists (Socialists) government escapes to Barcelona.

1937 October 29 The League of Nations High Commission complains that he is powerless to act in the city's internal affairs.

1937 November General Kutiepov, chief of the former Nationalist Russian Army in exile, is kidnapped by Communist agents on the streets of Paris, taken to Moscow and executed.

1937 November 1 The Swiss Court of Criminal Appeal quashes the judment of the lower court's verdict on the authenticity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its entirety. (See May 14, 1935)

1937 November 3 The Danzig Senate isolates Jewish merchants and seizes their bank deposits, charging them with tax evasion.

1937 November 5 The Hossbach Memorandum: Hitler outlines secret plans and contingencies in the event of a future war, telling his generals that he intends to destroy Czechoslovakia. Some historians contend that this document's historical significance has been greatly exaggerated. Others, such as William Shirer, emphatically state that it was on this date that Hitler first imparted his decision to go to war to the Commanders-in-Chief of the three armed services. (Shirer I)

1937 November 5 Germany and Poland sign an agreement regarding treatment of each other's minorities.

1937 November 6 Italy joins the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact.This grouping prefigures their later alliance structure in World War II.

1937 November 8 Goebbel's propaganda Ministry sponsors Der Ewige Jew (The Eternal Jew) an anti-Jewish exposition under the direction of Julius Streicher. It closes on February 4, 1938.

1937 November 9 Japanese troops occupy Shanghai.

1937 November 13 The Jewish Socialist Party (Bund) celebrates the 40th anniversary of its founding in Poland.

1937 November 16 Only in rare cases can Jews now obtain passports for foreign travel. (Persecution)

1937 November 17-21 A meeting between Lord Halifax and Hitler is said to mark the beginning of Britain's so-called "appeasement" policy toward Germany. They meet to discuss the deteriorating situation in Czechoslovakia.

1937 November 18 A catholic official refuses to allow permission for the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs to consult diocesan files on Jewish conversions and mixed marriages "on grounds of pastoral secrecy." (Up to this time, the Church had closely cooperated with the government in determining and sorting out those of Jewish descent. It was only when Catholics of Jewish descent were threatened that the Catholic church balked. Yet, even then, they continued disclosing the names of non-Catholics of Jewish extraction right through the war years, when the price of being Jewish was deportation and death.) (Lewy)

1937 November 24 Hjalmar Schacht is removed as German minister of the economy and is replaced by Walter Funk. Schacht remains president of the Reichsbank.

1937 November 26 Nazis begin "Aryanizing" Jewish business in Danzig.

1937 November 28 The Bar Association in Lublin (P) restricts the number of Jews in the legal profession to a percentage corresponding to the ratio of Jews in the total population.

1937 November 29 Pro-Nazi Sudeten German deputies resign en masse from the Czech parliament, precipitating a national crisis. (Edelheit)

1937 December 5 Spanish Loyalists (Socialists) begin a last-ditch counteroffensive in the civil war. (Edelheit)

1937 December 6 The Dutch People's Party, a new antisemitic political party, is established in Holland.

1937 December 8 The Iron Guard (Legionairies) announces the opening of a chain of cooperative stores aimed at underselling Jewish stores and forcing them out of business.

1937 December 11 Italy withdraws friom the League of Nations.

1937 December 12 Japanese forces sink the U.S. gunboat Punay in China's Yangtze River. Japan apologizes and agrees to pay reparations.

1937 December 12 Communists receive 98% of the vote in the first elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

1937 December 13 Nanking, the Nationalist capital falls to the Japanese.

1937 December 14 Himmler orders all those "identified" as "asocial" incarcerated in concentration camps.

1937 December 15 Polish bishops call for segregation of all Jewish students in Polish elementary schools.

1937 December 20 General Ludendorff dies. Hitler attends his funeral.

1937 December 20 The Jewish Party in Romania fails to win a single seat during parliamentary elections.

1937 December 21 Britain officially repudiates the Peel Commission's Partition Plan.

1937 December 28 King Carol of Romania appoints Octavian Goga and Alexander Cuza to head a National Christian Party government. During its 44 days in power it issues numerous anti-Jewish decrees.

1937 December-January General Miller, General Ktiepov's successor, is kidnapped in Paris and later executed in Moscow.

1937 Otto Rahn's second book Luzifers Hofgesind. Eine Reise zu Europas guten Geisten (Lucifer's Court in Europe) is published in Leipzig.

1937 After four months service with the SS-Death's Head Division Oberbayern at Dachau, Otto Rahn is given leave to devote himself fully to writing until his resignation from the SS in February 1939. (Roots)

1937 John D. Rockefeller appoints William S. Farish president and CEO of Standard Oil of New Jersey.

1937 Nikolai Bukharin is arrested by the Soviet secret police..

1937 Joseph Kennedy, Sr., is named U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. His sons, Joe Jr. and John, both work as international reporters for their father.

1937 Leon Trotsky publishes The Revolution Betrayed, an expose of Joseph Stalin and his regime.

1938 January 4 Goering issues a decree classifying even firms with 25% Jewish ownership as subject to "Aryanization".

1938 January 6 U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull declares that America cannot intervene in Romania's internal affairs.

1938 January 9 Max Warburg dedicates a new Jewish Community Center in Hamburg.

1938 January 10 Professor Otto Warburg, scientist, communal leader and Zionist leader, dies.

1938 January 14 A Romanian decree forbids Jews from employing Christian female servants under the age of forty.

1938 January 14 Romanian police order all Jewish libraries and Jewish owned bookstores closed in Bessarabia. The same day, the Romanian press publishes instructions for dismissing all Jewish doctors from social insurance institutions.

1938 January 19 American and European Jewish organizations submit a protest petition to the League of Nations regarding the treatment of Jews in Romania.(Edelheit)

1938 January 21 Romania formally abrogates the minority rights of Jews, and revokes the citizenship of many Jews who have been resident there since the end of the war. (Atlas)

1938 January 24 German War Minister Blomberg is forced to resign and army Commander-in-Chief Fritsch is accused of homosexuality and then sent away on leave.

1938 January 25 The Gestapo is given the power to place prisoners in "protective custody" at its own discretion.

1938 January 28 President Roosevelt asks Congress for increased appropriations to build-up the U.S. armed forces.

1938 January Archbishop Groeber, a "promoting member" of the SS, known as the "brown bishop," is excluded from the SS, but refuses to voluntarily give up his promoting membership. (Lewy)

1938 February 4 Hitler announces he is personally taking over command of the German armed forces. Fritsch is forced to resign and Konstantin von Neurath is replaced by Joachim von Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister. Hitler assumes complete control of the Wehrmacht and announces a complete reorganization of the armed forces supreme command (OKW). Sixteen high-ranking generals are dismissed and 44 others are transferred to other posts. Hitler successfully eliminates the most important dissidents in the Wehrmacht and replaces them with men he feels he can either trust or manipulate. General Walter von Brauchitsch is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the army (OKH). General Wilhelm Keitel is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the OKW.

1938 February 4 Austrian Nazis vandalize numerous Jewish businesses in the suburbs of Vienna.

1938 February 6 Romanian Prime Minister Goga warns that he will not tolerate foreign interference in his domestic antisemitic policy.

1938 February 10 The Goga government in Romania is dissolved. The new government, headed by Dr. Miron Christea, nullifies some of Goga's anti-Jewish legislation.

1938 February 12 A meeting between Hitler and Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg at Obersalzberg leads to a greater Nazi role in Austrian government and public life.

1938 February 16 Chancellor Schuschnigg names Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a virulent Austrian Nazi, minister of the interior.

1938 February 16 Lithuania adopts a new constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens regardless of race or creed. (Edelheit)

1938 February 20 British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigns and is replaced by Lord Halifax, Edward F.L. Wood.

1938 February 20 Bishop Ehrenfried of Wurzburg in a pastoral letter expresses the desire that "the totalitarianism of the State and the totalitarianism of the Church" should coexist "without conflicts and bitterness." (Lewy)

1938 February 20 Franz Josef Rarkowski is consecrated as bishop of the German army in a lavish ceremony conducted by Nuncio Orsenigo, assisted by Bishops Preysing and Galen. Rarkowski will hold this post until the end of World War II. (Lewy)

1938 February 23 Volksruf, a violently antisemitic newspaper, begins publication in Austria.

1938 February 24 Nazi-instigated disturbances erupt throughout Austria after Chancellor Schuschnigg calls for a plebiscite (referendum) on Austrian independence.

1938 February 28 The American Legion begins a nationwide campaign against the pro-Nazi German-American Bund.

1938 March 1 Thousands of Jews are deprived of their livelihood when the Polish government revokes Jewish tobacco dealers' licenses. (Edelheit)

1938 March 2 Long-time Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin is publicly tried in a so-called "show trial" on trumped-up charges of conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state. He is quickly convicted and sentenced to death after making a forced confession.

1938 March 4 Hitler rejects British concessions in Africa.

1938 March 7 J. Dreyfus and Company, a large Jewish-owned investment bank in Germany, is "Aryanized."

1938 March 8 More than 2,000 Nazi demonstrators march through the center of Vienna shouting anti-Jewish slogans.

1938 March 11 Hitler issues an ultimatum demanding that Schuschnigg resign as Austrain chancellor. Arthur Seyss-Inquart becomes chancellor, paving the way for a complete Nazi take over.

1938 March 12 Operation Otto -- German troops enter Austria unopposed. Hitler tells a large crowd in Linz, his old home town, that "Providence had called him out of Linz and charged him with a mission to restore his homeland to the German Reich." (Operation Otto referred to the first name of the pretender to the Austrian throne: Archduke Otto von Habsburg.)

1938 March 13 The Reichstag "legalizes" Austrian Anschluss (union or annexation) by passing the Law Concerning the Reunion of Austria, declaring it a German province. Hitler, proclaiming the unity of the German people, realizes his dream of a union between Germany and his native Austria.

1938 March 13 Hitler with General Keitel at his side enters Vienna in a triumphant motorcade. Thousands of ecstatic Austrias greet him with unbridled enthusiam, waving Nazi flags and screaming his name.

1938 March 13 More than 138,000 Austrian Jews now come under Nazi rule. The activities of all Jewish organizations and congregations are quickly forbidden, and the Gestapo launces a campaign of terror, looting hundreds of Jewish shops and apartments. Many Jewish leaders are arrested, and more than 500 Jews, driven to despair, soon commit suicide.

1938 March 13 Leon Blum recovers the office of French premier and begins his second term. His Front Populaire government will last only to April 15, 1939.

1938 March 13 Nikolai Bukharin is executed by a Soviet firing squad.

1938 March 15 Austria enacts its first anti-Jewish laws since Anchluss. Hitler places Hermann Goering in charge of the Austrian economy.

1938 March 18 The Gestapo and SD are empowered to act in Austria outside those powers enacted by law. (Edelheit)

1938 March 20 The Polish Association of High School Teachers in Cracow (P) proposes a ban on all Jewish teachers.

1938 March 21 Lichtenburg concentration camp near Prettin (Torgau) reopens

1938 March 22 Britain announes a drive against Jewish "illegal" immigration to Palestine.

1938 March 23 Leon Blum's government in France announces a plan to permit legalized residence for Jewish refugees who agree to become farmers.

1938 March 24 Professor Kleist, a psychiatrist, ends his report on the German mental hospital in Herborn, where "uthanasia" by starvation is being practiced, with these sentences: "As long as there is no law for the destruction of lives unworthy to be lived, those who are beyond cure have the right to humane treatment which assures their continued existence. The expenditure on these unfortunates should not fall below an acceptable minimum level." (Science)

1938 March 24 The Romanian Ministry of Agriculture bans Jewish ritual slaughter (shechita).

1938 March 26 Jewish professors and instructors are dismissed from Austrian universities.

1938 March 28 Hitler gives General Keitel secret directives for Operation Green against Czechoslovakia.

1938 March 28 Berlin's Jewish community loses its incorporated status.

1938 March 29 The Spanish civil war comes to an end.

1938 March 31 The Polish Senate passes the Expatriots Law, canceling citizenship for Polish Jews living outside the country, unless their passports are checked and stamped by Polish consular officials by the end of October. (Edelheit)

1938 April 1 A number od Austrian Jews are sent to Dachau concentration camp.

1938 April 1 Jewish patients are barred from Danzig's public hospitals and welfare institutions. All Jewish doctors and nurses are dismissed.

1938 April 7 Codreanu is arrested in Romania and will later die in prison.

1938 April 8 Eduard Daladier forms a new French government.

1938 April 8 The Rothschild Bank in Austria is "Aryanized" and taken over by the Austrian Credit Institute.

1938 April 10 A plebiscite (referendum) is held in Austria to legalize Anchluss. Jews are excluded from voting.

1938 April 11 Bulgaria outlaws the Bulgarian Nazi Party (Ratnizi)

1938 April 13 The Roman Congregation of Seminaries and Universities attacks as erroneous eight theses taken from Nazi doctrine. Antisemitism is neither mentioned nor criticized. (Lewy)

1938 April 15 Starting in Dabrowa, hundreds of Jews are injured and much property destroyed during anti-Jewish attacks in Poland. (Atlas)

1938 April 17 An attempted coup by Fascists and the Iron Guard is smashed by the Romanian government. Many of the instigators are arrested.

1938 April 19 All remaining Jewish banks in Austria are "Aryanized."

1938 April 22 Trouble breaks out in the Sudetenland signaling the beginning of the Czechoslovak Crisis.

1938 April 22 A German Law is published making it illegal for non-Jews to help conceal Jewish holdings.

1938 April 24 A Sudeten German Congress at Karlsbad demands full autonomy for Sudeten Germans.

1938 April 25 Nazis stage anti-Jewish riots in Theusing (G).

1938 April 26 The German government requires registration of all Jews with assets exceeding 5,000 Reichsmarks,, whether in Germany or abroad. Only British and American Jews living in Germany are exempted.

1938 April 27 The Woodhead Commission arrives in Palestine to study the Peel Commissions partition plan.

1938 May 2 The Gestapo orders the Jewish community offices in Vienna reopened.

1938 May 3 Flossenburg concentration camp opens in Germany.

1938 May 3 The DFG places 15,000 RM at the disposal of Dr. Ritter, "for the continuation of your research work on asocial individuals and on the biology of bastards (Gypsies, Jews)." (Science)

1938 May 3-9 Hitler makes a state visit to Mussolini in Rome, but omits the customary courtesy call on the pope. (Lewy)

1938 May 13 A major anti-partition demonstration is held in Beirut, Lebanon.

1938 May 17 The Czech government confiscates two Nazi-run newspapers, Die Rundschau and F.S., published by Sudeten German parties led by Konrad Henlein.

1938 May 19 Britain and France reject Hitler's demands concerning Czechoslovakia.

1938 May 20 Czechoslovakia orders a partial mobilization in response to Hitler's demands and unrest in the Sudetenland.

1938 May 24 The Nuremberg Laws are officially introduced in Austria. Books written by Jews and works not favoring Nazi ideology are removed from Vienna's libraries and bookstores.

1938 May 26 The U.S. House of Representatives establishes the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate activities of both the left and right.

1938 May 29 The Hungarian government passes its first law specifically restricting the number of Jews in the liberal professions, administration, commerce and industry to 20 percent. (Atlas)

1938 May 30 The Japanese government arrests 1,300 alleged Communists.

1938 May 30 Hitler signs a revised OKW plan for Operation Green (Fall Gruen) against Czechoslovakia.

1938 May 30 The Gestapo arrests almost 2,000 Jews in raids on cafes in Berlin and Vienna. Some 1,000 Austrian Jews are sent to Dachau.

1938 June 1 German political prisoners and all German Jews with previous criminal records are sent to Buchenwald. They are soon followed by 2,200 Austrian Jews.

1938 June 2 Italian Fascist leader Roberto Farinacci, a vocal antisemite, is appointed minister of State.

1938 June 7 Latvia and Estonia sign nonagression treaties with Germany.

1938 May 9 Munich's main synagogue is vandalized and destroyed.

1938 June 14 The German ministry of the interior requires registration of all Jewish-owned enterprises. Pressure is put on Jews to sell their business holdings to certain favored individuals or firms (I.G. Farben, the Flick Group, major banks etc.) at prices far below their actual market value. (Days)

1938 June 15 Operation June (Juni Aktion) sends some 1,500 German Jews to concentration camps.

1938 June 20 German Jews are forbidden to work in the stock and commodity exchanges.

1938 June 22 African-American boxer Joe Louis defeatss German boxer Max Schmeling at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1938 June 26 Nazis in Austria order all "non-Aryans" dismissed from all Jewish owned firms and close the parks of Vienna to Jews. Jewish schoolchildren are completely segregated.

1938 June 28 Germany and Italy officially recognize Switzerland's neutrality.

1938 June 29 Nearly 40,000 Austrian Jews are dismissed from their jobs.

1938 July 2 Almost 40,000 Austrian Jews are taken into "protective custody."

1938 July 5 Trade unions in Vienna are dissolved and their funds and property are seized by the German Labor Front.

1938 July 5 President Roosevelt convenes an international conference on refugees in the French resort town of Evian on Lake Geneva. It soon becomes clear that more and more countries, including the U.S., want to restrict the number of Jewish refugees allowed to immigrate to their nations. The Australian delegation declares, "since we have no racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one." (Atlas)

1938 July 6 The Law for the Alteration of Regulations of Industrial Enterprises prohibits numerous Jewish business activities in Germany. Jews can no longer operate real estate, information, loan, private security, marriage, brokerage, or administrative offices. They are even prohibited from serving as tour guides and are ordered to declare their assets and "sell" their businesses.

1938 July 8 The main synagogue in Munich is demolished on Hitler's orders. (See June 9)

1938 July 8 Alfred Rosenbergg proposes a plan for establishing a reservation for 15 million Jews on the island of Madagascar.

1938 July 11 The French chamber passes a law authorizing the prime minister to govern by decree in the event of war.

1938 July 14 The third regulation of the Reich Citizenship Law is published. All Jewish-owned businesses are again advised they must register with the government.

1938 July 19 King George VI of Britain pays a state visit to France.

1938 July 20 All members of the Wehrmacht are forbidden to live in Jewish-owned homes or apartments.

1938 July 23 A new German law decrees that as of January 1, 1939, Jews will be required to carry special identification cards, which they must obtain from the local police. (Persecution)

1938 July 25 The fourth regulation of the Reich Citizenship Act bars all Jewish doctors from medical practice beginning September 30, 1938. After that date, Jewish physicians may treat only Jews and must call themselves Krankenbehandler (medial orderlies or literally "caretakers of the sick"). (Persecution; Edelheit)

1938 July 25 British Fascists and Nazi sympathizers paint antisemitic graffiti throughout the city of London.

1938 July 27 All Jewish street names in Germany are changed and given new names. (Persecution)

1938 July 30 Germany begins preparations for building new fortifications on its western border. A number of prohibited areas are established.

1938 July 31 In a period of 19 months prior to this date, William Dudley Pelley mails 3.5 tons of antisemitic propaganda from his headquarters in America.

1938 August 2 A major clash breaks out between Socialists and Nazis in Switzerland.

1938 August 3 New anti-Jewish legislation is introduced in Italy.

1938 August 5 New laws regulating the meat and cattle industry in Poland virtually eliminate Jews from participation.

1938 August 7 The Beirut synagogue is bombed by Arab terrorists.

1938 August 8 Mauthausen, the first concentration camp in Austria, goes into operation.

1938 August 10 The great synagogue and Jewish community center in Nuremberg is demolished on Nazi orders. (Edelheit)

1938 August 11 Poland withdraws its permanent delegate from the League of Nations.

1938 August 11 Hermann Goering tells an American diplomat that within ten years the United States will become the most antisemitic country in the world and that the combination of Jews and blacks raise grave questions about America's future. (Architect)

1938 August 13 The Wehrmacht stages large-scale military maneuvers.

1938 August 16 The German Ministry of Justice orders an increase in the Gestapo's power in Austria.

1938 August 17 A new decree orders that as of January 1, 1939, German Jews may have only Jewish first names. If they keep an "Aryan" first name (Michael etc.), they must add Jewish middle names such as "Israel" or "Sarah." (Persecution)

1938 August 17 Special passports for Jews are inroduced in Germany. (Eyes)

1938 August 17 Hitler issues a new decree indicating that the Waffen-SS is destined to be more than just a private police force. By authorizing motorization of the SS-Verfuegungstruppen (SS-VT or "field troops"), Hitler serves notice that it will fight in the coming war and enforce the Nazi-dominated peace that he is sure will follow. (The SS, Time-Life)

1938 August 19 Swiss officials take measures to block Jewish refugees trying to enter Switzerland.

1938 August 19-20 At a meeting of the German Committee for Public Care and Welfare Law, professors of medicine and law discuss with civil servants from the Ministry of the Interior the possibility of a "law on asocial individuals" that would allow people so defined to be sterilized or committed to concentration camps. According to later drafts of this law, which was never passed, two physicians and a police officer were to decide on the sterilization and further disposal of these individuals to concentration camps. (Science)

1938 August 26 The Central Office for Jewish Emigration is established in Vienna under the direction of Adolf Eichmann. Within eighteen months, 150,000 Austrian Jews will be induced to emigrate. (Days)

1938 August 27 General Ludwig Beck, one of the top Wehrmacht generals resigns in disagreement over Hitler's Czechoslovakian policy, which he believes will lead to war. (Edelheit)

1938 August Late in the month, Max Warburg, his wife, Alice, and their daughter, Gisela, depart Germany for New York. First they will make a stop-over in London. (See September 1938) (Warburgs)

1938 September The Soviet Union joins the League of Nations.

1938 September In London before leaving for America, Max Warburg meets with George Rublee, an American lawyer and head of the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, and Lord Winterton at the British Foreign Office.

1938 September 1 Hitler demands the immediate cession of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Germany.

1938 September 1 The Italian government orders all Jewish residents who settled in the country after 1919 to leave the country within six months or be deported.

1938 September 5 More riots and demonstrations are staged in the Sudetenland by Konrad Henlein and the Nazis.

1938 September 6 The U.S. Congress passes the Alien Registration Act.

1938 September 6-12 Hitler, speaking at the Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg, verbally attacks Czechoslovakian President Benes, demanding the right of self-determination for the Sudeten Germans.

1938 September 7 All Jews naturalized in Italy after January 1, 1919, lose their citizenship.

1938 September 7 Pope Pius XI, during a reception for Catholic pilgrims from Belgium, is said to have condemned the participation of Catholics in antisemitic movements and to have added that Christians, the spiritual descendents of the Patriarch Abraham, were "spiritually Semites." This statement was omitted by all the Italian papers, including "L'Osservatore Romano". (La Croix, no. 17060; Lewy)

1938 September 7 France announces a partial mobilization in response to Hitler's demands on Czechoslovakia.

1938 September 8 The British Inner Cabinet meets to discuss the Czechoslovakian crisis (Munich crisis).

1938 September 12 Italy orders the expulsion of all foreign Jews.

1938 September 13 Czechoslovakian President Benes declares martial law in the Sudetenland..

1938 September 14 The Graf Zepplin II, the largest airship ever built, departs Germany on its maiden voyage.

1938 September 15 Hitler and Sir Neville Chamberlain and Hitler meet for the first time, at Obersalzberg (Berchtesgaden) to discuss the Czechoslovakian crisis.

1938 September 16 British Lord Runciman recommends that Czechoslovakia relinquish all border territories with a majority of ethnic Germans to Germany.

1938 September 18 British and French cabinet members, meeting in London, finalize an Anglo-French plan to "appease" Hitler in regard to Czechoslovakia.

1938 September 20-21 The Czech government is forced to accept the Anglo-French "appeasement plan" after being bluntly informed by representatives of Britain and France that they can expect no help if the Germans attack.

1938 September 22 Neville Chamberlain and Hitler meet at Bad Godesburg to discuss events in Czechoslovakia and Hitler's demands for the Sudetenland.

1938 September 22 Czech Premier Milan Hodza resigns, and a new Czechoslovakian government is formed by General Jan Sirovy.

1938 September 22 The International Brigades withdraw from Spain.

1938 September 23 Jewish synagogues at Cheb and Marienbad in Czechoslovakia are burned by German-speaking citizens of the Sudetenland. The new Czech government mobilizes its army.Atlas)

1938 September 23 Mussolini offers to mediate the Czechoslovakian crisis. A conference is called to settle the issue at Munich, setting the stage for an Anglo-French sellout of Czechoslovakia, whose representatives are not even invited to attend.

1938 September 24 Anti-Jewish riots break out in Strasbourg, France.

1938 September 25-26 The French government changes its position on the Anglo-French plan, committing itself to defend Czechoslovakia if the Germans attack.

1938 September 26 Hitler makes an angry speech at the Berlin Sportspalast, attacking Czechoslovakia's alleged mistreatment of its German-speaking citizens.

1938 September 27 Hitler warns that he will crush Czechoslovakia if his demands concerning the Sudetenland are not met.

1938 September 27 The fifth ordinance under the Reich Citizenship act closes the legal professions to Jewish lawyers in the German states.

1938 September 27 Police in Denmark adopt strict measures to prevent illegal Jewish immigrants from entering their country.

1938 September 27-28 The Britsh Home Fleet is mobilized in response to the Czechoslovakian crisis.

1938 September 29 The Munich Conference begins. Britain and France (Czechoslovakia's allies) quickly agree to turn over Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Hitler, who in return promises to make no further territorial demands in Europe. Czechoslovakia is excluded from participation in the conference.

(Note: Unlike Austria, Czechoslovakia was a democratic state, and its president, Eduard Benes, was prepared to militarily resist Hitler's demands, but realized it was hopeless without British and French assistance.)

1938 September 30 The Munich Agreement is signed by Chamberlain, Hitler, Daladier and Mussolini. The Czechoslovakian Sudetenland is ceded to Germany. After returning to England, Chamberlain declares, "I believe it is peace for our time."

1938 September 30 A new wave of anti-Jewish riots break out in Poland. (Edelheit)

1938 October Early in the month, the Polish government announces that all Jews who have lived outside Poland for more than five years will have their passports revoked. This law is to take effect of October 30. (Germany soon announces that there is no place in Germany for these "stateless" Jews.) (See October 26)

1938 October 1 German troops occupy the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland. Almost all of the 20,000 Jews in the Sudetenland soon flee to the still independent provinces of Bohemia and Moravia.

1938 October 2 Polish troops occupy Teschen in Czechoslovakia.

1938 October 4 On the advice of Swiss authorities, thhe letter "J" is printed on the front pages of German Jews' passports.

1938 October 5 German Jews have their passports revoked. (Edelheit)

1938 October 6 Dr. Eduard Benes, President of Czechoslovakia, resigns.

1938 October 6 Thousands of Jews with Polish passports who live in Germany and Austria have their passports recalled for "inspection and validation." (Edelheit)

1938 October 7 Slovakia and Transcarpathian Ruthenia are granted autonomy from what is left of Czechoslovakia. Father Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest, becomes leader of Slovakia.

1938 October 7 The Fascist Grand Council in Italy bans Jewish ritual slaughter (shechita).

1938 October 8 Hitler issues a decree establishing SS-Sicherheitpolizei Sonderkommandos (SS Security Police Special Units) for duty in the Sudetenland.

1938 October 13 The Italian government announces that no new business licenses of any kind will be issued to Jews.

1938 October 13 Chamberlain declares to the House of Commons that "The Munich Agreement does not permit us to diminish our efforts towards the realization of our military program."

1938 October 13 The Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire and the Holy Lance (Reichskleinodien and Helige Lanz) are transported by train under heavy armed guard from Vienna to Nuremberg. (Spear)

1938 October 20 The Nazis begin harassing Communists, Jews and other anti-Nazis in Czechoslovakia.

1938 October 24 German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Polish Ambassador Lipski meet at Berchtesgaden. Ribbentrop invites Polish Foreign Minister Beck to visit Berlin and puts forward the following suggestions: (1) Danzig to be a German city. (2) Free port for Poland in Danzig with communications assured by extraterritorial railroad and highway through Danzig. (3) An Extraterritorial zone one kilometer wide for a railroad and highway across the Polish Corridor uniting the two portions of Germany carved out at Versailles. (4) Both nations to recognize and guarantee their frontiers. (5) An extension of the German-Polish treaty of Friendship. These proposals are standing and open until August 10, 1939, when Poland will reject them and declare "any intervention by the Reich Government (will be regarded as) an act of aggression."

1938 October 26 Himmler orders the police to collect all Polish Jews in Germany with valid passports and deport them before October 29th. (Architect)

1938 October 28-29 Some 15,000 "stateless" Jews are forced to leave their homes throughout Germany and to go, with only one suitcase, to the nearest railway station. They are then taken through the night to the German-Polish border and forced across at gun point. (See October 1938) (Atlas)

1938 October 30 The sixth ordinance of the Reich Citizenship Act bars all Jews from working as patent agents.

1938 October 31 Polish Foreign Minister Beck instructs Ambassador Lipski to negate Ribbentrop's proposals.

1938 November Karl Wolff visits Malvwine Wiligut (Wiligut/Weisthor's wife) at her home in Salzburg and learns of Weisthor's (Wiligut's) psychiatric history. Weisthor's stay in an Austrian asylum becomes an embarrassment for Himmler.

1938 November 2 Hungary occupies and annexes southern Slovakia.

1938 November 7 Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, is shot by Herschel Grynszpan, a seventeen-year-old Jewish youth whose family had been expelled from Germany to Poland on October 28.

(Note: This was not the first assassination of a Nazi official by a Jew. Wilhelm Gustloff had previously been killed by a Jewish assassin in Switzerland and the SD was convinced both murders were part of a much broader Jewish conspiracy.) (Architect)

1938 November 8 Himmler addresses a select meeting of high-ranking SS leaders in Munich. He does not mention the vom Rath assassination, but tells them that within 10 years there will be unprecedented clashes -- not only a struggle among nations, but also an ideological struggle against the Jews, Freemasons, Marxists and Catholics worldwide. (Architect)

1938 November 9 Hitler authorizes Goering to deal with all Jewish political affairs. Hitler tells Goering that he is interested in sending German Jews to Madagascar and that he will make an initiative to the Western powers. (Architect)

1938 November 9-10 Enst vom Rath dies and a massive pogrom, known now as Kristallnacht (the night of glass) is launched against the Jews of Germany. 191 synagogues are set on fire and 76 others are completely destroyed, along with hundreds of Jewish shops and schools. 91 Jews are killed during the night of November 9th alone and 35,000 male Jews are arrested, herded into concentration camps and their property seized. (Atlas)

1938 November 10 Hitler, in a speech to hundreds of German journalists, discounts the prospects for peace and urges the press to help convince the German public to support his regime in the event of any future war. (Architect)

1938 November 10 The Gestapo closes the Central Organization of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. (Edelheit)

1938 November 11 Hitler gives Goering a mandate to resolve the Jewish question "one way or another" and to coordinate the necessary steps by various agencies. (Architect)

1938 November 11 Reinhard Heydrich reports on Kristallnacht to Goering, stating that 36 Jews have been killed and 20,000 arrested.

1938 November 11 A new law decrees that German Jews may neither carry nor possess firearms. (Persecution)

1938 November 12 Goering summons a large number of officials from various agencies to the Air Ministry in Berlin to deal with the economic consequences of Kristallnacht and the ways to remove Jews from the German economy. (Architect)

1938 November 12 German Jewry is ordered to pay "Atonement Payments" of one billion Reichsmarks to the German government for the damages caused by German citizens during Kristallnacht, and insurance payments amounting to more than ten million Reichmarks are soon paid to the German government. (Days)

1938 November 12 Jews are prohibited from attending theaters, movies, concerts, and exhibits. Jews are no longer allowed to own stores and artisan businesses. (Persecution)

1938 November 12-14 Nazis in Danzig burn down two synagogues and badly damage two others.

1938 November 13 Nazi officials seriously consider the Madagascar Plan for the first time.

1938 November 14 In response to the Kristallnacht pogrom, President Roosevelt recalls American Ambassador Hugh Wilson from Berlin to Washington.

1938 November 15 All Jewish children are excluded from the German school system. (Goebbels)

1938 November 16 Neville Chamberlain suggests that Jewish refugees come to Britain as a temporary measure. (Edelheit)

1938 November 17 Socialist members of the French Chamber of Deputies criticizes the government for not officially protesting the persecution of German Jews.

1938 November 18 The U.S. State Department extends visitor's visas to some 15,000 mostly-Jewish refugees already in America, because of Kristallnacht.

1938 November 18 The Legislative Assembly of the American Virgin Islands adopts a resolution offering the islands as a haven for Jewish refugees. (Edelheit)

1938 November 18 Members of the Iron Guard (Legionaries) blows up the Ereschitza synagogue in Romania.

1938 November 19 Polish Ambassador Lipski meets with Ribbentrop in Berlin and informs him that, "any tendency to incorporate the Free City (Danzig) into the Reich will inevitably lead to conflict" between Poland and Germany.

1938 November 20 Father Charles Coughlin, head of the misnamed Union of Social Justice, makes a notorious antsemitic radio broadcast, prompting group pressure that will eventually force him off the air.

1938 November 21 German Jews with assets over 5,000 Reichsmarks are forced to pay a special 20 percent tax on their registered assets to the Reich treasury.

1938 November 23 All Jewish-owned plants and retail businesses in Germany are dissolved by a special administrative order. Jews are completely eliminated from German economic life. (Persecution; Edelheit)

1938 November 24 The Danzig Senate introduces legislation resembling the Nuremberg Laws for Jews still living in the Nazi-dominated "Free City."

1938 November 24 Das Schwarze Korps, an SS periodical, claims that it would welcome the founding of a Jewish state.The German people are not in the least inclined to tolerate in their country hundreds of thousands of criminals, who not only secure their existence through crime, but also want to exact revenge... In such a situation we would be faced with the hard necessity of exterminating the Jewish underworld... The result would be the actual and final end of Jewry in Germany, its absolute annihilation. (Architect)

1938 November 26 Russian-Polish trade and nonagression are signed.

1938 November 27 Soviet Jews in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa and Kiev hold mass meetings protesting Kristallnacht.

1938 November 28 Nazi officials introduce residential restrictions on Jews. Movement of Jews from locality to locality is prohibited. The presidents of German regional councils are empowered to impose curfews on their Jewish populations and designate certain places as off-limits (Judenbann). (Persecution)

1938 November 29 Goering tells Hugo Rothenberg, a Danish Jew who had earned Goering's gratitude two decades earlier, that under all circumstances the Jews would have to leave Germany and recommended a foreign loan to finance their emigration. Goering warns him that Germany naturally had other ideas in case emigration did not work. He did not spell out their nature. (Architect)

1938 November 30 Father Charles Coughlin makes an antisemitic broadcast to an estimated 3.5 million American listeners on a nationwide radio network. Coughlin, with one of the largest antsemitic libraries in America, had been using antisemitic overtones in his propaganda before 1936, but it was only after the defeat of his third party in that year that he began to use antisemitism as a political weapon. (McWilliams)

1938 December The Nazi Party issue an edict affecting many sectarian groups in the Reich. (Roots)

1938 December Hjalmar Schacht meets in London with George Rublee, American lawyer and director of the inter-governmental commitee. Schacht presents a plan to allow 150,000 German Jews to leave Germany over a three year period. (Architect)

1938 December 1 Great Britain initiates a program of accelerated rearmament and military expansion.

1938 December 2 Jews in Danzig are ordered to contribute to the "atonement" fine of one billion Reichsmarks imposed on German Jews after Kristallnacht.

1938 December 3 A new decree orders that all Jewish enterprises and shops are now subject to compulsory "Aryanization," the forced disposal of all Jewish stores, businesses, and financial holdings. (Goebbels)

1938 December 3 German Jews are forced to give up their driver's licenses and vehicle registration papers. They are also forced to sell their securities and jewelry. (Persecution)

1938 December 4 Father Charles Coughlin verbally attacks the "Jewish international banking house" in an American radio address.

1938 December 5 The seventh ordinance of the Reich Citizenship Act orders a reduction in pensions for compulsorily retired Jewish officials.

1938 December 6 A new declaration of nonaggression and friendship is signed between Germany and France, providing a mutual guarantee of their common borders. Hitler disavows any interest in Alsace-Lorraine, and during the coming months, will cite this as proof of his peaceful intentions.

1938 December 8 All Jews are banned from conducting research at German universities. Jewish students can no longer attend German Universities. (Persecution)

1938 December 8 Himmler signs an order regarding the need to regulate the "Gypsy question" in Germany. (Edelheit)

1938 December 11 The Nazi Party wins in elections held in Memel. The Jewish situation becomes even more precarious.

1938 December 11 Twenty thousand Libyan Jews are deprived of their Italian citizenship.

1938 December 13 Neuengamme concentration camp is established as part of Sachsenhausen. It will eventually become independent with many sub-camps of its own.

1938 December 13 Jewish property is pillaged and synagogues burned in Slovakia during a renewed anti-Jewish campaign.

1938 December 14 Goering announces he has taken control of all Jewish affairs. All Jewish-owned businesses are placed under the contol of "Aryan" general managers.

1938 December 15 The New York Daily News reprints a scurrilously antisemitic pamphlet by William Dudley Pelley.

1938 December 16 A remarkable editorial in The New York Daily News says that the Bill of Rights means only "that our government shall not officially discriminate against any religion. It does not mean that Americans are forbidden to dislike other Americans or religions or any other group. Plenty of people just now are exercising their right to dislike the Jews."

1938 December 22 All Jews are forced to retire from Italain military service.

1938 December 23 The Hungarian parliament introduces new racially-defined antisemitic laws.

1938 December 28 Jews are forbidden to use sleeping compartments or dining cars on German railways.

1938 December 31 An internal SS report states that 22.7 % of the SS membership still belongs to the Catholic faith (despite all pressures to leave the Church). (Lewy)

1938 Outraged at Hitler's treatment of the Jews and fearing that Hitler will outlaw Christianity, Protestant pastor, Martin Niemoller, organizes the Pastor's Emergency League to oppose Hitler's policies.

1938 Pastor Martin Niemoller is arrested by the Gestapo and thrown into a concentration camp until liberated in 1945.

1938 Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., becomes chairman of the board of U.S. Steel.

1938 Otto Hahn discovers the principles of nuclear fission.

1938 Sigmund Freud flees to England to escape Nazi persecution in Vienna.

1938 The SS Training Office orders a specially revised and expanded, one-volume edition of Michael Prawdin's two books on Genghis Khan (See 1934, 1935). This book was frequently given as a Christmas present by Himmler and every SS leader received a copy. Hitler is said to have derived his ideas concerning Blutkitt (blood cement) from this source. (Architect)

1938 The U.S. and Britain send aid to the Chinese in their war against Japan.

1939 January The Ahnenerbe is officially incorporated into the SS and its leaders absorbed into Himmler's personal staff. At that time it has 50 branches under the direction of Professor Wurst, an expert on ancient sacred texts who had taught Sanskrit at Munich University. (Pauwels)

1939 January 1 A decree is published eliminating Jews from the German economy.

1939 January 5 Polish Foreign Minister Joseph Beck confers with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Hitler says he is considering a formula that would make Danzig politically German and economically Polish, and that he is ready to give a formal and clear guarantee for the German-Polish frontiers. (Sturdza)

1939 January 6 Beck and Ribbentrop meet in Munich. Ribbentrop asks for "the reunion of Danzig with Germany" and proposes a number of guarantees.

1939 January 9 The Reich Office of Racial Research exempts Karaites from antisemitic legislation. (Edelheit)

1939 January 10 Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax arrive in Rome to meet with Mussolini.

1939 January 11 The Danzig Senate orders 1,000 of the 4,000 Jews still in Danzig to leave by the end of the month.

1939 January 14 Pope Pius XI urges foreign diplomats at the Vatican to grant as many visas as possible to victims of German and Italian racial prejudice. (Edelheit)

1939 January 17 Denmark, Latvia and Estonia sign a nonagression pact with Germany. Norway, Sweden and Finland insist on strict neutrality.

1939 January 17 Slovakian premier, Father Tiso, declares his foremost task is to solve the "Jewish question."

1939 January 17 The eighth ordinance of the Reich Citizenship Act is passed, barring Jewish dentists, veterinarians and chemists from practicing their professions. Jewish dentists may only treat Jewish patients.

1939 January 19 Hjalmar Schacht has his last meeting with George Rublee in Berlin. (Architect)

1939 January 21 Hitler dismisses Hjalmar Schacht as president of the Reichsbank and replaces him with Walter Funk. Schacht was left as an unpaid minister without portfolio until 1943. (Children)

(Note: A secret report to Hitler, prepared by Himmler, had accused Schacht of being disloyal to Nazi interests in his negotiations with George Rublee.) (Architect)

1939 January 21 Hitler tells Czech foreign minister Chvalkovsy, "We are going to destroy the Jews -- they are not going to get away with what they did on November 9, 1918. The day of reckoning has come."

1939 January 23 Chamberlain announces the introduction of National Service and says, "It is a project that must make us prepared for war."

1939 January 24 Goering orders Reinhard Heidrich to establish the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration is established to organize and accelerate the emigration of the Jews. Heydrich names Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller to head the department. Almost 80,000 Jews will leave Germany in 1939. (Days)

(Note: Goering commissions Heydrich to bring the "Jewish question to as favorable a solution as present circumstances permit.") (Apparatus)

1939 January 24 Germany and Poland reach an agreement on Jewish deportees. One thousand Jews at a time may return to Germany to settle their accounts. A special proprietary account for this purpose will be set up in Germany for deposits only. (Edelheit)

1939 January 26 General Franco's forces capture Barcelona.

1939 January 27 Ribbentrop repeats Germany's Danzig proposals in Warsaw.

1939 January 28 Chamberlain tells as audience in Birmingham that Great Britain must prepare herself to defend not only her territory but also "the principle of Liberty."

1939 January 30 Hitler, in an address to the Reichstag, gives public notice of his intentions, "If international Jewry should succeed in Europe or elsewhere, in precipitating nations into a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevization of Europe and a victory for Judaism, but the extermination of the Jewish race." Hitler also comments on the lack of offers from the so-called democratic states to accept Jewish refugees.

1939 January 30 Archbishop Groeber in a pastoral letter concedes that Jesus Christ could not be made into an "Aryan," but the son of God had been fundamentally different from the Jews of his time -- so much so that they had hated him and demanded his crucifixion, and "their murderous hatred has continued in later centuries." (Lewy)

1939 January-February For the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Treaty, Pope Pius XI drafts a discourse that is said to have condemned totalitarianism in the strongest terms. After his death (February 10), his successor, Pius XII, chooses not to deliver the speech. (Lewy)

1939 February For the tenth anniversary of the Lateran Treaty, Pope Pius XI drafts a discourse that is said to have condemned totalitarianism in the strongest terms. After his death, his successor, Pius XII, chooses not to deliver the speech. (Lewy)

1939 February 3 A bomb thrown into a Budapest synagogue kills one Jewish worshipper and injures many others. (Atlas)

1939 February 5 Karl Wolff, Chief Adjutant of Himmler's person staff, informs Weisthor's SS staff by letter that Weisthor (Wiligut) has retired on his own application for reasons of age and poor health and that his SS office will be dissolved. (Berlin Document Center; Roots)

1939 February Otto Rahn unexpectedly resigns from the SS. (See February 5 and March 13) (Rahn file, Berlin Document Center; Roots)

1939 February 6 Einsatz des Juedischen Vermoegens is published, decreeing complete "Aryanization" of Jewish property in the Reich. (Edelheit)

1939 February 6 Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg is a pastoral letter writess that Jesus had been a Jew, but "the Christian religion has not grown out of the nature of this people, that is, is not influenced by their racial characteristics. Rather it has had to make its way against this people." Christianity, the bishop concludes, is not to be regarded as a product of the Jews; it is not a foreign doctrine or un-German. "Once accepted by our ancestors, it finds itself in the most intimate union with the Germanic spirit." (Lewy)

1939 February 7 Alfred Rosenberg, at a press conference in Berlin, discusses a plan to settle all 15 million of the world's Jews on the island of Madegascar.

1939 February 8 Six members of the Romanian Legion of St. Michael (Iron Guard) are arrested in Romania and later murdered by Armand Calinescu's police.

1939 February 10 Pope Pius XI dies.

1939 February 11 The tenth anniversary of the Lateran Treaty.

1939 February 11 At the first meeting of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Heydrich orders officials to proceed as if an agreement with the intergovernmental committee does not exist. (Architect)

1939 February 15 Count Pal Teleki takes office as Hungary's prime minister.

1939 February 20 A pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in New York draws 20,000 Nazi sympathizers and supporters of Father Charles Coughlin.

1939 February 21 German Jews are ordered to surrender all gold and silver, except wedding rings.

1939 February 22 Neville Chamberlain tells an audience in Blackburn, "Ships, guns and ammunition are produced by our shipyards and factories with an increased acceleration... Even if the whole world is against us we will win."

1939 February 24 Hungary joins the Anti-Comintern Pact and outlaws the Arrow Cross.

1939 February 26 The British government submits a proposal calling for an independent Palestine state allied to Britain. (Edelheit)

1939 February 27 Britain and France recognize the Franco government in Spain.

1939 March 1 Romania announces that 43,000 Jews have been denationalized.

1939 March 2 Papal Secretary of State Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli is elected to succeed Pius XI as pope. He becomes Pope Pius XII.

1939 March 4 Germany introduces a compulsory labor law for Jews, but does not allow them to become part of the German Labor Service (Arbeitdienst).

1939 March 6 Armand Calinescu becomes Prime Minister of Romania after the death of Patriarch Cristea.

1939 March 10 The Eighteenth Communist Party Congress opens in Moscow.

1939 March 10 Slovak Prime Minister Josef Tiso is dismissed by the Czech central government in Prague.

1939 March 11 Ousted Slovak Prime Minister Tiso meets with Hitler in Berlin.

1939 March 12 Prime Minister Chamberlain makes a public pledge of support for Polish sovereignty in Parliament. This speech has been called one of the most important expressions of England's support for Polish independence. (Duffy)

1939 March 13 Otto Rahn dies of overexposure while hiking in the mountains near Kufstein. (Berlin Document Center) Rumors persist that he was murdered by the SS.

1939 March 14 Monsignor Josef Tiso proclaims the independence of Slovakia and establishes an independent Axis state under the Fascist Hlinka Party. Slovak Nazis launch a wave of terror against Slovakian Jews.

(Note: After the war, Tiso will be arrested, imprisoned and executed by the Communist government in Prague.)

1939 March 15 Civil unrest forces President Hacha of Czechoslovakia to ask for German protection. Konstantin von Neurath is appointed "Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia."

1939 March 15 German troops enter Prague and Bohemia becomes a German Protectorate. Some 56,000 Jews are trapped, many of them refugees from Germany and Austria who had fled to Bohemia and Moravia only the year before. Adolf Eichmann soon sets up a Jewish emigration office in Prague. (Atlas)

1939 March 16 Hungarian troops occupy Czechoslovakian Carpatho-Ruthenia.

1939 March 16 Hitler declares that Czechoslovakia no longer exists.

1939 March 17 Neville Chamberlain accuses Hitler of breaking his promises made at the Munich Conference.

1939 March 20 The U.S. ambassador to Germany is recalled to protest the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

1939 March 20 Reichprotector von Neurath bans all "unofficial Aryanization" of Jewish property in former Czechoslovakian territrories. All Jews are dismissed from their jobs as municipal employees.

1939 March 21 Nazis seize the Free City of Memel (Lithuania).

1939 March 21 Sir Howard Kennard, British Ambassador in Warsaw, offers in the name of his government, what is called a Pact of Consultation and Resistance that includes Great Britain, France, Poland and the Soviet Union.

1939 March 23 German troops occupy Memel and Hitler begins claiming the Polish Corridor, the narrow strip of land that since the Treaty of Versailles has separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Nazi harassment forces thousands of Jews to flee to Lithuania.

1939 March 23 The Polish government rejects Germany's proposals for Danzig.

1939 March 23 An economic agreement between Germany and Romania gives Hitler access to Romanian oil.

1939 March 24 Miuroslav Arciczewski, the Polish Undersecretary of State, complains to the German Ambassador about British and French intrigues in Warsaw, "which don't take into consideration the dangers to which Poland is exposed." (Sturdza)

1939 March 25 The Vatican recognizes Monseignor Tiso's recently founded Slovakia.

1939 March 26 Polish Ambassador Lipski inBerlin completely rejects Germany's proposals of October 1938. Beck refuses to even meet with Hitler, and instructs Lipski to tell Ribbentrop that if Germany continues to insist on the idea of a German Danzig... it would mean war.

1939 March 27 Spain joins the Anti-Comintern Pact.

1939 March 28 General Franco occupies Madrid, and the Spanish Civil War comes to an end. Franco assumes complete control, strengthening both Hitler's and Mussolini's positions in the Mediterranean.

1939 March 31 The Anglo-French guarantee of Poland's borders is signed. The "unconditional" guarantees given to Poland by France and Great Britain concern only Poland's western border, not its frontiers with the Soviet Union.

1939 March 31 Neville Chamberlain tells the House of Commons that the British government considers itself bound to come immediately to Poland's aid the moment the Polish government feels its existence is in danger. The news of Chamberlain's guarantee throws Hitler into a rage. (Shirer I)

1939 March 31 Germany and Spain conclude a Treaty of Friendship,

1939 April 1 Hitler tells General Keitel that it is a shame that "sly, old Marshal Pilsudski," with whom he had signed a nonaggression pact, had died so prematurely, but the same could happen to him at any time, and that is why it is so important to resolve the problem of East Prussia as soon as possible.

1939 April 2 Nazis fail to win seats in the Belgian House of Deputies.

1939 April 3 Hitler issues a war directive marked "Most Secret" and has it delivered by hand to his senior war commanders. "Since the situation on Germany's eastern frontier has become intolerable and all political possibilities have been exhausted," it began, "I have decided upon a solution by force." Preparations for the attack on Poland, "Case White" (Operation White), "must be made so that the operation can be carried out any time from September 1, 1939." (Shirer I)

1939 April 4 The Godesberg Declaration accepts the Nazis world view (Weltanschauung).

1939 April 6 Italy issues an ultimatum to King Zogu I of Albania.

1939 April 6 Polish Foreign Minister Beck signs a temporary mutual assistance pact in London, but since Beck fears the Soviets as much or more than the Nazis, it excludes any Soviet participation.

1939 April 7 Mussolini's occupies Albania, and soon annexes it to Italy.

1939 April 11 Hitler issues a directive for Operation White, a proposed plan to attack Poland.

1939 April 11 Hungary withdraws from the League of Nations.

1939 April 13 Britain and France counter Mussolini's threats with a guarantee to protect the sovereignty of Greece and Romania.

1939 April 14 President Roosevelt appeals to Hitler to respect the independence of nations.

1939 April 15 Roosevelt appeals to both Hitler and Mussolini for assurances against any further aggression, telling them both there is no need for war and to respect the independence of other European nations.

1939 April 15 Alfred Rosenberg opens the Institute of the Nazi Party for Research into the Jewish Question (Institut der NSDAP zur Erforschung der Judenfrage).

1939 April 16 After Franco, with the help of Hitler and Mussolini, has successfully defeated the "Loyalists," Pope Pius XII sends the Spanish Catholics his expressions of "immense joy" and "fatherly congratulations for the gift of peace and victory with which God has deigned to crown the Christian heroism of your faith and charity, proved through such great and generous sufferings." (Lewy)

1939 April 17 Britain and France reject a Soviet offer to form an anti-Nazi alliance.

1939 April 17 Soviet Ambassador Alexei Merekalov calls on Ribbentrop's chief subordinate, Baron von Weizacher and offers unmistakable signals that Russia is now willing to develop better relations with Germany.

1939 April 18 In Berlin, Hitler warns Grigore Gafencu, Romania's new Foreign Minister that "Romania will be abandoned by the covetousness of its neighbors" and again offers military aid and support against Soviet aggression.

1939 April 19 Hitler tells Gregoire Gafencu he cannot understand why the English cannot see that he only wishes to reach an agreement with them.... But if England wants war she can have it.

1939 April 20 Hitler celebrates his 50th birthday with the largest military display in German history. It is a clear warning to his enemies.

1939 April 20 Joint hearings of the U.S. House and Senate are held concerning the admission, on a non-quota basis, of 20,000 German Jewish children over a two-year period.

1939 April 24 A new Slovakian decree dismisses Jews from the civil service and corporation staffs.

1939 April 27 Britain enacts the Concsription Law, ordering compulsory military service.

1939 April 27 Hitler denounces the 1935 British-German naval agreement.

1939 April 28 In a worldwide radio broadcast from the Reichstag, Hitler rejects Roosevelt's appeal for peace and denounces what he calls Britain's new foreign policy. He also annuls the German-Plish nonagression Pact and denounces the British-Polish Pact. (See April 14)

1939 April 28 Sudeten-German Nazis incite anti-Jewish riots in Jihlava (Iglau), Czechoslovakia. Many Jewish shops and stores are damaged. (Edelheit)

1939 April 30 A new German decree causes Jews lose their right to rent protection. Landlords are sanctioned by law to evict Jewish tenants. (Persecution)

1939 April The first regular television broadcasts begin in the United States.

1939 May Hitler orders his personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt, to devise a new program for the killing of sick and disabled German children.

1939 May The British government sets a limit of 75,000 Jewish refugees into Palestine over the next five years.

1939 May Stalin's purges have by now cut across Russian society. A total of 98 of the 139 central committee members elected in 1934 have been shot and 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates to the 17th Congress arrested. The secret-police reign of terror annihilates a large portion of every profession. Deaths have been estimated in the millions, including those who perished in concentration camps.

1939 May 3 Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, a Jew, is replaced by Stalin with V.M. Molotov, a gentile. Hitler is said to have been greatly pleased.

(Note: Molotov will serve as foreign minister from 1939-49 and again from 1953-56. Litvinov will become Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. in 1941.) (Ickes)

1939 May 3 Hungary enacts antisemitic laws similar to the Nuremberg Laws. Hungarian Jews are forbidden to become Judges, lawyers, schoolteachers, or members of Parliament. Those who converted to Christianity before 1919 and Jewish war veterans are exempted.

1939 May 4 A second anti-Jewish law in Hungary deprives Jews naturalized after July 1, 1914 of their citizenship.

1939 May 4 The Housing Segregation Law is enacted in Germany. (Edelheit)

1939 May 6 Mussolini commits himself to sign an armistice with Hitler. It will be a fateful decision. (Shirer I)

1939 May 8 Spain withdraws from the League of Nations.

1939 May 13 The Hungarian Union of Jewish Communities, in response to a massive surge in conversions to Christianity, implores Jews not to abandon the faith of their fathers and the Jewish people.

1939 May 15 The S.S. St. Louis, loaded with 930 Jewish refugees, leaves Hamburg bound for Cuba.

1939 May 15 Ravensbrueck, a concentration camp for women, is established.

1939 May 17 A German census lists 330,539 Jews in Greater Germany; 138,819 males and 191,720 females. These figures include 94,530 Jews in what was formerly Austria and 2,363 in the Sudetenland.

1939 May 18 Julius Streicher's Der Stuermer calls for the extermination of all Jews in the Soviet Union, saying it is the only way to eliminate Bolshevism.

1939 May 18 Britain reinstates compulsory military conscription.

1939 May 19 Franco's Spanish Nationalists stage a huge parade in Madrid.

1939 May 20 Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov invites German Ambassador von der Schulenburg to meet with his staff in the Kremlin.

1939 May 20 Pan American Airways launches the first commercial trans-Atlantic flight. The Yankee Clipper flies from New York to Portugal.

1939 May 22 Hitler and Mussolini sign the "Pact of Steel."

1939 May 23 The British parliament approves the so-called "White Paper" by a vote of 268 to 179. This document proposes slowing the growth of the Jewish community in Palestine by limiting Jewish immigration and cutting back Jewish purchases of land. The House of Commons approves a plan for an independent Palestinian state by 1949, but the plan is denounced by both Arabs and Jews.

1939 May 23 Hitler tells a gathering of his highest-level military officers, "The Britisher himself is proud, brave, tough, dogged and a gifted organizer. He knows how to exploit every new development. He has the love of adventure and the courage of the Nordic race... England is a world power in herself. Constant for three hundred years. Increased by alliances. This power is not only something concrete, but must also be considered as a psychological force, embracing the entire world. Add to this immeasurable wealth and the solvency that goes with it and geopolitical security and protection by a strong sea power and courageous air force." (Shirer I)

1939 May 23 Hitler orders the Military High Command to prepare for war with Poland. Goebbels propaganda machine begins accusing the Poles of committing atrocities against their German-speaking minority. (Goebbels)

1939 May 26 Ribbentrop instructs Schulenburg to inform Molotov that Germany's hostility to the Comintern will be abandoned if Hitler can be assured that the Soviets have, in fact, renounced their aggressive struggle against Germany as indicated by Stalin's recent speech.

1939 May 27 The Cuban government refuses to admit the 930 Jewish refugees onboard the S.S. St. Louis. (See May 15)

1939 May 28 The Arrow Cross Party elects 45 representatives to the Hungarian parliament.

1939 May 29 President of the Hungarian Senate, Count Julius Karolyi, resigns in opposition to his country's new anti-Jewish laws.

1939 May 31 Hundreds of commercial licenses held by Jews are cancelled after the Hungarian Ministry of Commerce applies strict numerus clausus to Jewish businesses.

1939 June 1 General Oswald Pohl is named chief administrator of the SS.

1939 June 1 Italian Jews are ordered to assume "Jewish" surnames. Collaboration between Jewish and non-Jewish professionals is prohibited. (Edelheit)

1939 June 1 The SS-Gericht, the SS Legal Head Office, is established on Himmler's orders.

1939 June 2 The Cuban government forces the S.S. St. Louis to leave Havana harbor. (See May 27)

1939 June 3-4 The U.S. government refuses to admit the 930 Jews on the S.S. St. Louis, even those with valid American quota numbers. All requests go unheeded as the ship sails northward along the Florida coast.

1939 June 6 President Roosevelt ignores a telegram sent on behalf of the Jews aboard the S.S. St. Louis. The ship, with all 930 Jews on board, is forced to return to Europe.

1939 June 7 Britain's King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrive in America for a state visit and public relations campaign.

1939 June 12 Romania imposes a special tax on denationalized Jews, ranging from 2,000 to 10,000 lei annually.

1939 June 13 Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands (Holland) agree to take in the Jews aboard the S.S. St. Louis. Those who find shelter on the Continent will come under German control in the summer of 1940 and most will later be murdered in the concentration camps.

1939 June 18 A bomb explodes in a Jewish cafe in Prague, injuring 39 people.

1939 June 20 General Walther von Brauchitsch issues a directive ordering cooperation between the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS (SS- Verfuegungstruppen).

1939 June 20 Professor Fischer says in a lecture: "When a people wants, somehow or other, to preserve its own nature, it must reject alien racial elements, and when these have already insinuated themselves, it must suppress them and eliminate them. The Jew is such an alien and, therefore, when he wants to insinuate himself, he must be warded off. This is self-defence. In saying this, I do not characterize every Jew as inferior, as Negroes are, and I do not underestimate the greatest enemy with whom we have to fight. But I reject Jewry with every means in my power, and without reserve, in order to preserve the hereditary endowment of my people." (Science)

1939 June 22 Slovak Minister of Propaganda Aleksander Mach proclaims that with a year Slovakia with be cleansed of Jews (Judenrein).

1939 June 29 The first group of Gypsy women from Austria are sent to Ravensbrueck concentration camp. They number some 440.

1939 June 30 A fire destroys part of the Jewish district in Silal, Lithuania. Arson is suspected.

1939 Summer A public announcement is printed: "The German Society of Race-hygiene is to organize the Fourth International Congress of Eugenics in Vienna on 26-28 August 1940. The President of the Congress will be Professor Rüdin." (Science)

1939 July 4 The tenth ordinance of the Reich Citizenship Act creates the Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland), replacing all other Jewish organizations. All German Jews are forced to become members of the new association. (Persecution)

1939 July 6 Adolf Eichmann arrives in Prague to take charge of Jewish emigration.

1939 July 7 An editorial in the Völkischer Beobachter states that the Jewish problem in Germany will be solved only when Germany is cleansed of Jews.

1939 July 7 The ban against Action Francaise is lifted just four months after the election of Pope Pius XII, who was even more convinced of the usefulness of anti-Communist right-wing movements than his predecessor. (Lewy)

1939 July 8 Italian companies dealing with the government are prohibited from employing Jews. (Edelheit)

1939 July 9 Churchill urges a British military alliance with the Soviet Union.

1939 July 10 Niculetta Nicolescu, head of the women's branch of the Legionary Movement in Romania is arrested and and tortured. Her breasts are cut off and she is put to death after being raped. (Sturdza)

1939 July 12 Chamberlain tells the House of Commons that: "The present status of Danzig could not be considered as illegal or unjust... We hope that the Free City will prove once more that different nationalities can collaborate when their interests demand it."

1939 July 13 Italy an "Aryanization" program similar to the one in Germany.

1939 July 15 A Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle fuer Juedische Auswanderung) opens in Prague under the direction of Adolf Eichmann. A branch office is set up in Brno. All Jews wishiung to emigrate from the Czech Protectorate must request permission from these offices.

1939 July 16 Sir Oswald Mosley declares that one million British Fascists will refuse to fight in a "Jewish war."

1939 July 17 Cardinal Bertram sends instructions marked "Top Secret" to the German bishops informing them where priests should report for military pastoral care in case of war. (Lewy)

1939 July 23 Britain and France agree to Russia's proposal that military staff talks be held at once to spell out specifically how Hitler's armies are to be met by the three nations (See August 5). (Shirer I)

1939 July 24 A numerus clausus is instituted in Slovakia, restricting Jews in the professions to four percent. another Slovak decree dismisses all Jews from the army.

1939 July 26 The United States rescinds the 1911 trade agreement with Japan.

1939 July 29 Jews in Slovakia are forbidden to live in rural areas.

1939 July 30 Elections are held for the Twenty-first Zionist Congress to be held in Geneva.

1939 August Stalin, who has become convinced that Britain and France are conspiring to help throw the full weight of German strength against the USSR, seeks an accommodation with Hitler despite their bitterly antagonistic ideologies.

1939 August 1 The U.S. Congress passes a bill outlawing the use of uniforms and firearms by any organization conflicting with the American government. (Edelheit)

1939 August 2 After a lengthy debate the House of Commons votes itself a summer holiday. It is not scheduled to return until October 21.

1939 August 2 Albert Einstein writes a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him of the possibility that Nazi Germany might be attempting to build an atom bomb. "This new phenomena (atomic energy) would also lead to the construction of bombs. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air." Roosevelt soon issues orders for a U.S. effort to investigate building an atomic bomb. (Howarth)

1939 August 3 Following a secret meeting in London between German Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen and Sir Horace Wilson, head of Britain's civil service and Chamberlain's closest adviser, a message is sent to Hitler informing him that Britain is prepared to increase trade with Germany, talk constructively about Germany's need for colonies, take a helpful view of Germany's need for expansion in southeast Europe, announce jointly a cooperative program to help improve the world economic situation, look seriously at the possibility of limiting armaments (including a possible loan to Germany to offset the financial difficulties limitation would bring), and finally, not to intervene in matters concerning the Greater Reich, which would include Danzig. There was only one precondition: Germany and Britain should sign a treaty of nonaggression, in which both sides would renounce unilateral aggressive action as a policy method. (Howarth)

1939 August 3 Jews in Memel are allowed to liquidate their property without Nazi interference.

1939 August 4 The Polish government sends an ultimatum to the Danzig Senate warning it will arm its customs officers if the Senate does not stop interfering with Polish customs inspectors. Supposedly based on mistaken information, Poland's action causes great consternation among the Nazis.

1939 August 5 Britain and France's joint military mission to Russia departs Britain for Leningrad on a slow-moving, passenger-cargo ship. Discussions have been arranged with Molotov in Moscow (See July 23). (Shirer I)

1939 August 5 Albert Foerster, Nazi Gauleiter of Danzig, flies to Berchtesgaden to confer with Hitler. Meanwhile, the customs dispute in Danzig is temporarily resolved, but is seen in other countries as a Nazi capitulation, infuriating Hitler.

1939 August 6 Mussolini, fearing Germany will go to war with Poland, discusses with Count Galeazzo Ciano, his son-in-law and Foreign Minister, possible ways to evade the terms of the Pact of Steel, which commits them to aiding Germany. Mussolini believes Italy is still 3 years short of readiness for war.

1939 August 6 German authorities in Danzig tell the Poles that their customs officials can no longer work in the port.

1939 August 7 Count Ciano requests a meeting with Joachim von Ribbentrop.

1939 August 8 Winston Churchill makes a fifteen-minute radio broadcast to America, warning of the increasingly serious threat of war in Europe and the likelihood of American involvement. "This is the time to fight - to speak - to attack!"

1939 August 9 Germany issues an official warning to the Polish government in Warsaw, saying that another comminatory note to Danzig will result in strained Polish-German relations, with Poland being responsible.

1939 August 9 German Ambassador von Dirksen, preparing to depart on leave to Germany, visits British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. Halifax questions von Dirksen over the "sharp tone of the German press concerning Danzig." Dirksen replies that it is the fault of the Polish newspaper Czas which has published a statement that if there were any attempt to incorporate Danzig into the Reich, Polish troops would open fire on the Free City. (Howarth)

1939 August 9 The joint British-French military mission arrives in Leningrad.

1939 August 9 Jews from several Hagana units sink the British police boat Sinbad II in Palestine. (Edelheit)

1939 August 10 The Warsaw government warns Germany that "any future intervention to the detriment of Polish rights and interests in Danzig will be considered an act of aggression."

1939 August 10 In Berlin: Julius Schnurre, head of the Economic Policy Department of the German Foreign Ministry, picks up discussions with Georgi Astakhov, Charge d'Affaires of the Soviet Embassy, sounding out the possibility of a pact between Germany and the Soviet Union.

1939 August 10 Delegates of the joint British-French military mission spend the day sightseeing in Leningrad.

1939 August 10 Alfred Naujocks, a young SS secret-service veteran and member of the SD since its founding in 1934, is personally ordered by Reinhard Heydrich to fake a Polish attack on the radio station at Gleiwitz near the Polish border. "Practical proof is needed for these attacks by the Poles for the foreign press as well as German propaganda," Heydrich tells Naujocks. (Alfred Naujocks, sworn affidavit, Nuremberg, November 20, 1945; Shirer I)

1939 August 10 Night-time air war exercises are conducted over England on a larger scale than any time since WWI. 500 aircraft (bombers with fighter support) sweep in from the east to attack Birmingham, Rochester, Bedford, Brighton and Derby. 800 defenders take off to challenge the attackers. Defending forces are largely successful in beating off the attacking forces. Bombers approaching London have particular difficulty because of a balloon barrage above the capital.

1939 August 11 The British-French military mission finally arrives in Moscow. It is agreed to start talks the next day; by then it will be too late. Approaches are already quietly underway between Germany and Russia (See August 19). (Shirer I)

1939 August 11 The British Foreign Office learns that Germany will be in a state of complete military readiness on August 15.

1939 August 11 Karl Burckhardt, Commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig, is summoned to see Hitler at Berchtesgaden.

1939 August 11 Italian Foreign Minister Ciano and Ribbentrop meet in Salzburg. When Ciano asks Ribbentrop whether Germany wants the "Polish Corridor" or Danzig, Ribbentrop replies, "Not that any more.We want war." (Howarth)

1939 August 11 Gauleiter Foerster warns his Danzig Nazis to be prepared for anything.

1939 August 11 Jews begin to be expelled from the Czech Protectorate.

1939 August 12 The British-French military mission begins talks in Moscow. They will continue until August 19, but no agreement will be reached because of a dispute over Soviet troops being allowed in Poland. (WWIIDBD)

1939 August 12 Ciano meets with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Hitler is pondering over his maps planning the war against Poland. Hitler believes that the war will be localized and there is not the slightest danger that Britain and France would fight. When Ciano protests that so little would be gained at such vast risk, Hitler says to him "You are a southerner, and you will never understand how much I, as a German, need to get my hands on the timber of the Polish forests." Ciano notes: "He has decided to strike, and strike he will."

1939 August 13 Ciano returns to Rome disgusted at the attitudes of Ribbentrop and Hitler. "They have betrayed us and lied to us. Now they are dragging us into an adventure which we do not want and which may compromise the regime and the country as a whole." (Ciano)

1939 August 14 New York Congressman Hamilton Fish, president of the U.S. delegation to the Interparliamentary Union Congress conference in Oslo, Norway, meets with Ribbentrop. Fish is a vocal isolationist and staunch opponent of Roosevelt. The congressman advocates better relations with Germany and hopes to solve the Danzig question during the August 15-19 conference in Norway. Ribbentrop tells Fish that Germany has lost its patience and unless Danzig is restored to Germany war will break out. (Secrets)

1939 August 14 Chamberlain and Halifax receive details of Ciano's meetings with Hitler and Ribbentrop. They consider the idea of sending a German-speaking Briton to negotiate directly with Hitler.

1939 August 14 Hitler orders Ribbentrop to telegraph Ambassador von der Schulenberg in Moscow, ordering him to secure "a speedy clarification of German-Russian relations." Ribbentrop says that he is prepared to personally fly to Moscow and present Hitler's views to Stalin "because only through such a direct discussion can a change be brought about, and it should not be impossible therefore to lay the foundation for a final settlement of German-Russian relations."

1939 August 15 German State Secretary Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker warns Sir Neville Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin, that the situation is extremely serious. Weizsäcker says any German diplomatic initiative is unthinkable in view of Beck's speech declaring that Poland was prepared to talk, only if Germany would first accept Poland's terms. In view of that, the ultimatum to the Danzig Senate, and the comminatory note to Germany of August 10, no further talks are possible.

1939 August 15 Churchill begins a tour of the Maginot Line, France's main land defensive barrier against Germany.

1939 August 15 Molotov meets with von der Schulenberg in Moscow and expresses great interest in Hitler's proposals. Von der Schulenberg in turn is surprised and pleased at the Russian's moderate conditions.

1939 August 15 Captain Karl Doenitz, head of the U-boat arm of the German Navy, is recalled unexpectedly early from leave.

1939 August 15 Ambassador Von Dirksen's leave in Berlin is uninterrupted. Although he wishes to see Ribbentrop, the Foreign Minister will not see him. Von Dirksen discovers that Italian Ambassador in Berlin, Bernardo Attolico, believes Hitler is about to go to war with Poland, ignoring Britain's conciliatory attitude. Von Dirksen is convinced Attolico is wrong. (See August 3)

1939 August 15 Advance mobilization orders are sent to the German railways, and plans are made to move Army headquarters to Zossen, east of Berlin. The navy reports that the pocket battleships Graf Spee and Deutschland and twenty-one submarines are ready to sail for their stations in the Atlantic. (Shirer I)

1939 August 15 The annual Nuremberg Party Rally, which Hitler proclaimed on April 1 as the "Party Rally of Peace" and which is scheduled to begin the first week in September, is secretly cancelled. (Shirer I)

1939 August 16 Ribbentrop cables von der Schulenberg, telling him that all Molotov's conditions can be met. Captain Doenitz arrives at Kiel, the main U-boat base, and begins to implement plans for Fall Weiss (Case White) the projected attack on Poland.

1939 August 16-26 The Twenty-first World Zionist Congress meets in Geneva. It strongly opposes the British White Paper and expresses concern for the fate of Jews in Germany, Poland and the rest of eastern Europe.

1939 August 17 The League of Nations' Permanent Mandate Commission rules that the British White Paper is inconsistent with provisions of the Mandate.

1939 August 17 General Halder makes a strange entry in his diary: "Canaris checked with Section I (Operations). Himmler, Heydrich, Obersalzberg: 150 Polish uniforms with accessories for Upper Silesia." (Shirer I) (See August 31, 8 PM)

1939 August 17 Molotov is highly gratified by the German's obvious haste to achieve a political agreement. Soviet Marshal Voroshilov - by now sure that neither the French nor the British mean business - dismisses their delegates for four days.

1939 August 17 Sumner Welles, U.S. Under Secretary of State, passes information concerning the German overtures to Moscow to British Ambassador Sir Ronald Lindsay, who immediately telegraphs London, confident his message will be in the Foreign Office first thing in the morning, London time. It is, but will not be deciphered for four days.

1939 August 18 Weizsäcker repeats his warning to the British and French Ambassadors. (See August 15)

1939 August 18 After learning a German attack on Poland is threatened to take place within two weeks, Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin, implores Chamberlain to write personally to Hitler.

1939 August 18 Doenitz despatches Germany's 35 operational U-boats. 18 are sent to the eastern Atlantic and the remaining 17 to the Baltic for operations against Poland and possibly Russia.

1939 August 19 A German-Soviet economic agreement are completed and signed in Moscow. Molotov suddenly produces a draft of a Russian-German nonagression pact and invites Ribbentrop to Moscow on the 26th or 27th.

1939 August 19 Orders to sail are issued to the German Navy. The pocket battleship Graf Spee is ordered to waters off Brazil, and her sister ship, Deutschland, is directed to the North Atlantic. Twenty-one submarines are ordered to take up positions north and northwest of the British Isles. (Shirer I)

1939 August 19 At 7:10 PM, a telegram is received in Berlin from the German ambassador in Moscow: "SECRET. MOST URGENT. THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT AGREE TO THE REICH FOREIGN MINISTER COMING TO MOSCOW ON AUGUST 26 OR 27. MOLOTOV HANDED ME A DRAFT OF A NON-AGRESSION PACT." (Shirer I)

1939 August 19 Churchill and Chaim Weizmann meet in London. (Edelheit)

1939 August 20 In Moscow during the early hours of the morning an agreement in signed between Germany and the Soviet Union.

1939 August 20 Hitler, suspecting Molotov might cause delays in ratification of the nonagression pact, sends a personal message to Stalin asking him to receive Ribbentrop in Moscow as soon as possible, telling Stalin "The tension between Germany and Poland has become intolerable... A crisis may arise any day. Germany is at any rate determined from now on to look after the interests of the Reich with all the means at her disposal."

1939 August 20 The Soviet Union scores a major victory over Japan in the border conflict along the Outer Mongolia-Manchukuo frontier and Japan sues for peace. By the end of the campaign Soviet losses will be10,000 killed and wounded. Japanese losses: 52,000 to 55,000 killed and wounded.

1939 August 20 German U-boats take up positions in the North Atlantic shipping lanes.

1939 August 21 The Trade and Credit Agreement is signed between Germany and the Soviet Union. Stalin cables Hitler: "THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT HAVE INSTRUCTED ME TO INFORM YOU THAT THEY AGREE TO HERR VON RIBBENTROP'S ARRIVING IN MOSCOW ON AUGUST 23. -- J. STALIN."

1939 August 21 Neville Chamberlain arrives in London, having travelled overnight from Scotland. British Intelligence suggests that Field Marshal Hermann Goering should come to London for discussions.

1939 August 21 Soviet Marshal Voroshilov (knowing of Ribbentrop's impending arrival) indefinitely postpones any continuation of Anglo-French-Soviet talks.

1939 August 22 Chamberlain writes a letter to Hitler, warning him the German-Soviet Agreement will not alter Britain's obligation to come to the aid of Poland.

1939 August 22 Chamberlain gives a fighting speech, to be broadcast by the BBC, saying it is unthinkable that Great Britain should not carry out its obligations to Poland.

1939 August 22 Sir William Seeds, British Ambassador in Moscow, accuses Molotov of negotiating in bad faith.

1939 August 22 At Obersalzburg, Hitler tells his generals that the destruction of Poland "starts on Saturday morning" (26 August), the aim of this war is the wholesale destruction of Poland.

(Note: Hitler proclaims to the commanders of the armed services: "Our strength is in our quickness and our brutality. Genghis Khan had millions of women and children killed by his own will and with a gay heart. History sees him only as a great state builder... Thus for the time being I have sent to the East only my "Death's Head Units" with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. Only in such a way will we win the vital space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?") (Architect)

1939 August 22-4 The Fulda Bishop's Conference of 1939 includes the bishops of Austria and the Sudetenland for the first time. All are aware of the "Top Secret" instructions of July 17. (Lewy)

1939 August 23 The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is signed in Moscow. Sometimes called the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement of Non-Aggression, it sets up plans for a 10-year collaboration between Germany and Soviet Russia. Both parties agreed that if either became involved in a war, the other would give no help to the enemy; nor would either join any group against the other. There was no clause stating that withdrawal was allowed if one signatory attacked a third party, although this was customary in such treaties. A "secret protocol" to the agreement provided for the partition of Poland along the line of the rivers Pisa, Narew, Vistula and San in the event of what was referred to as a "territorial transition" taking place in Poland. The Soviet Union was allocated all the Byelorussian and Ukrainian provinces of Poland, as well as the province of Lublin and part of that of Warsaw. Germany was to take the western part of the country, though the possibility of retaining a small remnant of a Polish state was kept open. The USSR was to have a free hand in Finland, Estonia and Latvia; and Germany in Lithuania. Soviet interest in the Rumanian province of Bessarabia was recognised by Germany.)

1939 August 23 Hitler is delighted. He believes Stalin has just handed him the perfect opportunity to restore the Reich's "rightful possessions" without having to fight a war on two fronts. He is certain that this new treaty with the Russians will allow him to safely reclaim Danzig and take back the Polish Corridor. Britain and France, he tells his staff, without other major allies, will not go to war in such a situation... "especially over what everyone knows are, by all rights, German territories anyway." (Toland)

1939 August 23 Hitler sets the date for the invasion of Poland as: Saturday, August 26, at 4:30am. Colonel-General Alfred Jodl is appointed Chief of staff of the armed forces supreme command (OKW).

1939 August 23 Orders are issued to confiscate all radios belonging to German Jews. (Eyes)

1939 August 23 The British and French Special Military Mission leaves Moscow.

1939 August 23 French citizens are advised to leave Paris. Churchill leaves France and returns to London. Daladier asks the Permanent Committee for National Defence whether they can stand by and watch the disappearance of Poland and Rumania; they agree that they cannot.

1939 August 23 Sir Percy Lorain, British Ambassador to Rome, informs his government that he is confident the Italians will not fight. Mussolini declares himself ready to mediate.

1939 August 23 Hitler writes to Neville Chamberlain: "Germany was prepared to settle the questions of Danzig and of the Corridor by the method of negotiations on the basis of a truly unparalleled magnanimity, but the allegations put forth by England regarding a German mobilization against Poland, theassertion of aggressive designs toward Romania, Hungary, etc. as well as the so-called Guarantee Declarations which were subsequently given had dispelled any Polish inclination to negotiate on a basis which would have also been tolerable for Germany... The German Reich government has received information to the effect that the British government has the intention to carry out measures of mobilization which, according to the statements contained in your own letter, are clearly directed against Germany alone... I therefore inform your Excellency that in the event of these military announcements being carried into effect, I shall order the immediate mobilization of the German armed forces."

1939 August 23 Foreign Minister Beck agrees to allow passage of Soviet troops through Poland.

1939 August 23 Belgium proclaims its neutrality and mobilizes its army for defense.

1939 August 24 Poland and Great Britain formally sign a treaty of mutual assistance.

1939 August 24 The British Parliament reconvenes and passes the Emergency Powers Act. Royal Assent is given on the same day and the Royal Navy is ordered to war stations. Soon afterward a general mobilization begins.

1939 August 24 Hitler predicts the Chamberlain government will fail. Goering meets with Birger Dahlerus, a Swedish businessman and proposes that Dahlerus, who has good connections, should act as a go-between with Great Britain.

1939 August 24 Gauleiter Albert Foerster becomes head of state in Danzig.

1939 August 24 Pope Pius XII appeals for peace.

1939 August 25 Goering's friend, Swiss businessman Birger Dahlerus, lands in Croyden, England, in Goering's private plane. Dahlerus personally gives copies of Hitler's proposals for a peaceful settlement of the Danzig problem to Lord Halifax.

1939 August 25 Colonel Walery Slawek, a Polish opponent of the anti-German policies of Marshal Smigly-Rydz and President Moscicki, and a strong proponent of Marshal Pilsudski's pro-German policy, is murdered and his death ruled a suicide, even though two bullets are found in his body. (Sturdza)

1939 August 25 Hitler confers with British Ambassador Henderson, telling him that "Poland's provocations have become intolerable." Hitler then makes several new proposals to Britain, whose friendship, Hitler says, he has "always sought." In conclusion, Hitler strongly urges Henderson to leave for London that same day with these new proposals.

1939 August 25 Italian Ambassador Attolico tells Hitler that Italy will not support Germany without German help with arms. On hearing of this, Hitler cancels his invasion of Poland scheduled for 4:30 AM the following morning.

1939 August 25 The number of incidents along the Polish-German border increase. In Makeszowa, near Katowice, German soldiers take over the court house and railway station. Poles break into an wreck the offices of a German newspaper. More Polish reservists are called up and cars and horses are requisitioned.

1939 August 25 President Roosevelt once again appeals for peace.

1939 August 26 The British Chiefs of Staff advise the cabinet that the earliest possible date for any ultimatum to Germany is September 1.

1939 August 26 Dahlerus meets with Halifax again, flies back to Berlin with a letter for Goering and returns to London later that afternoon.

1939 August 26 French Ambassador Robert Coulondre sees Hitler and appeals to him as one soldier to another. When Coulondre cites the probable fate of women and children in any war, Hitler hesitates, but Ribbentrop quickly strengthens his resolve.

1939 August 26 The Polish government in Warsaw increases the pace of its military mobilization.

1939 August 26 Mussolini submits a list of Italian requirements to Ribbentrop.

1939 August 26 Palestinian Jews (IZL) assassinate two British police detectives accused on torturing suspects. Many Britons hate and fear the Jews as much as the Germans. (Edelheit)

1939 August 27 Italian Foreign Minister Ciano recommends British acceptance of Hitler's latest offer.

1939 August 27 The British Cabinet learns from Lord Halifax of "Mr D," Birger Dahlerus, and his efforts on the Nazis behalf. Dahlerus arrives back in Berlin about midnight.

1939 August 27 Polish Foreign Minister Beck agrees to consider an exchange of population between predominantly German and predominantly Polish areas.

1939 August 28 Dahlerus has an early morning meeting with Goering and Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, Counsellor of the British Embassy, before breakfasting again with Goering. Later that day rationing is imposed in Germany.

1939 August 28 Polish Foreign Minister Beck refuses to go to Berlin. Beck says he accepts the principle of direct negotiations, but towards midnight tells British Ambassador Kennard that Polish mobilisation is proceeding.

1939 August 28 Karl Maria Weisthor (Wiligut) officially retires from the SS. Himmler requests the return of Weisthor's SS Totenkopfring, (Deathshead ring), SS dagger, and sword. Himmler personally keeps them under lock and key. (Weisthor file, Berlin Document Center; Roots)

1939 August 28 Ambassador Henderson returns to Berlin from London. Chamberlain requests information concerning Hitler's intentions towards Poland.

1939 August 28 Slovak Premier Josef Tiso invites the Germany army to occupy Slovakia. (Edelheit)

1939 August 28 The Netherland (Holland) orders a general military mobilization.

1939 August 29 At 7.00 AM Dahlerus telephones Cadogan with news of his meeting with Goering. The Fuehrer "was in fact only considering how reasonable he could be," he said, and was about to extend an invitation to the Poles for discussions in Berlin.

1939 August 29 Chamberlain makes a firm uncompromising speech in the House of Commons, saying "The catastrophe is not yet upon us, but I cannot say that the danger of it has in any way receded." He warns the press to exercise restraint, and apologizes for not being able to give more than an outline of his communications with Hitler.

1939 August 29 Hitler meets with Henderson, repeats his friendly sentiments towards the British Empire and grudgingly accepts direct negotiations with Poland, but demands that a Polish plenipotentiary must arrive in Berlin by the end of the following day. Henderson tells Hitler that the short term of 36 hours sounds like an ultimatum. Hitler replies that this is not an ultimatum, but has the purpose of stressing the urgency of a situation where two completely mobilized armies are confronting one another. On the Western border, only five German divisions man the Siegfried Line in front of the entire French Army.

1939 August 29 German troops enter Slovakia on Poland's southern frontier, but Ambassadors Kennard and Nokl persuade Beck to postpone any further Polish mobilization.

1939 August 29 Ernst von Weizsäcker, State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry learns of a secret annex to the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican. It stipulates that in the event Germany introduces universal military training, students studying for the priesthood are declared exempt except in the case of general mobilization. In that event most of the diocesan clergy are to be exempt from reporting for service, while all others are to be inducted for pastoral work with the troops or into the medical corps. (Lewy)

1939 August 29 Switzerland orders full mobilization of its frontier forces.

1939 August 30 The Warsaw government orders the Polish army to fully mobilize. Drastic measures are taken to stop any possible sabotage by pro-Germans. (Edelheit)

1939 August 30 Ambassador Henderson is advised by the Home Office that Hitler's demand for the arrival of a Polish plenipotentiary that day is unreasonable. Henderson and Ribbentrop meet again, and this time come close to blows. Ribbentrop goes over Hitler's latest proposals, but Henderson claims Ribbentrop refuses to give him a copy of the text.

1939 August 30 Hitler agrees to Britain's request for a 24-hour extension to permit a Polish negotiator to meet with von Ribbentrop.

1939 August 30 Beck tells Ambassador Kennard that Polish mobilization will resume at midnight. By 4.30 PM. all Polish towns are covered with posters summoning all men up to the age of 40 to report for enlistment. (Howarth)

1939 August 30 The British Foreign Office sends a message at 5:30 PM to Berlin after it receives reports of German sabotage in Poland. It says in part, "Germany must exercise complete restraint if Poland is to do so as well."

1939 August 31 The sixth decree on implementation of the law on sterilization virtually puts an end to sterilizations in Germany. (Science)

1939 August 31 Henderson, instead of informing the Poles of Hitler's proposals and the granting of an extension, tries to dissuades Lipski from meeting with von Ribbentrop at all. Henderson, in his Final Report, writes "I suggested that he (Lipski) recommend to his government an interview between Marshal Smigly-Rydz and Goering. I felt obliged to add that I could not conceive of the success of any negotiations if they were conducted by Ribbentrop." (Sturdza)

1939 August 31 A telegram from Sir Howard Kennard, British Ambassador in Warsaw to Lord Halifax states that Polish Foreign Minister Beck has informed him that Lipski has been forbidden to receive any documents from von Ribbentrop.

1939 August 31 Lipski telegrams Beck that French Ambassador Coulondre has told him that Henderson has been informed of Germany's intention to wait until midnight August 31st. Lipski writes: "Coulondre advises me to inform the German government, only after midnight, that the Polish Embassy was always at its reach." (Sturdza)

1939 August 31 The Supreme Soviet ratifies the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.

1939 August 31 At half past noon, Hitler issues Directive # 1 for the conduct of the war: (1) Now that all the political possibilities of disposing by peaceful means of a situation which is intolerable for Germany are exhausted, I have determined on a solution by force. (2) The attack on Poland is to be carried out. Date of attack: September 1, 1939. Time of attack: 4:45am. (Shirer I)

1939 August 31 Polish Ambassador Lipski meets with Ribbentrop at 6:15 PM.

1939 August 31 A telegram to Beck from Lipski informs the Foreign Minister that "I have met with von Ribbentrop. I have obeyed instructions received and told him that I was not empowered to negotiate. Mr. von Ribbentrop repeated that he believed I had such powers. He told me that he would report my visit to the Chancellor."

1939 August 31 SS Sturmbannfuehrer Alfred Helmut Naujocks is said to have received the code words "Grandmama dead," thus ending a 14 day wait at the German radio station at Gleiwitz, where he and Gestapo head Heinrich Mueller are to carry out a mock attack. The "canned goods:" a dozen "condemned criminals" dressed in Polish military uniforms are believed to have been given fatal injections before being shot.

(Note: See Alfred Naujocks, sworn affidavit, Nuremberg, November 20, 1945. Shortly after signing his affidavit, Naujocks mysteriously disappeared from custody. Some Germans and numerous antisemites believe he had been forced to sign his confession and was murdered to keep him silent.)

1939 August 31 At 8 PM the German radio station at Gleiwitz near the Polish border announces it is under attack. Most contemporary historians believe Hitler staged this attack as an excuse to invade Poland. Holocaust deniers and historical revisionists, however, suggest that British or Jewish secret agents were responsible. (See August 10,15, 17, 1939)

1939 August 31 At 8.20 PM Ciano is informed by the telephone central office that London has cut its communications with Italy. (Howarth)

1939 August 31 At 9 PM all radio stations in Germany interrupt their schedules to broadcast Hitler's 16 point plan for Poland. It includes provisions for: the annexation of Danzig by Germany; a corridor across the Danzig Corridor; a plebiscite to be held in the Corridor area in 12 months time, and a later exchange of populations. The port of Gdynia is to be recognized as Polish, thus leaving Poland with access to the sea. It will not be delivered to the Polish ambassador until September 1. (Howarth; Bell)

1939 August 31 A huge banquet is held in Ribbentrop's honor at the Kremlin in Moscow. Ribbentrop, Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan and Beria are all seated at the head table. The party ends at 3:00 AM.

WORLD WAR II

1939 September 1 4:45 AM, German troops cross the Polish frontier. The German military machine strikes in what is known as a Blitzkrieg (lightning war). High-speed panzer (tank) units blast holes in the Polish lines. Luftwaffe (air force) bombers destroy the Polish air force on the ground, damage communications lines, and prevent the Poles from moving reinforcements, supplies, and ammunition to the front, while German motorized units and footsoldiers quickly move forward to capture and hold the conquered ground. In all, 53 German divisions take part in the attack.

1939 September 1 An 8 PM curfew is established for all German Jews.

1939 September 1 Mussolini proposes a suspension of hostilities and the immediate convening of a Conference of the Big Powers, Poland included, to discuss terms for a peaceful settlement. Germany, France and Poland immediately accept Mussolini's proposals. Britain categorically rejects any negotiations and demands withdrawal of German troops from all occupied Polish territory (30 kilometers deep). Britain does not consult with Warsaw before making its decision.

1939 September 1 Osborne, British Ambassador at the Vatican, reports to Lord Halifax that he had suggested to Papal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione that publication of the last-minute unsuccessful peace appeal of Pope Pius XII be accompanied by an expression of regret that the German government, despite the Papal appeal, has plunged the world into war. Maglione, he says, has turned down this request as too specific an intervention into international politics. (Lewy)

1939 September 1 The Euthanasia Decree, which will not actually be written until October, is predated to go into effect on this date in Greater Germany. This decree orders that all Germans with incurable diseases are to be killed in order to free up needed hospital space and eliminate "useless eaters."

1939 September 1 Gauleiter Albrecht Foerster proclaims an anschluss of Danzig with Greater Germany.

1939 September 2 Coulondre telegrams Daladier: "Stay firm, Hitler will knuckle under." France revokes its acceptance of Mussolini's peace proposals.

1939 September 2 German control is established in Danzig and a concentration camp is opened outside the city at Stutthof. Hundreds of Jews are among the first prisoners.

1939 September 2 The Gestapo orders all Jews in Germany between 16 and 55 years of age to report for compulsory labor. (Edelheit)

1939 September 3 Great Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany. The British ultimatum that Germany withdraw from Poland was delivered to the German Foreign Ministry at 9 AM by Ambassador Neville Henderson. It gave Hitler two hours to begin the withdrawal or a state of war would exists between the two nations. At 11 AM the French ultimatum was delivered. It expires at 5 PM.

1939 September 3 Ten British bombers drop 13 tons of leaflets on the Ruhr. Printed on the six million sheets of paper is the message: "Your rulers have condemned you to the massacres, miseries and privations of a war they cannot ever hope to win." (Duffy)

1939 September 3 Unity Mitford shoots herself in the head with a small pistol outside a German government building in Munich. Her attempt is unsuccessful, but she will continue to live for several years after the war as an invalid.

1939 September 3 Lieutenant Colonel Nikolaus von Vormann, army liaison officer to Hitler, records in his notes of the day: "Even today the Fuehrer still believes that the Western powers are only going to stage a phony war, so to speak." (Irving I)

1939 September 3 A German U-boat is accused of sinking the Athenia, a Canadian liner bound for Montreal. The sinking results in the loss of 112 lives, including 28 Americans. During the first two months of the war, 67 British merchant ships are sunk. (See October 5)

1939 September 3 Himmler tells the Einsatzgruppe under Udo von Woyrsch that its mission is to suppress the Polish resistence movement with all available means. The overall operation of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland has been given the code-name Aktion Tannenberg. It will officially come to an end on October 25. (Architect)

(Note: It is uncertain whether this code-name referred to the Battle of Tannenberg or to the well-known Pan-German writer Otto Richard Tannenberg. (See 1911)

1939 September 4 With Hitler's consent, Goering makes a speech asking for a settlement with Poland.

1939 September 4 Hitler visits Marshal Pilsudski's grave in the Krakow Cathedral. (Sturdza)

1939 September 4 British Blenheim and Wellington bombers attack the German naval facilities at Wilhelmshaven. Of the 29 bombers that took off from England, 5 failed to find the target and 7 were shot down. The only serious damage was done by a Blenheim that managed to crash into the bow of the cruiser Emden, killing a number of sailors. (Duffy)

1939 September 6 The German command asks the Polish Command to evacuate noncombatants from Warsaw, if it intends to defend the city. Poland answers: "Warsaw will be defended, nobody will be evacuated." (Sturdza)

1939 September 7 Heydrich tells his division heads that the Polish leadership must be "neutalized." The Einsatzgruppen already had lists of people considered to be hostile to Germany, which included members of Polish patriotic organizations, communists, clergymen, noblemen, and Jews. (Architect)

1939 September 7 - 9 French forces cross the German border at three different locations: near Saarbrücken, Saarlouis, and Zweibrücken. The French meet little resistence due to the fact that Hitler had ordered German units near the border not to engage the French units unless they were attacked and forced to return fire. The transfer of troops to Poland had left only eleven regular divisions plus the equivalent of one division of fortress troops defending the western frontier. These were supported by 35 recently-formed divisions of second-, third-, and fouth-line troops. There were no armored or motorized units facing west; they had all been tranferred to the east. (Duffy)

1939 September 9 Hitler issues an amnesty for Catholic priests accused of minor infractions of German law (See March 11, 1940). (Lewy)

1939 September 9 All Jewish men in the small Ruhr town of Gelsenkirchen are deported to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, near Berlin. The women and children are left to fend for themselves. (Atlas)

1939 September 12 Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, protests to General Keitel that extensive shootings are planned in Poland, and that the nobility and intelligentsia are to be exterminated. The world, Canaris said, would hold the armed forces responsible. (Architect)

1939 September 12 The French army now occupies a 15-mile-wide front some five miles inside German territory. Although his forces have met no real opposition to its advance, General Maurice Gamelin halts his army and issues orders to prepare for a rapid retreat at the first sign of strong German opposition. (Duffy)

(Note: General Gamelin brazenly lies to the beleaguered Poles when they protest the lack of French action; telling them that half of his active divisions are engaged in combat and meeting vigorous German resistence. "I have thus gone beyond my promise to take the offensive with the bulk of my forces by the fifteenth day after mobilization. It has been impossible for me to do more." Only 9 of France's 85 divisions on the frontier were employeed in the "offensive.") (Shirer II)

1939 September 17 Stalin's Soviet Army invades Poland from the East.Neither England nor France chooses to break diplomatic relations with Moscow or declare war, despite Russia's obvious aggression.

1939 September 18 The Polish government and High Command escape into exile in France.

1939 September 21 Reinhard Heydrich tells a meeting of his department heads in the Reich Central Security Office (RSHA), an organization emcompassing the Gestapo, SS, SD, and Criminal Police, that the mass deportations of thousands of Jews, including Poles, Germans, Austrians, Czechs and Slovaks, to the eastern areas of Poland are the "first steps in the final solution" (die Endlösung).(Apparatus)

1939 September 21 Romanian Legionaries murder Armand Calinescu, who they blame for the death of Corneliu Codreanu. Nine of the assassins turn themselves in to police and all are quickly executed.

1939 September 21 The Germans decree that all Polish communities with less than 500 Jews are to be dissolved and that the Jews are hereafter to live in certain restricted areas in the larger cities, or in a special region between Lublin and Nisko, called the "Lublinland reservation." (Atlas)

1939 September 21 Cardinal August Hlond, Primate of Poland, arrives in Rome and personally reports of German atrocities against Catholic priests in Poland to the Pope. The Vatican radio and "L'Osservatore Romano" tell the story to the world. (Lewy)

1939 September 22 Four hundred Legionaries are murdered in Romania by government dead squads and their bodies left at the country's crossroads as a warning to others.

1939 September 23 All German Jews are ordered to turn in their radios to the police. (Persecution)

1939 September 24 Warsaw surrenders to the Germans after heavy and prolonged bombardment. 3,000 of the dead are Jewish civilians. (Atlas)

(Note:WWIIDBD says Warsaw surrendered September 27)

1939 September 24 On the Jewish Day of Atonement, Jewish prisoners of war are forced to clean the latrines with their bare hands and are treated with particular brutality. (Atlas)

1939 September 28 Poland is partitioned between Germany and the Soviet Union. Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz forms a Polish government-in-exile in France. During the fighting about 60,000 Polish soldiers have been killed, of whom some 6,000 were Jews.

1939 September 28 Lithuania annexes the Vilna region of Poland.

1939 September 28 Polish Cardinal August Hlond is allowed to broadcast a message to the Poles of the world over the Vatican Radio. The Pope, unhappy with the cardinal's presence in Rome, wants him to return to Poland, but the Germans will not allow it. (Lewy)

1939 September 30 German Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs Hanns Kerrl sends word to all church authorities suggesting that all church bells should ring during the noon hour for seven days "out of grateful commemoration of the victory (over Poland) and of the dead."

1939 September 30 About 400,000 of the 600,000 people classified as Jews in Germany have already fled the country. Of the 200,000 who remain, about 150,000 will die in the concentration camps.

1939 September 30 General Gamelin issues orders for the French army to begin withdrawing from Germany during the night. (Duffy)

1939 September-October Germany annexes the northern and western portions of German-occupied Poland, including provinces Germany had been forced to give up by the Treaty of Versailles. The southern and eastern portions become an occupied zone, in effect a German colony, designated as the Government General of Poland. (Apparatus)

1939 September-October Stalin forces the Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- to accept garrisons of Soviet troops within their borders.

1939 September-October Simon Wiesenthal becomes a commissar for the Soviet secret police in western Poland, thereby avoiding deportation to the Siberian labor camps.

1939 October The first "euthanasia" questionnaires are distributed to mental hospitals. They are completed, in their capacity as "experts," by Professors Heyde, Mauz, Nitsche, Panse, Pohlisch, Reisch, C. Schneider, Villinger, and Zucker, all of whom are professors of psychiatry, and thirty-nine other doctors of medicine. Their payment is 5 pfennigs per questionnaire when more than 3,500 are processed per month, and up to 10 pfennigs when there are less than 500. A cross signifies death. There are 283,000 questionnaires to be processed. These experts mark at least 75,000 with a cross. (Science)

1939 October-November During this period 214 Polish priests are executed, among them the entire cathedral chapter of the bishopric of Peplin. (Broszat; Lewy)

1939 October-April Following Hitler's speedy victory in Poland, a period known as the Phony War follows in western Europe. Hitler proposes several peace conferences, all are quicklyly rejected. The British and French use this 6-month lull for strategic planning.

1939 October Stalin disappears from the Kremlin for two days to meet secretly with Hitler. (KGB Archives.)

1939 October 1 Cardinal Bertram informs all bishops that they should comply with Kerrl's suggestion of September 30, and the church bells in all dioceses in Germany ring out to celebrate Hitler's first military victory. (Lewy)

1939 October 4 All French forces except for a light screen have withdrawn from Germany and returned to French territory. (Duffy)

1939 October 5 President Roosevelt and his Cabinet discuss an official message from German Admiral Raeder to the American military attache in Berlin, warning him that the British are planning to sink the Iroquois, an American ship. Harold Ickes writes in his secret diary, "Of course no one in this country believes that the British would do a thing of this sort, but Hitler and his government have not ceased to insist that it was Churchill who personally gave the orders to sink the Athenia (September 3) for the purpose of having it blamed on the German government in the hope of embroiling us with Germany." (Ickes)

1939 October 6 Hitler calls for a new European conference to end the war, and to settle Germany's differences with England and France. Hitler declares to the Reichstag that Germany has "no further claims against France," and adds, "Nowhere have I ever acted against British interests."

1939 October 7 Himmler issues a new decree giving him a new title: Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of the German People (RFV). (Architect)

1939 October 9 Hitler issues Directive No 6, saying: If England and France will not end the war, then, he will go over to the offensive.

1939 October 10 President Daladier of France rejects Hitler's offer to negotiate.

1939 October 10 Churchill argues in the British Cabinet for the mining of Norwegian coastal waters to interfere with German iron ore traffic.

1939 October 10 Admiral Raeder mentions to Hitler for the first time the idea of invading Norway.

1939 October 12 Chamberlain also rejects Hitler's offer of peace. Saying it would amount to forgiving Germany for all its aggression.

1939 October 12 The Nazis begin deporting Jews from Austria and Moravia to Poland. (Persecution)

1939 October 12 Hans Frank is appointed Chief Civilian Officer in occupied Poland. (Goebbels)

1939 October 14 A German U-boat penetrates the defenses of Scapa Flow, the British naval base in the Orkney Islands, and sinks the battleship Royal Oak, killing 833.

1939 October 15 Of the 16,000 Polish civilians executed in the first six weeks of the war, 5,000 were Jewish. About 250,000 Jews escaped from the Germans into the Soviet Union. Some were immediately deported to labor camps in Siberia, where many of them later died. (Atlas)

1939 October 16 A German counterattack begins driving out the few remaining French troops in Germany, and by the following night, no French forces remain on German soil. (Duffy)

1939 October 16 Rarkowski, bishop of the German army, declares in a pastoral letter that "the Almighty God had visibly blessed the struggle against Poland that has been forced upon us." (The average German soldier had no way of knowing for sure whether Poland had indeed mistreated its German minority, or fired the first shots as claimed by Hitler.) (Lewy)

1939 October 18 President Roosevelt issues a proclamation closing U.S. offshore waters and all U.S. ports to submarines of all belligerents. (Schlessinger I)

1939 October 19 The Kristallnacht "Atonement fee" for Jews is increased to 1.25 billion RM and has to be paid by November 15, 1939. (Persecution)

1939 October 19 Hitler incorporates western Poland into the German Reich.

1939 October 25 Aktion Tannenberg. officially comes to an end. SS special task forces (Einsatzgruppen) have murdered hundreds of Jews and members of the Polish intelligentsia, burned down dozens of synagogues, and waged an all-out campaign of terror against non-German,Polish civilians. (See September 3)

1939 October 28 Starting with the town of Piotrkow, German authorities begin confining the Jews of Poland to a particular area (ghetto) of each city or town in which they live. Sometimes this area is the already prominently Jewish quarter, but often it is a poor or neglected part of th town, away from the center. Jews from the rest of the town are then forced to leave their homes, and to move into this, often much smaller area, in which even the basic amenities are unavailable. In eachof these ghetto areas, food and medical supplies are restricted. Intense overcrowding, hunger and disease lead to widespread suffering and death. (Atlas)

1939 October 28 Himmler sets off a controversy when he issues an extraordinary "order" for the entire SS and police to father as many children as possible, even outside of marriage, to compensate for the German blood lost in the war. Himmler pledges to provide generous support for all such children, regardless of their parents marital status. (Architect)

1939 October 30 Himmler orders that all Jews must be cleared out of the rural areas of western Poland within 3 months. In the Poznan region, 50 communities are immediately uprooted. (Atlas)

1939 November 3 Hitler suggests using The Protocols of the Elders of Zion abroad to demonstrate that the true instigators of the war are Jews and Freemasons. (Segel/Levy)

1939 November 4 The American Neutrality Act is modified to allow the sale of arms to billigerents on a "Cash and Carry" basis. Only the British and French can benefit because on the terms and conditions imposed.

1939 November 6 Himmler departs for Munich to prepare for the annual Blutzeuge celebration to commemorate the 1923 putsch. (Architect)

1939 November 7 Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands and King Leopold of Belgium issue a plea for peace to England and France.

1939 November 7 Hitler postpones his attack on the west, which was scheduled for November 12. This postponement will be repeated 15 times until May 10, 1940.

1939 November 8 Hitler tells a meeting of "Old Fighters" in Munich, "What were the aims of Britain in the last war? Britain said she was fighting for justice. Britain has been fighting for justice for three hundred years. As a reward God gave her 40 million square kilometers of the world and 480 million people to dominate." (Payne)

1939 November 8 A bomb supposedly intended for Hitler explodes at the Burgebraukeller in Munich. Hitler had cut short his speech and abruptly left shortly before the explosion. Eight are killed and sixty are injured in the blast. Johann Georg Elser, a carpenter from Württemberg, is arrested a week later. The Nazis are convinced he is involved in a British plot with Otto Strasser, who was in Switzerland and returned to England soon after the explosion. (Goebbels)

(Note: The British claimed Hitler, himself, staged this explosion to gain the propaganda value.)

1939 November 8 Two British spies are arrested for espionage at Venlo on the Dutch-German border by the Germans, who capture a list of British agents and use it to make numerous arrests of British agents in Czechoslovakia and other occupied countries.

1939 November 8 Hans Frank becomes Governor General of Poland. He quickly encourages the persecution of the Jews.

1939 November 9 On Hitler's instructions, Goebbels cancels the Day of National Solidarity (Blutzeuge) in Munich, saying, "In these times, it is too dangerous." (Goebbels)

1939 November 10 The Papal Nunzio in Berlin delivers the special personal congratulations of Pope Pius on the Fuehrer's miraculous escape from the assassination attempt of November 8. (Lewy)

1939 November 12 A Te Deum is sung in the Cathedral of Munich"in order to thank the divine Providence in the name of the archdiocese for the Fuehrer's fortunate escape from the criminal attempt made upon his life." ("Munchener Katholische Kirchenzeitung;" Lewy)

1939 November 12 King George VI of England and President Lebrun of France reply to Queen Wilhemina and King Leopold refusing to negotiate with Hitler.

1939 November 16 Martial law is declared in Prague after shootings by anti-Fascists.

1939 November 21 The British begin blockading German exports.

1939 November 23 Mandatory wearing of the Star of David by Jews is ntroduced by the Germans in Poland. (Persecution)

1939 November 28 the USSR denounced its nonaggression pact with Finland, which had resisted Soviet pressures.

1939 November 30 The Soviets invade Finland and the Russo-Finnish war begins. The Finns put up a surprisingly spirited resistance in what is called the Russo-Finnish War, or Winter War. The Western Powers again fail to act against Russia, and later Churchill will declare war on Finland.

1939 December The first euthanasia centers open in Germany. The first victims are shot, but as the program is expanded, gassing rooms disguised as showers are used. The largest of these institutions are at Grafeneck in Wuttemberg and Hadamar in Hesse.

1939 December 1 Trainloads of deportees begin rolling into the newly created Government General in eastern Poland. The administration which already has 1.4 million Jews under its jurisdiction is overwhelmed by the numbers--an average of more than 3,000 per day. (These mass movements were designed to make room in the annexed area of Poland for ethnic Germans who were moving westward under special agreement with the Russians, from the Baltic States and other regions now under Soviet control. (Apparatus)

1939 December 2 Finland appeals to the League of Nations to mediate in their dispute with the Soviets.

1939 December 5 The Soviet Seventh Army reaches the Mannerheim Line, the main Finnish defenses.

1939 December 7 Inmates, including many Jews, at Tiegenhof asylum near Gnesen in the Polish Wartheland are said to be among the earliest victims of Nazi Germany's poison-gas technology. Bottled carbon-monoxide appears to have been used in vans. (Architect)

1939 December 8 Alfred Rosenberg introduces Hitler to Vidkun Quisling, head of the Norwegian National Unity Party.

1939 December 8 The Pope issues a pastoral letter to the clergy serving as military chaplains in the armed forces of the warring nations. The present war, Pius declared, should be seen as a manifestation of God's providence, as the will of a Heavenly Father who always turns evil into good. (Lewy)

1939 December 9-11 The League of Nations meets and agrees to intervene in the continuing dispute between Finland and the Soviet Union.

1939 December 12 Two years forced labor is made mandatory by the Germans for all male, Polish Jews between the ages of 14 and 60. Labor camps are soon set up throughout the General Government and in the Warthegau (Wartheland). (Atlas)

1939 December 14 The Soviets refuse to recognize League of Nations intervention and are expelled from membership. England and France continue to maintain diplomatic relations with Russia.

1939 December 17 The German pocket battleship Graf Spee is scuttled off Montevideo, Argentina, after a battle with British warships. It had already sunk nine Allied ships.

1939 December 23 The first 7,500 Canadian troops arrive in the United Kingdom.

1939 December 27 The First Indian army troops join the British Expeditionary Force in France.

1939 December 29 Spanish Falangists publish The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a prelude to a New Year's denunciation of Jews and Freemasons by Franco.

1939 President Roosevelt appoints Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. chairman of the War Resources Board. Stettinius selects Walter Gifford of American Telephone and Telegraph, Robert Wood of Sears, Roebuck and John Lee Pratt of GM to serve with him.

1939 The He 176, the world's first jet airplane, is tested in Germany.

Copyright © 1997 R.H. Perez de Cruet
All Rights reserved.

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