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1889 April 20 Adolfus Hitler (Adolf Hitler) is born at Braunau am Inn, Austria. According to his birth certificate, he was born at six o'clock in the evening and baptized two days later by Father Ignaz Probst at the local Catholic church. (Payne)

(Hitler's father, Alois, was a 51-year-old Austrian customs official of questionable birth. His mother, Klara, was his father's niece and former servant -- twenty-three years his junior. Married in 1885, their first three children, two boys and a girl, all died before Adolfus was born.)

1889 June An antisemitic conference held at Bochum, Germany, draws a number of representatives from France and Austria-Hungary, including Georg von Schoenerer (Schönerer), and soon leads to the foundation of two German antisemitic political parties, the Deutsch-Soziale Partei led by Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg and the radical Antisemitische Volkspartei under peasant-rousing demagog, Otto Böckel. (P.G.J. Pulzer; Roots)

1889 August Leading socialist theorist and founder of the German Communist party, Rosa Luxemburg is forced into exile in Switzerland. Born into a prosperous Jewish business family in Russian Poland, she had been engaged in revolutionary activity since 1887.

1890 March 9 Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov is born at Kukarka, now Sovetsk, 500 miles east of Moscow. Molotov's original family name is Scriabin.

1890 March 18 German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck is dismissed from his post by Kaiser (emperor) Wilhelm II

1890 July Heligoland is ceded to Germany by Britain's Lord Salisbury.

1890 November 22 Charles Joseph de Gaulle is born at Lille, France.

1891 Ernest Krauss brings the swastika to the attention of a number of mysterious groups, both in Britain and Germany.

1891 April Father Berenger Sauniere, parish priest at Rennes-le-Chateau, in France, is said to have discovered four ancient parchment texts that contain the complete genealogies of Dagobert II and of the Mergovingian line from the seventh to the seventeenth centuries.

1891 Spring The Blue Star Lodge is founded by Gustav Meyrink in Prague. Meyrink is a close friend and correspondent of Friedrich Eckstein, founder of an influential Theosophical Society in Vienna.

1892 August The Hitler family is transferred by the Austrian customs service to Passau, Germany.

1893 February 24 Guido von List lectures on the ancient cult of Wotan and its priesthood to the nationalist Verein, "Deusche Geschichte." List claims that this extinct religion was the national religion of the Teutons before it was destroyed by Christianity. In time, this ancient priesthood will form the basis of his entire political mythology.

1893 April 7 Allen Welsh Dulles is born in Watertown, New York.

1893 July 31 Adolf Josef Lanz, age 19, becomes a novice at the old Cistercian monastery in Heiligenkreuz on the present Austro-Hungarian border. Lanz was born in Vienna on July 19, 1874, but later claimed to have been born at Messina, Sicily, on May 1, 1872. To mislead astrologers, so he said.

1893 August 30 Huey Pierce Long is born near Winnfield, Louisiana.

1893 October 1 "Gotterdammerung" by Guido von List appears in Karl Wolf's East German Review. Wolf is a Pan-German parliamentary deputy and close associate of Georg von Schoenerer.

1893 October 31 "Allerseelen under vorchristliche Totenkult des deutschen Volkes"by Guido von List appear in Karl Wolf's East German Review. (Roots)

1893 November 22 Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich is born in the small village of Kabany, now Novokashirsk, east of Kiev.

1893 Gladstone's second Irish Home Rule Bill is vetoed after great discussion in the British House of Lords.

1893 Adolf Josef Lanz first meets Guido von List as well as several members of the wealthy Wannieck family of Vienna at Gars-am-Kamp (A). (Roots)

1893 Georg von Schoenerer reenters Austrian politics. Schoenerer had been convicted of assault in 1888 and deprived of his political rights for five years.

1893 Rosa Luxemburg helps found the anti-nationalist Polish Socialist party while in exile in Switzerland.

1894 January 14 Guido von List publishes "Die deutsche Mythologie." More than a dozen other articles by List appear in the East German Review during 1894. He will be a regular contributor until December 1896.

1894 March 24 Edmund Hitler, Adolf Hitler's younger brother, is born in Passau, Germany, near the Austrian border.

1894 April 17 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev is born in a mud hut in the village of Kalinovka, southwest of Kiev. His father, Sergei, a coal miner, sends Nikita to work in the mines when he is only nine years old.

1894 May A tombstone relief depicting a "Aryan" nobleman treading on an unidentifiable beast is excavated from the cloister flagstones at Heiligenkreuz. Adolf Josef Lanz (Liebenfels) writes his first published work, interpreting this relief as an allegorical depiction of the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil. Lanz soon assimilated current racist ideas into a dualist religion, identifying the blue-eyed, blond-haired "Aryans" as the good principle and the various dark races as the evil. (Berthold von Treun, 1894)

1894 June Koreshism is founded in America by Cyrus R. Teed, who claims that his followers number more than 4,000 initiates. (Pauwels)

1894 October The court-martial of army captain Albert Dreyfus, a Jewish officer, creates a political crisis in France. The evidence presented against Dreyfus is insufficient; nevertheless, he is convicted and sent to Devil's Island for imprisonment.

1894 The Deutsch-Soziale Partei and the Antisemitische Volkspartei are merged into the Deutsch-Soziale Reformpartei. (Pulzer; Roots)

1894 Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Joseph Stalin), age14, enters the Tiflis Theological Seminary. He later says, the discipline there was an impetus toward his revolutionary activism.

1894 Thousands of Armenian men, women and children are massacred in Turkey.

1894 The Bund der Germanen is refounded. It had previously operated under the name Germanenbund from 1886 to 1889 when it was dissolved by the Austrian government. (Roots)

1894 Albert Einstein (b. 1879 in Ulm, Germany), the son of nonobservant Jews, moves with his parents from Munich to Milan, Italy, after the family business (manufacture of electrical apparatus) fails, and officially relinquishes his German citizenship. Within a year, without completing secondary school, he fails an examination that would have allowed him to pursue a course of study leading to a diploma in electrical engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich Polytechnic).

1895 January 24 Sir Randolph Churchill (1849-95), father of Winston Churchill, dies. At the time of his death, his estate owes Nathaniel "Natty" Rothschild and Rothschild's Bank more than 66,000 pounds, a huge sum at that time. Had this been generally known, it would have caused a major scandal since he had always shown great favor to the Rothschild family and its various business interests. (The Churchills)

1895 Spring The Hitler family moves to Hafeld, Austria, near the old provincial capital of Linz, on the Danube.

1895 May 1 Adolf Hitler enters elementary school at Fischlham.

1895 June 25 Alois Hitler retires on a government pension from the Austrian customs service.

1895 Dr. Karl Lueger is elected mayor of Vienna, but is not allowed to take office by the Emperor.

1895 The Austrian government rules that Slovene classes must be introduced in an exclusively German school at Celje in Carniola. This relatively insignificant controversy takes on a symbolic importance to German nationalists, who use it to rally mass support.

1895 Drexel, Morgan and Company is renamed J.P. Morgan and Company, and quickly grows to be one of the most powerful banking houses in the world.

1895 Winter The United States Treasury, practically on the verge of bankruptcy, allows J.P. Morgan and Co. to organize a group of financiers to carry out a private bond sale to replenish the treasury.

1895 December 29 The Jameson Raid on the Boer republic of Transvaal increases anti-British hostility. Jameson led his raiding party of volunteers into the Transvaal hoping to join forces with discontented non-Boer Europeans (Uitlanders) to overthrow the government of President Paul Kruger. Jameson and his men are quickly captured. Cecil Rhodes, a close friend of Jameson, is clearly implicated and soon afterward is forced to resign as Prime Minister of Cape Colony. British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain is cleared of charges, but was probably aware of the conspiracy. After a prison term in Britain, Jameson serves as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1904 to 1908.

1895 The Sphinx, one of the most powerful advocates of the Germanic occult revival, ceases publication. It had been published since 1886 by Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden, founder of the first German Theosophical Society at Elberfeld in July 1884.

1895 Communist leader Vladimir Ilich Lenin, is exiled to Siberia.

1896 January 21 Paula Hitler, Adolf's sister, is born in Hafeld, Austria.(Payne)

1896 February 12 Guido von Linz writes an antisemitic article entitled "Die Juden als Staat und Nation" in Karl Wolf's East German Review. (Roots)

1896 June 16 Adolph Ochs meets with J.P. Morgan in New York City. Ochs said that at their first meeting, Morgan rose to greet him, shook his hand and warmly said, "So you're the young man I have heard about. Now, where do I sign the papers." (NY Times, June 26, 1996)

1896 August 18 Adolph Ochs purchases controlling interest in The New York Times for $75,000 ($25,000 of which, he says, is a loan from J. P. Morgan).

1896 August A new German Theosophical Society is founded in Berlin under the presidency of Franz Hartmann.

1896 Franklin D. Roosevelt enters Groton School, a preparatory school in Groton, Massachusetts. The headmaster, Endicott Peabody, an Episcopal clergyman, starts him thinking about a career in public service.

1896 Theodor Herzl publishes The Jewish State, in which he advocates the creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine.

1896 November Father Berenger Sauniere begins to spend large amounts on the restoration of Rennes-le-Chateau. He will spend several million dollars over the next twenty years.

1896 Albert Einstein returns to the Zurich Polytechnic, graduating as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physics in 1900. Two years later, he obtains a position at the Swiss patent office in Bern, and while employed there (1902-09), completes an astonishing range of publications in theoretical physics.

1896 The first modern Olympic Games are held at Athens in Greece. Only thirteen countries compete.

1896 Colonel Georges Picquart, the new chief of French military intelligence, attempts to reopen the Dreyfus case and is dismissed after bringing charges against Major Ferdinand Esterhazy.

1896 Paul Zillmann founds the Metaphysical Review, a monthly periodical devoted to the esoteric tradition.

1897 Paul Zillmann, inspired by the nineteenth-century mystic Eckhartshausen and his ideas for a secret school of illuminates, founds the occult Wald-Loge (the Forest Lodge). Zillman becomes an important link between German occultists and their counterparts in Austria. (Roots)

1897 The Hitler family moves to Lambach, Austria.

1897 April Austrian premier Count Casimir Badeni introduces controversial language decrees, which ruled that all officials in Moravia and Bohemia should be able to speak both German and Czech, which clearly discriminated against Germans. These decrees provoked a nationalist furor throughout the Austro-Hungarian empire.

1897 April 7 The Wieden Singer's Club in Vienna organizes a List festival to commemorate the silver anniversary of List's literary career. List had long been a celebrity amongst the Pan-Germans of Austria. (Roots)

1897 July Adolf Hitler begins choir school at Lambach Abbey.

1897 Summer Bloody riots break out between mobs of ethnic Germans and Austrian police. Hundreds of Vereine (German-oriented organizations) are dissolved by the police as a threat to public order.

1897 August 29 Jewish nationalist Theodor Herzl organizes the first World Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland. The 204 delegates to the congress adopt a program calling for "a publicly recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine." Herzl worked to secure acceptance of his ideas, first from the Jewish philanthropists Edmond Rothschild and Maurice de Hirsch, then from Emperor William II of Germany, Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, and Pope Pius X.

1897 September 3 The French periodical Le Temps publishes an article claiming that a certain Dr. Mandelstein, Professor at the University of Kiev, in the course of his speech opening the Zionist International Congress said, "The Jews will use all their influence and power to prevent the rise and prosperity of all other nations and are resolved to adhere to their historic destiny i.e. to the conquest of world power." Antisemites took these words very seriously and quickly used them to stir up anti-Jewish sentiments throughout eastern and western Europe.

1897 September 12 Adlof Josef Lanz, now Brother Georg, takes his vows as a Cistercian monk at Heiligenkreuz Abbey. Lanz's novice-master was Nivard Schloegl, a bible scholar and expert on oriental languages. Schloegl disdained the Jews as an arrogant and exclusive religious group, and his bible translations were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Catholic Church because of his antisemitic prejudice.

1897 October 29 Joseph Goebbels is born at Rheydt in the German Rhineland to a lower middle-class Catholic family.

1897 Alfred Dreyfus's brother succeeds in having Major Ferdinand Esterhazy brought to trial. Against all evidence, Esterhazy is acquitted.

1897 Austrian Emperor Franz Josef finally allows Karl Lueger to assume office as mayor of Vienna.

1897 In Germany, Wilhelm Schwaner (b. 1863) publishes Der Volkserzieher, one of the earliest völkisch periodicals, which features a swastika on its title-page.

1898 January Novelist Emile Zola publishes an open letter entitled "J'accuse," attacking the French army and bringing the Dreyfus affair to the public's attention. Dreyfus's cause is taken up by French radicals, socialists, and intellectuals. Later that year the major document used against Dreyfus is proven to be a forgery.

1898 January 6 Guido von List is visited by the old catholic bishop of Bohemia, Nittel von Warnsdorf, who congratulates him on "a new epoch in the history of religion." (Balzli; Roots)

1898 Spring Father Georg (Adolf Josef Lanz) is said to have visited Lambach Abbey, spending several weeks studying in the private library of Theoderich Hagn, the former abbot. Hagn had ordered swastikas designs carved on the abbey as early as 1868. (Angebert)

1898 July 30 Former German Chancellor Otto von Bismark dies.

1898 September 19 Father Georg (Adolf Josef Lanz) assumes teaching duties in the seminary at Heiligenkreuz (A). (Daim)

1898 The Marxist Social Democratic Labor party is established in Russia.

1898 Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin) becomes involved in radical political activity.

1898 Georg von Schoenerer launches his Los von Rome (break from Rome) campaign.

1898 Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Trotsky) is arrested and later exiled to Siberia where he soon joins the Social Democratic Party. Trotsky is the son of a well-to-do Jewish farmer from Yanovka in the southern province of Kherson.

1898 Hitler develops an interest in Germanic mythology and mysticism. According to his abbot, he was a good student and a class leader.

1899 January Adolf Hitler leaves choir school at Lambach Abbey.

1899 February 23Hitler's father buys a house near the old Catholic cemetery in Leonding, a suburb of Linz, Austria.

1899 April 11 Father Georg (Adolf Josef Lanz) writes a letter to the authorities of Heiligenkreuz Abbey, complaining of his desire for physical and intellectual freedom. (Heiligenkreuz Abbey Archive)

1899 April 27 Father Georg (Adolf Josef Lanz) renounces his holy vows and leaves Heiligenkreuz Abbey. The abbey register refers to his leaving as a "surrender to the lies of the world and carnal love." (Daim)

1899 August Guido von List is married to Anna Wittek, his second wife. The wedding is celebrated in the evangelical Protestant (Lutheran) church. Like many other Austrian Pan-Germans, List had rejected the Catholic Church. (Austrian Staatsarchiv, Vienna)

1899 Britishman Houston Stewart Chamberlain publishes "The Foundations of the 19th Century." The book's introduction is written by Lord Redesdale, Bertrand Mitford, grandfather of Unity Mitford and a close personal friend of the Wagner family. (The House of Mitford)

1899 Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin) leaves the Tiflis Theological Seminary without graduating and becomes a full-time revolutionary organizer.

1899 Journalist and future statesman Winston Churchill escapes from Boer captivity in South Africa.

1899 Alfred Dreyfus is granted a retrial, but once again is found guilty. Afterward, President Emile Loubet grants him a pardon.

1899 Georg von Schoenerer begins to associate the Pan-German movement with a new Lutheran movement, accounting for about 30,000 protestant conversions in Bohemia, Styria, Carinthia and Vienna between 1899 and 1910.

1900 February 2 Edmund Hitler, Adolf Hitler's younger brother, suddenly dies. Mysteriously, both his mother and father choose not to attend the funeral. Instead, they both travel to neighboring Linz, where the local bishop resides and don't return until the following day. 11-year-old Adolf goes to the funeral alone. No headstone is ever erected on Edmund's grave. (Waite)

(Robert Payne states that young Edmund died on February 29. Toland: February 2)

1900 February Hitler's personality suddenly changes. Reportedly, he becomes distant, moody and evasive. His grades deteriorate, and he begins to cause trouble in school.

1900 September 17 Hitler enters Realschule at Linz, but he continues to do poorly in school.

1900 Karl Rohm, who visited with English Theosophists in London during the late 1890s, founds a publishing house at Lorch in Wurttemberg. His publications include translations of the works of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and other contemporary occultists. (Roots)

1900 Adolf Josef Lanz returns to Vienna where he joins Georg von Schoenerer's Pan-German movement and converts to Protestantism. (Ostara III, 1930)

1900 December 25 Adolf Josef Lanz (Liebenfels) later claims that it was on this date that he founded the Order of the New Templars. Lanz said he set himself up as the order's Grand Master and adopted the swastika as his emblem. (Historians believe the order was not modeled along Templar lines until sometime after 1905.) (Roots)

1900 Germany begins to expand its navy in an attempt to challenge British control of trade and the seas.

1900 The work of Mendel is rediscovered. Those who regard the mental traits of Man (intelligence and so on) as being primarily inherited, believe that their hypothesis is scientifically proved by Mendelian genetics. For them, the whole of human history becomes a part of the biological evolution Darwin had described in the animal kingdom. They see it as their duty to demand the prevention of procreation by other "inferior races" and by "inferior individuals" within their own race, in order to stave off the decline and ruin of European culture which they allege is near at hand. (Science)

1900 King Humbert I is assassinated and succeeded by Victor Emmanuel III as king of Italy.

1900 Sigmund Freud publishes 'The Interpretation of Dreams.'

1900 The first modern concentration camps are built by Field Marshal Lord Roberts, British Commander-in-Chief in South Africa during the Boer War. Camps are expanded by General Lord Kitchener, and the population of the concentration camps increases to approximately 110,000 whites and 107,000 Africans. An estimated 27,927 whites, of whom 26,251 are women and children, and at least 13,315 Africans die due to starvation, poor location, bad administration, and disease. (Grolier)

1900 Georg von Schoenerer converts to Protestantism.

1901 January 22 Queen Victoria dies on the Isle of Wight, ending the longest reign in British history (64 years). Her son, Edward VII, succeeds her.

1901 February 25 The United States Steel Corporation is incorporated in the state of New Jersey by J.P. Morgan in defiance of the Sherman Anti-trust Law. One-seventh of the total capitalization goes to the men who arrange the intricate deal. Morgan, himself, is said to have made $80 million. (Schlesinger I)

1901 March 4 William McKinley is inaugurated as U.S. President for a second term. Theodore Roosevelt is Vice President.

1901 September 6 U.S. President William McKinley is shot by Anarchist Leon Czolgosz, as he attends a reception for the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo.

1901 September 14 President McKinley dies of his wounds and Forty-two-year-old Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as President.

1901 Stalin, now a member of the Georgian branch of the Social Democratic party, roams the Caucasus, agitating among workers, helping with strikes, and spreading socialist literature.

1901 Lev Borisovich Kamenev (originally Rosenfeld) joins the Russian Social Democratic Workers' party.

1901 Hitler attends Lohengrin, his first opera, at the Linz Opera House.

1901 Rudolf Glauer (Rudolf von Sebottendorff) claims to have been initiated into a lodge of Freemasons at Bursa in Anatolioa by the patriarch of the Termudi family, Greek Jews from Salonica. Old Termudi had retired from business to devote himself to the study of the Cabbala and collecting alchemical and Rosicrucian texts. After Termudi's death Sebottendorff said he had inherited this occult library and begun his own study of the secret mystical exercises of the Baktashi dervishes. (Sebottendorff; Roots)

(Sebottendorff was born November 9, 1875 in the Saxon market town of Hoyerswerda, north of Dresden.)

1901 Theodor Fritsch sends a circular to some three hundred individuals who had earlier been active party antisemites. Fritsch hoped to establish a broad and powerful antisemitic movement outside parliament, where he thought it would be more effective. (Roots)

1901 The first German translation of The Secret Doctrine, the Theosophical Society's basic text, is published.

1902 January 3 Alois Hitler dies in Leonding (A). Oddly, no headstone is erected on his grave by the family, even though his wife, Klara, had received a considerable inheritance and a government pension. Josef Mayrhofer, the mayor of Leonding, is appointed as Adolf and Paula's guardian.

1902 January Theodor Fritsch founds the Hammer, a völkisch and Social Darwinist, antisemitic periodical.

1902 March 26 British imperialist and statesman Cecil Rhodes dies.

1902 April Ludwig Woltmann founds the Social Darwinist publication, Politisch-Anthropologische Revue.

1902 Guido von List goes blind for eleven month following an eye operation for cataracts. During his long convalesence, a fundamental change takes place in the character of List's ideas. Occultism becomes central to his thoughts on rune symbolism and the basis of his belief in the ancient German faith. (Balzli; Roots)

1902 September 14 Angela Hitler, Adolf's half-sister, marries Leo Raubal.

1902 November 15 The German Workers Party (DAP) is first organized in the northern Bohemian city of Aussig (Usti nad Labein). (Unknown Nazis)

1902 Karl Hermann Wolf and his followers resign from the Austrian Pan-German party.

1902 Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Trotsky) escapes abroad from Siberia. He soon meets Lenin, and begins a troubled relationship with the Bolshevik party.

1902 Rudolf Steiner, a young scholar who had studied in Vienna before writing a study of Goethe at Weimar, becomes general secretary of the German Theosophical Society in Berlin.

1902 Baron Nathaniel "Natty" Rothschild meets Theodor Herzl to discuss a possible Jewish homeland to be setup in Palestine.

1902 The Zionist Congress rejects a British offer of land for a Jewish settlement in Uganda, East Africa.

1902 Dr. L. Woltmann, a gentleman-scholar, founds the Politisch-Anthropologischen Revue (Political-anthropological review). (Science)

1902 The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the South African War (the Boer War 1899-1902).

1903 Philipp Maschlufsky begins editing the occult periodical Die Gnosis in Vienna. It was later acquired by a group of Berlin Theosophists who amalgamate it with Rudolf Steiner's Luzifer. (Roots)

1903 April Fourty-nine Jews are murdered in a pogrom at Kishinev in western Russia. After the massacre, Theodor Herzl calls for the creation of Jewish nachtasyls (havens) throughout the world.

1903 April Guido von List sends a manuscript concerning the "Aryan proto-language" to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. It is his first attempt to interpret by means of occult insight the letters and sounds of the runes, as well as the emblems and glyphs of ancient Germanic inscriptions. This manuscript becomes the "masterpiece" of his occult-nationalist researches,"Die Ursprache der Arier, deren Schrift und Heilszeichen." (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1903 May Adolf Josef Lanz, now calling himself Dr. Jorg Lanz-Liebenfels, publishes a scholarly article in Ludwig Woltmannn's Politisch-Anthropologische Revue 2.(This is his first known use of the name Liebenfels. Lanz by this time was also using a doctoral title, and although there is no evidence of his having earned a degree from the University of Vienna, one may have been conferred by some other university.)

1903 September An Association of Occultism in Vienna establishes a lending-library, where its members can consult the works of Zollner, Hellenbach and du Prel. (Die Gnosis)

1903 September Die Gnosis publishes an article by Guido von List indicating the new theosophical cast of his occult thinking. (Roots)

1903 The Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party is held in London. This meeting splits the new party into two factions: the Bolsheviks (majorityites), led by Lenin (Vladimir Ulyanov), and the Mensheviks (Minorityites), led by Yuri Martov. Leon Trotsky sides with the Mensheviks. Even though he admires Lenin and his pragmatism, he fears that Lenin's "elitist" organizational methods will lead to dictatorship.

1903 Theodor Herzl endorses British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's plan to establish a Jewish homeland in East Africa. After two years of squabbling, the Zionist Congress again rejects the so-called Uganda Plan in 1905.

1903 Alexander, King of Serbia, is assassinated and is succeeded by Peter I.

1903 Dr. Jorg Lanz-Liebenfels (Adolf Josef Lanz) publishes an anticlerical book entitled Katholizismus wider Jesuitismus (Frankfurt, 1903).

1903 Rudolf Steiner publishes Luzifer, a Theosophically oriented periodical, in Berlin (until 1908).

1903 Orville Wright makes the first successful flight in a self-propelled airplane.

1903 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels publishes a long article entitled "Anthropozoon biblicum" in Vierteljahrsschift fur Bibelkunde, a perodical for biblical research. This strange investigation of the past extends his earlier Theosophical and scientific hypotheses and sets out the basic ideas that will be further developed in his Theo-Zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods (1905). (Roots)

1903 Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (Radomyslsky) joins Lenin in Switzerland and becomes one of his closest collaborators.

1903 Lenin sets about organizing the Bolshevik revolutionary group. Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin) supports the Bolsheviks. Lenin, it is said, greatly appreciates Dzhugashvili's familiarity with Russian nationality problems and his intense personal loyalty.

1904 January 17 The first issue of the DAP (German Workers Party) newspaper appears in Austria. (Unknown Nazis)

1904 March 17 Franklin D. Roosevelt marries Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, his sixth cousin. President Theodore Roosevelt, her uncle, comes to New York City to give the bride away. The young couple sees a great deal of "T. R." and his liberal ideas and strong leadership help Franklin to decide on a career in politics.

1904 May 22 Adolf Hitler is confirmed at the Linz cathedral.

1904 June Klara Hitler sells her house in Leonding and moves into a comfortable apartment in nearby Linz.

1904 Summer Hitler leaves Steyr Realschule. He soon falls ill and recuperates with his mother's relatives in Spital, Austria.

1904 July 3 Theodor Herzl, the Hungarian credited with founding modern political Zionism dies at Edlach, Austria.

1904 August 15 The Austrian DAP is officially founded at Trautenau (Trutnou). Two of the party's first leaders are from Hitler's hometown of Linz. (Unknown Nazis)

1904 September Adolf Hitler reenters Realschule at Steyr, Austria.

1904 Chaim Weizmann settles in England, joins the faculty of the University of Manchester and becomes a leader of the British Zionist movement.

1904 Britain concludes the Entente Cordiale with France.

1904 Autumn Adolf Hitler meets August Kubizek at the Linz Opera House, and they soon become close friends.

1904 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels publishes the conclusion of "Anthropozoon biblicum" in Vierteljahrsschift fur Bibelkunde. (Roots)

1904 Jorg Lanz-Liebenfels (Adolf Josef Lanz) publishes two more anticlerical books: Das Breve 'Dominus ac redemptor noster' (Frankfurt 1904) and Der Taxil Swindel (Frankfurt 1904).

1904 Dr. A. Ploetz, a gentleman-scholar, founds the Archiv für Rassenkunde und Gesellschaftsbiologie (Archives of Race-theory and Social Biology). (Science)

1904 The formation of the Anglo-French Entente alarms the nationalistic leadership in Germany.

1905 Sergey Nilus publishes a book in Russia containing what are called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Certain versions claim they were actually written by a Jew named Asher Ginsburg under the pen name Achad Haam. Most historians are now convinced the Protocols are an antisemitic forgery that can be traced back to a non-Jewish, French writer, Maurice Jolie, in the mid-1800's.

1905 The Petersburg Soviet of Workers is formed by a group of Communist radicals in St. Petersburg.

1905 Middle-class liberals in Russia form the Constitutional Democratic party (Cadets).

1905 Two-hundred thousand workers and their families stage a peaceful march to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The Czar's palace guards panic and fire into the crowd, killing 500 marchers. Afterward, the day becomes known nationwide as "Bloody Sunday."

1905 A general strike and revolution breaks out in Russia.Trotsky returns to take a leading role in the St. Petersburg (later Petrograd) Workers' Soviet. He is arrested, tried, and again exiled to Siberia.

1905 Zinoviev returns to Russia representing Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the 1905 Revolution.

1905 Czar Nicholas II grants a constitution to the Russian people.

1905 Rene Guenon publishes Le Roi du Monde.

1905 Dr. A. Ploetz founds the GeselIschaft für Rassen-hygien(Society of Race-hygiene). (Science)

1905 An article written by Adolf Josef Lanz first appears in Theodor Fritsch's Hammer.

1905 Winter Adolf Josef Lanz, alias Dr. Jorg Lanz-Liebenfels, publishes the first issue of Ostara, a popular and vehemently racist, antisemitic magazine. This same year, Lanz publishes the fundamental statement of his doctrine, entitled: Theo-Zoology or the Lore of the Sodom-Apelings and the Electron of the Gods. Lanz's specific recommendations for the disposal of so-called racial inferiors included deportation to Madagascar, enslavement, incineration as a sacrifice to God, and forced labor as beasts of burden.

(Note: After Hitler came to power in 1933, Madagascar was often suggested by the Nazis as a place for the deportation of the Jews. This odd choice seems to be a direct link to Lanz and his theories. Lanz published the first issue of Ostara at Graz, but it was henceforth published at Rodaun until mid 1913. It was then published at Moedling until 1917, when the first series (Ostara I) was discontinued. Ostara II was published for a brief time in 1922 at Magdeburg. Ostara III was published in Vienna from 1927 to 1931 sponsored by Johann Walthari Wolfl.

1905 At the 1905 World Zionist Congress one Jewish group withdraws after the majority of delegates again rejects a British proposal for establishing a Jewish homeland in Uganda. Despite opposition from fundamentalist and assimilationist Jews as well as other internal divisions, the Zionist organization begins to gather strength. (Grolier)

1905 Friedrich Wannieck, his son, Friedrich Oskar Wannieck, Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and fifty other prominent Austrians and Germans sign the first public announcement concerning support for the proposed Guido von List Society. (GLB; Roots)

1905 Readers of Theodor Fritsch's Hammer, then numbering more than three thousand, begin organizing themselves into local Hammer-Gemeiden (Hammer-Groups). (Roots)

1905 Germany attempts to isolate France diplomatically by supporting Moroccan independence. Contrary to German expectations, Britain rallies to the support of France.

1905 American labor leader Eugene V. Debs founds the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

1905 Albert Einstein publishes three scientific papers and obtains a Ph.D. degree from the University of Zurich. The second of his 1905 papers proposes what is today known as the special theory of relativity.

1905 The Japanese destroy the Imperial Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima.

1905 The union of Norway and Sweden is dissolved, and Haakon VII is elected king of Norway.

1905 W.E.B. Du Bois forms the Niagara Movement and demands full civil rights for all black Americans.

1906 March 19 Adolf Eichmann is born in the Rhineland but his family later moves to Austria.

1906 Spring Adolf Hitler becomes infatuated with a girl named Stefanie in Linz, but never dares to speak with her. Instead he attempts to communicate with her by telepathy, according to August Kubizek.

1906 Hitler quits school in Linz without graduating.

1906 July Noted Theosophist Harald Gravell van Jostenoode writes a complete issue of Lanz-Liebenfel's Ostara. Gravell demands the return of the Crown Jewels and Holy Lance of the Holy Roman Empire to the German Reich. (To the Pan-Germans, the return of the regalia (Reichskleinodien) to a new imperial capital at Nuremberg represented the restoration of a neo-Carolingian Greater German Empire under Hohenzollern rule, which would then reabsorb the historic "German" territories of Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, as well as Belgium, Holland and Scandanavia.) (Roots)

1906 Summer Hitler makes his first visit to Vienna, spending several weeks sight-seeing and attending the opera. With whom he stayed and other details of his visit remain uncertain.

1906 Hitler and August Kubizek visit St. Georgen on the River Gusen, the site of an ancient German battle. Hitler tells Kubizek that much could be learned from the "spirits" residing in the ancient soil and in the mortar between the cracks of the ruined buildings. At exactly this same time, both Lanz and List were telling their students in Vienna this same story. (Kubizek)

1906 November Hitler attends Wagner's opera Rienzi in Linz and is greatly affected. He soon becomes an ardent admirer of Richard Wagner, and most especially his racist theoretical writings. According to August Kubizek, Hitler read Wagner's works in a private library owned by the wealthy father of a friend, and is already an ardent antisemite. (Kubizek)

1906 Ernst Haeckel, an eminent zoologist, founds the Monist League, repeatedly warning against the dangers of race-mixing. (Roots)

1906 H.M.S. Dreadnought, the first modern battleship, is launched by Great Britain.

1906 The Algeciras Conference in Spain approves the French plan of establishing a protectorate over Morocco.

1906 Two articles written by Adolf Josef Lanz appear in Theodor Fritsch's Hammer #5.

1906 The Aga Khan III forms the All-India Moslim League.

1906 The Dreyfus affair ends after Alfred Dreyfus is vindicated by a civilian court and readmitted into the French army.

1907 January Hitler learns his mother, Klara, is dying of breast cancer.

1907 Hitler moves to Vienna with the hope of dedicating his life to a career as an artist and painter.

1907 Jorg Lanz-Liebenfels (Adolf Josef Lanz) publishes Theosophy and the Assyrian 'Man-Beasts.'

1907 Schoenerer and the Pan-German party are defeated in the Austrian parliamentary elections.

1907 After graduating from Harvard University, Franklin Roosevelt completes his studies at Columbia University Law School in New York City, and soon begins to practice with a leading New York law firm.

1907 Britain signs a treaty of friendship with Russia.

1907 The Triple Entente, a series of bilateral agreements, is formed between Britain, France and Russia. Europe is thus divided into the two armed camps.

1907 Lazar Kaganovich begins work in a shoe factory in Moszyr, fifty miles north of Kabany. He had been introduced to the trade by his uncle, Levich Kaganovich. The Kaganovich clan, itself, was huge and Lazar had numerous relatives throughout Russia. Although a Jew, Lazar had refused to be bar mitzvahed.

1907 Guido von List who has often used the aristocratic title "von" in his name since 1903, finally enters the title in the Vienna address book of 1907. This soon comes to the notice of the nobility archive, which urges an official inquiry. (Roots)

1907 October 1 The Panic of 1907 causes runs on banks across America and brings about a collapse of the stock market and the depression of 1907-1908. J.P. Morgan and friends import $100 million in gold from Europe to help shore up U.S. currency. (Schlesinger I)

1907 October 2 Guido von List tells the magistrates investigating his alleged nobility that his family was descended from Lower Austrian and Styrian aristocracy. List claims his great-grandfather had abandoned the title after entering a burgher trade (inn keeper), but that he had resumed the title after leaving commerce for a literary career in 1878. (Balzli; Roots)

1907 October Hitler fails his entrance examination to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

1907 November Hitler is called home by the family doctor, Dr. Eduard Bloch, a Jew. The doctor later wrote that Hitler displayed no sign of animosity or racial prejudice, and was one of the most grieving sons he had ever seen. (Bloch)

1907 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels purchases the ruins of an ancient medieval castle, Burg Werfenstein, outside the village of Struden near Grein in Upper Austria, with the aid of his wealthy friends. Lanz soon converts it into the headquarters of the Order of the New Templars (ONT). (Roots)

1907 December Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels writes an article entitled "Der Orden des neuen Templels" in Ostara I, # 18, stating that he is founding a museum of "Aryan" anthropology, for which he has secured a suitable site (i.e. Burg Werfenstein). He also sets out the ONT program, describing it as an "Aryan" mutual-aid association founded to foster racial consciousness through genealogical and heraldic research, beauty contests, and the foundation of racist utopias in the underdeveloped parts of the world. (Roots)

1907 December The Sphix Reading Club, an occult study-group is founded by Franz Herndl, in Vienna.

1907 December 21 Klara Hitler dies of breast cancer. Dr. Bloch will later say he has never seen a more grieving son. Many years later, Hitler personally arrange for Dr. Bloch to leave the country unmolested.

1907 December 25 Jorg Lanz Liebenfels celebrates Christmas Day by hoisting a swastika flag from the high tower of Burg Werfenstein. Two flags were flown: one displaying the Liebenfels blazon, while the other showed a red swastika surrounded by four blue fleur-de-lis upon a golden field. (Herndl; Roots)

1907 Max Altmann begins to publish the widely popular Zentralblatt fur Okkultismus, which was edited by D. Georgiewitz-Weitzer, who wrote his works on modern Rosicrucians, alchemy and occult medicine under the pseudonym G.W. Surya. (Roots)

1907 Universal male suffrage is introduced in Austria.

1907 Rasputin, real name Grigori Yefimovich, gains influence at the court of Russian emperor Nicholas II.

1907 Leon Trotsky again escapes abroad from Siberia and continues to write extensively.

1907 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels will later claim more than 100,000 copies of Ostara were circulated in 1907. It was widely distributed from tobacco stands and eextremely popular with the right-wing fencing associations. (Daim; Roots)

1907 The Deutsch-Soziale Reformpartei wins only six seats in the German parliament. (Roots)

1907 Karl Brandler-Pracht, returns from the United States and soon afterward founds the First Vienna Astrological Society. (Roots)

1908 February Hitler returns to Vienna and settles into a flat at number 29 Stumpergasse.

1908 Guido von List, identifies the swastika (Hakenkreus) as an ancient symbol of racial purity, as well as a sign of esoteric knowledge and occult wisdom.

1908 Albert Einstein submits a paper to the University of Bern and becomes a privatdocent, or lecturer, on the university faculty.

1908 Austria announces its annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austrian's expansion intensifies its rivalry with Russia and eventually leads to war.

1908 Cyrus R. Teed (the first Koresh) dies in America.

1908 August Kubizek joins Hitler in Vienna and becomes his roommate at number 29 Stumpergasse.

1908 March 2 The Guido von List Society is officially founded in Vienna by supporters who are attracted to the distinctive admixture of nationalism and occultism propounded by this strange, pagan mystic. In the years between 1908 and 1912 scores of well-known figures in Austria and Germany join. Membership lists can be found in GLB. (Roots)

1908 Spring Festivals held at Burg Werfenstein are believed to be the earliest organized ONT activities. Several hundred guests arrived by steamer from Vienna to the sound of a small cannon fired from the beflagged castle. The large party was treated to a concert in the castle courtyard and festivities lasted late into the night with bonfires and choir-singing. This event was widely publicized in the Austrian national press, thus helping to publicize Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, ONT and Ostara to a much broader audience. (Herndl; Roots)

1908 April Hitler returns home one day and tells Kubizek that he has joined a secret antisemitic lodge. (Toland)

1908 July Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels publishes the 25th issue of Ostara. This issue features another contribution by the Theosophist, Harald Gravell van Jostenoode, which outlines a thoroughly Theosophical conception of race, quoting Annie Besant, the successor of Madame Blavatsky at the Theosophical Society in London, as well as Rudolf Steiner, Secretary General of its German branch in Berlin. (Roots)

1908 July From July 1908 to the end of World War I, Lanz will personally write 71 issues of Ostara. (Ostara was the pagan goddess of Spring.) (Roots)

1908 July Karl Maria Wiligut (Weisthor) writes a series of nine pagan commandments. He claims that his father had initiated him into the family secrets in 1890, and that he is able to recall the history and experiences of his tribe over thousands of years. (Roots)

1908 Wiligut (Weisthor) meets Theodor Czepl of the Order of the New Templars (ONT) through an occult circle in Vienna, whose members included Willy Thaler, a cousin of Wiligut, his wife Marie Thaler, a well-known actress, and several other ONT brothers.(According to Frau B., a source of Rudolf Mund, Hitler is said to have also frequented this group between 1908 and 1913.) (Roots)

1908 October Hitler fails his art examination at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna for a second time.

1908 November 18 Hitler moves out of his flat, leaves no forwarding address, and doesn't speak to Kubizek again until March 1938. Police records show Hitler moved to new lodgings on the Felberstrasse only a few blocks away. He lived at this new address from November 18, 1908 to August 20, 1909.

1908 December 31 Simon Wiesenthal is born at Buczacz in what was then Austria-Hungary.

1908 Dr. Walter Riehl joins the Austrian DAP.

1908 William Thomas Manning (1866-1949) becomes the Episcopal rector of Trinity Parish in New York City. Manning had been born in Northampton, England, and immigrated to America.

1908 Guido von List publishes the first three of his seven Guido List Bucherei. GLB 1 (Geheimnis der Runen) was a key to the meaning and magical power of the runes. GLB 2 (Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen) was a study of the political authority and organization of the Wotanist priesthood (Armanenschaft), and GLB 3 (Die Rita der Ario-Germanen) an esoteric interpretation of folklore and place-names. (see also 1909, 1910, 1911 and 1914) (Roots)

1908 William Durant, founds the General Motors (GM).

1908 Ford Motor Company produces the first Model T.

1908 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded.

1908 Zinoviev is briefly Imprisoned in Russia. After his release, he rejoins Lenin in western Europe, where he edits various Communist newspapers.

1908 The Tunguska fireball explodes in Siberia with the force of a modern H-bomb.

1908 In the German colony of South-West Africa, all existing mixed marriages are annulled and such marriages are forbidden in the future. The Germans involved are deprived of their civil rights. Dr. E. Fischer, a Dozent in anatomy at the University of Freiburg, begins to investigate the 'bastards' (persons of mixed blood, born mainly of unions between Dutch (Boer) men and Hottentot women) of Rehoboth in German South-West Africa (now Namibia). (Science)

1908 The Young Turk Revolution in Turkey leads to political reform.

1909 Summer Hitler visits Georg Lanz von Liebenfels at his home. (Lanz was interviewed by Daim on May 11, 1951, and confirmed this meeting with Hitler. (Daim)

1909 August 20 Hitler moves into a flat on Vienna's Sechshauserstrasse.

1909 August 29 Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung arrive in New York City on their way to be honored for their work at Clark University in Massachusetts. This will be Freud's first and only visit to America, but Jung will make several return trips.

1909 Winter Adolf Hitler is said to have first seen the Holy Lance (Helige Lanz) at the Hofburg Treasure House in Vienna. (Ravenscroft)

1909 December Hitler takes up residence at Vienna's Asylum for the Homeless.

1909 Louis Bleriot flies an airplane of his own design from France to England.

1909 Karl Maria Wiligut (Weisthor) resigns his membership in the Schlarraffia, a quasi-masonic lodge he had joined in Görz in 1889. He had attained the grade of Knight and the office of Chancellor. His lodge name was Lobesam. (Roots)

1909 Lanz von Liebenfels begins writing to Philipp Stauff at Enzisweiler near Lake Constance. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1909 Guido von List publishes his GLB 4 (Die Namen der Völkerstämme Germaniens und deren Deutung) a continuing study of his esoteric interpretations of folklore and place-names. (Roots)

1909 Albert Einstein receives an appointment as associate professor of physics at the University of Zurich. He is by now recognized as a leading scientific thinker throughout German-speaking Europe.

1910 January The Jewish population of Vienna increases to 175,294 out of a total 2,031,420 (8.75%). Jews in some neighborhoods accounted for 20 percent of the residents.

1910 February 9 Adolf Hitler settles into comfortable quarters at the Mannerheim, a comfortable residence for bachelors in Vienna.

(Josef Greiner later claimed that Hitler had a substantial collection of Lanz von Liebenfels' Ostara. He also claimed to remember Hitler engaging in heated conversations with a fellow-boarder named Grill about Lanz's racial ideas.)(Daim)

1910 May 30 Philipp Stauff writes a letter to Heinrich Kraeger in which he mentions the idea of an antisemitic lodge with the names of members kept secret to prevent enemy penetration. Stauff was convinced that the powerful influence of Jews in German life could be understood only as a result of a widespread Jewish secret conspiracy. It was supposed that such a conspiracy could best be combatted by a similar antisemitic organization. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

1910 August 5 Hitler testifies in court during a lawsuit he had filed against Reinhold Hanisch, an ex-business partner.

1910 Autumn A Hammer group is established in Magdeburg.

1910 November 8 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to the New York state senate.

1910 December Rudolf Glauer (Rudolf von Sebottendorff) claims to have founded a mystical lodge in Constantinople while writing a study on Baktashi dervishes. (Roots)

1910 Averell Harriman's mother pays for the building of the Eugenics Records Office, an American branch of the Galton National Laboratory in London.

1910 Jean Monnet moves to Montreal and soon becomes associated with the Hudson Bay company and the banking firm, Lazard Brothers.

1910 Edward VII dies and is succeeded by his only surviving son, who becomes King George V.

1910 Guido von List publishes GLB 5 (Die Bilderschrift der Ario-Germanen or Ario-Gernische Hieroglyphik) a glossary of secret "Aryan messages" in hieroglyphs and heraldic devices. (Roots)

1910 British politician Winston Churchill is appointed First Lord of the Admiralty.

1910 Philipp Stauff moves to Kulmbach in Franconia from Enzisweiler on Lake Constance where he had published a nationalist newspaper since 1907. (Roots)

1910 Philipp Stauff joins the List Society and quickly becomes a member of the inner circle (HAO). (Roots)

1911 January 18Johannes Hering, a member of the local Hammer group in Munich, the Pan-German League and a close friend of both Guido von List and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, writes to Philipp Stauff, the prominent völkisch journalist, telling him that he has been a Freemason since 1894, but that this "ancient Germanic institution" has been polluted by Jewish and parvenu ideas. He concluded that a revived "Aryan" lodge would be a boon to antisemites. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1911 March 21 Johanna Polzl, Hitler's aunt, dies after giving him a modest inheritance shortly before her death.

1911 April 5 The Hammer group in Magdeburg institutes what is called the Wotan Lodge, with Hermann Pohl elected Master. (Roots)

1911 April 15 A Grand Lodge is formed with Theodor Fritsch as Grand Master, but the work of formulating rules and rituals is undertaken by theWotan Lodge. (Roots)

1911 May 4 Hitler is ordered by a court in Linz to surrender his orphan's pension to his sister, Paula.

1911 John Foster Dulles joins the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in New York City.

1911 The Austrian DAP wins three seats in the Austrian parliamentary elections.

1911 Summer The HAO (Hoher Armanen-Orden or High Armanen-Order), a tiny inner circle of initiates within the List Society, is formally founded at the midsummer solstice, when the most dedicated List Society members in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich travel to meet their Austrian colleagues in Vienna. (Roots)

1911 June 23 Guido von List takes members of the HAO on a "pilgrimage" to the St. Stephen's catacombs in Vienna, where List claimed to have first sensed Wotan while still a child. They then continued on to other Wotanist "sanctuaries" on the Kahlenberg, the Leopoldsberg and at Klosterneuburg. (List; Roots)

1911 June 24 During the next three days, List and 10 members of the HAO, including Philipp Stauff, travel to Bruhl near Mödling, Burg Kreuzenstein, and finally Carnuntum, where a photo of the "pilgrims" is taken. (Roots)

1911 July The Germans send a gunboat to Agadir to put pressure on the French to guarantee German iron interests in West Morocco and also to cede parts of the French Congo to Germany during what is called the second Moroccan crisis. (Roots)

1911 Italy's attempt to annex Cyrenaica and Tripolitania leads to the Italo-Turkish War.

1911 September 6 Dr. Jorg Lanz-Liebenfel (Adolf Joself Lanz) uses the title "von" on his letterhead to Johannes Hering (the first traceable use by Lanz).(Bundesarchiv, Koblenz) (Goodrick-Clark says Lanz was using title by 1903.)

1911 September 14 Russian Prime Minister Pyotyr Stolypin is assassinated while watching an opera with the Czar in Kiev. The assassin, Dmitri Bogrov, is said to be a terrorist, but was later discovered to be a police agent.

1911 October 25 Winston Churchill is appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in Britain.

1911 November 11 Guido von List receives a letter from an individual calling himself "Tarnhari," who claims to be the descendant or reincarnation of a chieftain of the ancient Wölsungen tribe in prehistoric Germany. During the early postwar years this same person (Ernst Lauterer) is closely associated with Dietrich Eckart, Hitler's mentor in the early days of the Nazi Party.

(Tarnhari popularized List's writings during WWI as can be seen from the writings of Ellegaard Ellerbek (Gustav Leisner), a völkisch-mystical writer who paid extravagant tribute to both List and Tarhari.) (Roots)

1911 November Hermann Pohl sends a circular to some fifty potential antisemitic collaborators, stating that the Hammer group in Magdeburg has already established a lodge upon appropriate racial principles with a ritual based on Germanic pagan tradition. Pohl urges his correspondents to join his movement and to form lodges of their own, adding that this project has the full support of Theodor Fritsch. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1911 Rudolf Glauer (Rudolf von Sebottendorff) becomes a Turkish citizen in Constantinople. (Roots)

1911 Mikhail Kaganovich, the older brother of Lazar Kaganovich, is arrested for being a member of the Bolshevik party.(Wolf)

1911 Guido von List publishes his GLB 2a (Die Armanenschaft der Ario-Germanen. Zweiter Teil), continuing his "exploration" of the Wotanist priesthood. (Roots)

1911 Lazar Kaganovich first sees Leon Trotsky, at a speech in Kiev. Trotsky, he later said, was already a well-known figure throughout Russia.

1911 Italian forces seize Tripoli.

1911 Otto Richard Tannenberg a well-known Pan-German writer, publishes Greater Germany: The Work of the Twentieth Century, urging his countrymen to create a great European empire by uniting all German and German-related peoples. (Architect)

1912 January The Deutsch-Soziale Reformpartei wins only three seats in the German parliament. (Roots)

1912 January 12 Hermann Pohl writes a manifesto for the "loyal lodges" of the Germanenorden, which stresses his desire for a fervent, rather than numerous, following, which would usher in an "Aryan-Germanic religious revival" stressing obedience and devotion to the cause of a pan-German "Armanist Empire" (Armanenreich) and the rebirth of a racially pure German nation, in which the "parasitic and revolutionary mob-races" (Jews, anarchist crossbreeds and gypsies) would be deported. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1912 Austrian DAP headquarters in Vienna are located in the same district where Adolf Hitler has his apartment. (Unknown Nazis)

1912 February Karl August Hellwig , a retired colonel and follower of Guido von List living in Kassel, drafts a constitution for the future Reichshammerbund. This document sets up a council of twelve members called the Armanen-Rat. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1912 March Theodor Fritsch, recalling the weakness of the earlier antisemitic political parties, demands a new antisemitic organization "above the parties." (Hammer #11; Roots)

1912 March 12 The Grand Lodge, founded on April 5, 1911, adopts the name Germanenorden upon the suggestion of Theodor Fritsch. (Roots)

1912 Heinrich Class, the antisemitic chairman of the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League), publishes Wenn ich der Kaiser wär! (If I was Kaiser!), appealing for the establishment of a dictatorship, the suspension of parliament, and denouncing the Jews. (Roots)

1912 April Theodor Fritsch writes a set of guidelines for the Reichshammerbund which urges collaboration with Catholics and a coordinated propaganda campaign amongst workers, farmers, teachers, civil servants, military officers and university students. (Roots)

1912 May 24-25 Theodor Fritsch, twenty prominent Pan-Germans, antisemites, and disciples of Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and Guido von List found two groups to indoctrinate German society. Karl August Hellwig, a List Society member since 1908, now heads the Reichshammerbund, which has grown into a confederation of all existing Hammer groups. Hermann Pohl, from Magdeburg, becomes head of the Germanenorden, a secret twin-organization. (see photo, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz)

1912 July Hermann Pohl publishes the first Germanenorden newsletter, which records that lodges have been ceremonially established at Breslau, Dresden and Königsberg that spring. Lodges in Berlin and Hamburg are already active prior to this time. Brothers in Bromberg, Nuremberg, Thuringia and Düsseldorf, he writes, are still recruiting and plan to found new lodges in the near future. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1912 October 4 Theodore Roosevelt is shot by an assassin in Milwaukee, but insists on giving his speech before being taken to the hospital.

1912 November 5 Woodrow Wilson is elected President of the U.S., defeating the Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt who has split the Republican vote by running on the independent Bull Moose ticket.

1912 December The Germanenorden newsletter claims 316 members in six major German cities have already joined the new organization: 99 in Breslau, 100 in Dresden, 42 in Königsberg, Hamburg 27, Berlin 30, and 18 in Hanover. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1912 Philipp Stauff moves to Berlin where he soon publishes a directory of Pan-German and antisemitic groups entitled Das deutsche Wehrbuch (German Defense Book) for Heinrich Kraeger, who with Alfred Brunner, will found the Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei in 1918. (Between 1912 and 1914, Stauff will publish Semi-Gotha and Semi-Alliancen, genealogical handbooks which purport to identify Jews amongst the German aristocracy. These and his other writings soon involve Stauff in a number of on-going legal suits.) (Roots)

1912 American Indian, Jim Thorpe, wins both the decathlon and the pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. George S. Patton places fifth in the pentathlon.

1912 Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili takes the alias "Stalin" from the Russian word "stal" (steel). Between 1902 and 1912, Stalin had been arrested many times, but escaped repeatedly to continue working as a Bolshevik organizer. To obtain funds for the Bolsheviks, he staged a number of robberies.

1912 Lenin rewards Stalin by naming him to the Bolshevik Central Committee. From there, Stalin rapidly gains influence and power among the Bolsheviks and becomes the first editor of Pravda, the party newspaper.

1912 David Mitford, Lord Redesdale, the father of Unity Mitford, names his family property in Canada: Swastika. His father, Bertram Mitford, had not only written the introduction to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's famous book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, but was also a close, personal friend of the Wagner family. Richard Wagner's son, Siegfried, kept a photo of Bertram Mitford on his desk until his death. (The House of Mitford)

1912 Levick Kaganovich and his family move to the U.S. Levick had been like a father to Lazar Kaganovich. His son, Morris, was Lazar's best friend.

1912 Lazar Kaganovich joins the Bolshevik party in Mozyr and is designated as a party organizer.

1912 Johannes Baum founds the New Thought publishing house. Although initially concerned with translations of American material, this firm will play a vital role in German esoteric publishing during the 1920s. (Spirits in Rebellion; Roots)

1912 Phillip Stauff becomes a committee member of the List Society and a generous patron. (Roots)

1912 A U.S. federal committee investigates J.P. Morgan and his various business operations. Many believe that his mergers and consolidations have created unfair monopolies and developed restrictive trade practices.

1912 Archduke Otto von Habsburg is born.

1912 Rudolf Steiner breaks with the Theosophists and soon founds the Anthroposophical Society.

1912 The British luxury liner Titanic sinks after colliding with an iceberg on her maiden voyage, 1517 die, only 706 manage to survive.

1912 China becomes a republic.

1912 Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro form the Balkan League for protection against their longtime common adversary--Ottoman Turkey.

1912 The Balkan League makes war on Turkey, successfully ousting the Turks from the Balkans during what is called the First Balkan War.

1912 Benito Mussolini becomes editor of the Milan-based, Socialist party newspaper Avanti!

1912 Colonel Edward Mandell House publishes Philip Dru, Administrator, a book who's hero seizes the government of the United States with the backing of a secret cartel of rich and powerful financiers. Dru describes his new government as "...Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx," and begins to adopt several key Marxist programs such as a graduated income tax and a graduated inheritance tax. He also prohibits the "selling of ... anything of value," just as described by Marx. Colonel House will later become President Woodrow Wilson's top personal advisor.

1913 January A Germanenorden lodge is established at Duisburg with 30 brothers. Lodges in Nuremberg and Munich are established later in the year, but are not as successful as those in Northern and Eastern Germany. (Bundesarchiv, Koblenz; Roots)

1913 Kaiser Wilhelm II and H.S. Chamberlain plot to steal the Helige Lanz (Holy Lance) from Austria at a Germanic art exposition in Berlin. General Helmuth von Moltke foils their plan by alerting the Austrians.

1913 Walter Riehl and Rudolf Jung draft a new program for the Austrian German Worker's party (DAP) at Iglau. (Forgotten Nazis)

1913 Drew Ali, a black leader, founds a Moorish Science Temple in Newark, N.J., and establishes a religious tradition that will lead to the founding of the Black Muslims and other Islamic groups in the U.S.

1913 February 3 Wyoming approves the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, becoming the last of the 36 states needed to authorize a federal income tax.

1913 February 14-19 Philipp Stauff is involved in a series of spiritualist seances which claim to communicate with the long-dead priest-kings of the old religion. Guido von List later writes about these seances in depth. (Roots)

1913 February 25 The 16th Amendment becomes law in the United States. Earlier, the Supreme Court had found that an income tax whose monies are not reapportioned to the states is unconstitutional. The 16th amendment provides the necessary legal basis for a graduated federal income tax. (Schlesinger I)

1913 March King George I of Greece is assassinated and is succeeded by his son, Constantine I.

1913 March 4 Woodrow Wilson takes his oath of office as 28th President of the United States. Marshall becomes Vice President.

1913 March 31 J.P. Morgan dies in Rome, Italy. His son, J.P. (Jack) Morgan, Jr., takes over operation of his various business enterprises.

1913 April 27 The dead body of 14-year-old Mary Phagan is found is found in a pencil factory in Marietta, Georgia. Leo Frank, a 29-year-old Jew is convicted of the crime even though Miss Phagan left a note saying she had been assaulted by a Negro. After Frank's sentence was commuted by the governor, Tom Watson, a Georgia demagogue, denounced him as "King of the Jews." (See August 16, 1915)

1913 May Adolf Hitler leaves Vienna for Munich in Bavaria.

(Note: In 1959, Elsa Schmidt-Falk, who was in charge of a genealogical research group within the Nazi party in Munich during the 1920's, told Wilfried Daim that Hitler had regularly visited her and her husband at their Munich home. At these meetings, Hitler often mentioned reading Guido von List and quoted his books enthusiastically. She also claimed that Hitler told her that members of the List Society in Vienna had given him a letter of introduction to the President of the List Society in Munich. (Daim; Inge Kunz; Roots)

1913 May 24 Hitler moves to Schleissheimerstrasse 34 in Munich, lodging with the family of a tailor named Papp. He registers with the police as a painter and artist.

1913 May 30 Fearing a spread of hostilities in the Balkans, the major powers intervene to terminate the war with the Treaty of London, a preliminary peace treaty, under which Turkey agrees to surrender its Balkan territories and create the state of Albania. Peace in the Balkans lasts less than a month.

1913 May 31 The 17th Amendment is passed, establishing the popular election of U.S. Senators. This amendment dramatically alters America's republican form of government and further reduces the power of the individual states.

1913 June Nineteen Reichshammerbund branches have by now been established throughout Germany. (Roots)

1913 June A second war begins in the Balkans, when Bulgaria makes surprise attacks against Serbia and Greece in the hope of occupying the contested districts of Macedonia won from Turkey before the great powers had intervened. Bulgaria is quickly defeated and overrun by Romania, Turkey, Greece and Serbia.

1913 August 10 The Treaty of Bucharest awards Serbia and Greece possession of those parts of Macedonia they had previously claimed. Romania also received territory from Bulgaria.

1913 September 6 Philipp Stauff closes a letter to Lanz von Liebenfels with the salute "Armanengruss und Templeisensieg." Lanz had first written Stauff in 1909. (Balzli; Roots)

1913 September 29 Rudof Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, apparently drowns after he mysteriously disappears from the mail steamer Dresden while crossing the English Channel. Legend has it that he was carrying secret plans for a new engine that ran on nothing but pure water.

1913 September 29 Under the Treaty of Constantinople, Turkey recovers the greater part of the province of Adrianople from Bulgaria.

1913 October 3 Congress enacts the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act which lowers tariffs on 958 articles, including food-stuffs, clothing and raw materials. Rates on cotton are cut 50% and on woolens over 50%. Congress will enact the graduated income tax to make up the difference in revenues. (See October 22, 1914) (Schlesinger I)

1913 December 23 The Federal Reserve Act, already passed by the U.S. Congress, is approved by President Wilson.

1913 Rudolf Glauer, now calling himself Rudolf von Sebottendorff, moves to Berlin, claiming to have been adopted by Baron Heinrich von Sebottendorff in Turkey in 1911. The Baron's family in Germany recognizes the adoption and seems genuinely fond of him. (Roots)

1913 "Unionist" gunrunners cause bloodshed at Londonderry in Ireland.

1913 Danish physicist Niels Bohr publishes his atomic theory.

1913 Stalin is exiled to Siberia by the Czarist government. He will not return to Russia until 1917.

1913 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels in Ostara I, #69, interprets the holy grail as an electrical symbol pertaining to the "panpsychic" powers of the pure-blooded "Aryan" race. The quest of the "Templeisen" (Templars) for the grail was a metaphor, Lanz said, for the strict eugenic practices of the Templar Knights designed to breed god-men. (Roots)

1913 Dr. Eugen Fischer's book Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardisierungsproblem beim Menschen (The Bastards of Rehoboth and the problem of miscegenation in Man) is published. In it he writes about the people of mixed blood in German South-West Africa: "We should provide them with the minimum amount of protection which they require, for survival as a race inferior to ourselves, and we should do this only as long as they are useful to us. After this, free competition should prevail and, in my opinion, this will lead to their decline and destruction." (Science)

1913 Antonius von der Linden begins publishing Geheime Weissenschaften (Secret Science, 1913-1920) consisting of reprints of esoteric texts from the Renaissance scholar Agrippa von Nettesheim. (Roots)

1913 Medical missionary Albert Schweitzer builds a hospital at Lambarene in Africa.

1913 Sigmund Livingstone among others forms the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and a civil-rights statute is enacted in New York at the request of several other Jewish organizations.

1913 Russian revolutionary Joseph Stalin is exiled to Siberia by the Czarist government.

1913 American Charles Callahan publishes Washington: The Man and the Mason. It contain a letter wriiten by George Washington in 1798 to Reverend G.W. Snyder, acknowledging Washington's belief in the existence of the Illuminati and the revolutionary principles of Jacobinism in the United States. It is "too evident to be questioned," Washington writes. (View document)

1913 Mexican President Francisco Madero is killed in a military coup led by Victoriano Huerta.

1913 Rosa Luxemburg publishes her chief work, Accumulation of Capital (English translation, 1951), presenting her theory of imperialism.

1913 Adolf Hitler establishes contact with certain proto-Nazi circles in Munich, even before World War I. (Mein Kampf)

1914 January 11 A Germanenorden initiation ceremony held in the Berlin Province features racial tests by Berlin phrenologist Robert Burger-Villingren, inventor of the "plastometer," a device used for determining the relative "Aryan purity" of a subject by measurement of the skull. (Roots)

1914 January 12 Adolf Hitler is ordered to report for Austrian military service.

1914 January 19 Hitler writes to the Austrian Consulate pleading for leniency in regard to his failure to report for military service.

1914 February 5 Hitler is rejected by the Austrian army as unfit for duty.

1914 February 9 Detlef Schmude, one of Jorg Lanz von Liebenfel's earliest and most enthusiastic supporters in Germany, founds the second priory of the Order of the New Templars (ONT) at Hollenberg near Kornelmünster. (Roots)

1914 May 20 A letter from Arthur Strauss to Julius Rüttinger says that a Reichshammerbund group was founded in Munich that spring by Wilhelm Rohmeder, chairman of the Deutscher Schulverein and a member of the List Society since 1908. (Bundesarchiv; Roots)

1914 June King Peter I of Serbia, in poor health, appoints his son, Alexander as regent of Serbia.

1914 June 28 Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary is assassinated at Sarajevo, capital of the Austrian province of Bosnia, by a Serbian assassin, Gavrilo Princip. Princip has ties to both Britain and Russia.

1914 July The Master of the Leipzig Geramanenorden lodge politely proposes that Hermann Pohl retire from his office as head of the order. (Roots)

1914 July 23 Austria-Hungary presents a warlike, 48-hour ultimatum to the Serbian government, demanding a virtual protectorate over Serbia. Serbia accepts all but one of the demands, but still its response is unsatisfactory to Austria-Hungary.

1914 July 28 Austria-Hungary, refusing to submit the disputed terms to international arbitration, declares war on Serbia. Within a week most of Europe will at war.

WORLD WAR I

1914 July 29 Austrian forces invade Serbia and begin an artillery bombardment of Belgrade, the Serbian capital.

1914 July 29 Russia mobilizes its troops near the Austrian border.

1914 July 31 The London Stock Exchange, at this time the most influential in the world, announces its closing due to war. The U.S. follows suit and for several weeks all other important exchanges will also close. (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 1 Fighting begins on the German-Russian frontier and Germany declares war on Russia.

1914 August 2 General Helmuth von Moltke is appointed commander of all German armies in the field.

1914 August 3 Germany declares war on France.

1914 August 3 Hitler petitions King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to enlist in the Bavarian army.

1914 August 3 The French firm of Rothschilds Freres cables J.P. Morgan & Co. in New York suggesting the floatation of a loan of $100,000,000, a substantial part of which is to be left in the United States to pay for French purchases of American goods. (America Goes to War,Charles C. Tansill. Little, Brown. Boston, 1938)

1914 August 4 Germany invades Belgium. A specially trained task force of about 30,000 men crosses the frontier and attacks Liege, one of the strongest fortresses in Europe. Some of the fortifications are captured in a daring night attack led by General Erich Ludendorff.

1914 August 4 Great Britain declares war on Germany.

1914 August 5 British ships dredge up and cut the German trans-Atlantic cables to America. Thereafter, the bulk of the war news will be routed through London and the British censors.

1914 August 5 The U.S. makes a formal statement announcing it will remain neutral in the European wars, but offers its services as a mediator in the mushrooming conflicts. (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 6 Austria-Hungary declares war against Russia. Italy temporarily remains neutral, claiming its obligations to the Triple Alliance are void because Austria had initiated the war.

1914 August 8 French troops under Gen. Paul Pau advance across the frontier to Mulhouse in Alsace.

1914 August 12 Austrian troops numbering 200,000, commanded by Gen. Oskar Potiorek, cross the Sava and Drina Rivers and invade Serbia.

1914 August 14 A full-scale French offensive, the Battle of Lorraine, begins southeast of Metz. Following a planned withdrawal, the Germans counterattack, throwing the French back to the fortified heights of Nancy.

1914 August 14 Kaiser Wilhelm II leaves Berlin, choosing to live at Pless, in Silesia, or near the Western front for the remainder of the war.

1914 August 15 U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan writes to J.P. Morgan telling him that loans to belligerents goes against the U.S. policy of neutrality. (See October 15) (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 15-20 Serbian Marshal Putnik is victorious over the Austrians at Cer Mountain.

1914 August 16 The last fortifications at Liege, pounded into submission by giant howitzers, surrenders. The German First Army under Gen. Alexander von Kluck and the Second, commanded by Gen. Karl von Bulow, pour through the Liege corridor and across the Meuse.

1914 August 16 Adolf Hitler enrolls in the 1st Company of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry.

1914 August 16 Austrian troops are driven back by the numerically superior Serbian army, inadequately equipped, but battlewise from their Balkan Wars experience. They are commanded by Marshal Radomir Putnik.

1914 August 17 The Russian Northwest Army Group begins to advance into East Prussia. From the east came Gen. Pavel K. Rennenkampf's First Army; from the south Aleksandr Samsonov's Second Army. Opposing are German Gen. Max von Prittwitz and Gen. Gaffron's Eighth Army. Their mission one of elastic defense and delay until the bulk of the German army can be shifted from the Western Front.

1914 August General Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff, hampered by poor communications with his armies, overestimates the extent of the initial German victory. Confident that the French armies are on the brink of destruction, he detaches two corps from Kluck's army to the Eastern front, where the Russians are threatening East Prussia.

1914 August 17 The center of Rennenkampf's advance is mauled by General Hermann K. von Francois's German I Corps near Stalluponen.

1914 August 18 President Woodrow Wilson issues his "Proclamation of Neutrality," temporarily keeping America out of the war.

1914 August 20 Brussels is occupied by the Germans. The Belgians, personally commanded by King Albert I, retreat to Antwerp.

1914 August 20 Advancing French troops collide with a numerically superior German force in the Battle of the Ardennes.

1914 August 20 Rudolf Hess joins the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment and is soon transported to the battlefields of France. (Missing Years)

1914 August 20 At Gumbinnen in East Prussia, Prittwitz's forces are thrown back by Rennenkampf, who has attacked from the east. Prittwitz, fearing envelopment by Samsonov's army, withdraws to the Vistula River, thus ceding all of East Prussia. Prittwitz phones Moltke at Coblenz, reporting his decision and requesting reinforcements to hold the Vistula line. Moltke immediately relieves Prittwitz, appointing in his place 67-year-old Gen. Paul von Hindenburg who had retired in 1911. Gen. Erich Ludendorff, the hero of Liege, is named Hindenburg's chief of staff.

1914 August 20 Pope pius X dies, just one day after issuing a futile plea for peace.

1914 August 20 Britain, in its Order of Council, enlarges the list of goods it unilaterally considers contraband and thereby subject to search and seizure. British ships immediately begin confiscating the contraband cargoes, which include even cotton, now used in making munitions. (Schlesinger I)

1914 August 21 The newly landed British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under Field Marshal Sir John French moves into Belgium to support Lanrezac's advance.

1914 August 21 Serbian Marshall Putnik defeats the Austrians at the battle of Sabac (August 21-24).

1914 August 22 Two German armies strike Gen. Charles Lanrezac southwest of Namur, on the Sambre River, forcing him to retreat on the 23rd.

1914 August 23 The Belgian defenders of Namur are overwhelmed by Bulow's troops after a brief siege.

1914 August 23 The BEF near Mons is struck by the full weight of Kluck's German First Army. Learning of the fall of Namur, Lanrezac orders a general retreat, leaving the outnumbered British with an unprotected left flank and forcing them to withdraw during the night.

1914 August 23 In the Galician Battles (August 23-September 11), Russian forces under Gen. Nikolai Ivanov repelled an Austrian offensive, seizing all of Austrian Galicia except the key fortress of Przemysl.

1914 August 23 Japan declares war on Germany and soon besieges Tsingtao, the only German base on the China coast.

1914 August 23 Hindenburg and Ludendorff arrive to take command on the Eastern Front.

1914 August 24 After four days of furious fighting, the devastated French fall back in the Ardennes and reorganize west of the Meuse.

1914 August 24 Main German armies enter France.

1914 August 24 Samsonov's troops encounters the Germans near Frankenau and severe fighting rages the entire day between Frankenau and Tannenberg.

1914 August 26 In East Prussia, the Germans counterattack from north, east, and west. Samsonov's uncoded radio messages are intercepted and Ludendorff learns the locations of all Russian units.

1914 August Alexander I becomes nominal Commander-in-Chief of the Serbian army.

1914 August St. Petersburg's name is changed to Petrograd in order to eliminate the German ending "burg".

1914 August 27 At Le Cateau French's BEF fights off a double envelopment by the full strength of Kluck's army. The survivors successfully disengaged at nightfall.

1914 August 28 A British raid into the Heligoland Bight results in the war's first naval battle. Four German ships are sunk.

1914 August 29 Russian forces in East Prussia but are defeated at the Battle of Tannenberg. Hindenburg and Ludendorff direct the movements that encircle General Samsonov's Second Russian Army. By nightfall the encirclement is complete. Samsonov, who disappeared during the night, evidently committed suicide. 35,000 Russians are killed, and 90,000 taken prisoner. German losses are 10,000 to 14,000.

1914 August 29 Hoping to relieve German pressure on the BEF at Le Cateau, Joffre orders the French Fifth Army, itself pressed hard by the German Second Army, to make a 90-degree shift westward to attack the left flank of the German First Army at Guise. The initial attack, however, is inconsequential.

1914 August Gen. Louis Franchet d'Esperey, commanding the French I Corps, halts the German advance, achieving the first French tactical success of the campaign. Bulow calls on Kluck for aid the next day.

1914 August Kluck responds to Bulow's call for assistance by shifting his direction of march to the southeast, thus discarding the remnants of the Schlieffen Plan. This change would cause him to pass east of Paris. He knew nothing of General Maunoury's concentration in the fortified area of the capital. Belatedly, Moltke sends a message to Kluck, agreeing to the move east of Paris, but ordering Kluck to guard the right flank of the Second Army. For Kluck to have obeyed this order would have meant halting his army for two days, a move he believes will permit the French either to escape or to rally. Intent on driving the French out of Paris, Kluck continues southward across the Marne, just east of Paris, his right flank wide open.

1914 September 4 General Wilson sets in motion a plan to envelop the exposed German right flank. Gen. Maunoury's Sixth Army, temporarily under the regional command of Gen. Joseph S. Gallieeni, the military governor of Paris, begins an advance from Paris toward the Ourcq River, where Kluck's right flank lies open.

1914 September 5 The First Battle of the Marne begins. Joffre's plan is almost ruined when right-flank units of Kluck's army detect the French Sixth Army advance from Paris and counterattack. Kluck then launches an attack toward Paris in the Battle of the Ourcq. By turning west, however, Kluck creates a gap to his left between his army and the Second, under Gen. Karl von Bulow.

1914 September 6 After two days of furious fighting, the German offensive bogs down only twenty-five miles from Paris.

1914 September 6-15 The Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

1914 September 7-9 Kluck then turns his entire army westward in savage counterattacks, halting the French and forcing them to fall back. Only fresh reinforcements rushed from Paris, some in taxicabs, permits Maunoury to stem the German advance.

1914 September 8 Maubeuge, on France's northern border, falls to the Germans.

1914 September 9 Lt. Col. Richard Hentsch, a trusted staff officer sent by Moltke to assess the situation and issue orders if necessary, discovers that von Bulow's Second Army had been pushed back by the French Fifth, and that the BEF is moving into the gap between the German First and Second Armies, Hentsch then orders both armies to retreat to the Aisne River. Kluck retreats to prevent his army from being encircled.

1914 September 9-14 Russian troops are expelled from East Prussia, after the German Eighth Army defeats the Russian First Army in the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

1914 September 10 Assuming the BEF is no longer a threat, Kluck shifts westward, widening the existing gap between his army and that of Bulow, which is still advancing to the south. Exploiting this gap, French commander Franchet d'Esperey, in a vigorous night attack, takes Marchais-en-Brie from the Germans. This is probably the turning point of the battle. Bulow, personally defeated, is about to retreat. Kluck's First Army is making headway in the northwest against Maunoury's left, but the BEF's northward advance into the gap threatens Kluck's left and rear. Moltke, realizing that his offensive has failed, then orders a retreat to the Noyon-Verdun line. (Allied losses are about 250,000; German casualties nearly 300,000.)

1914 September 14 General Moltke, blamed for the failure at the Marne and with violating the Schlieffen Plan, is relieved by by the Kaiser and ordered to report to Berlin. He is replaced by Gen. Erich von Falkenhayn.

1914 September 15 The first trenches are dug.

1914 September 15 The German victory at Masurian effectively knocks out the Russians as an important consideration in Allied strategy. (Schlesinger I)

1914 September 17 The German "Race to the Sea" begins.

1914 September 22-26 Fierce battles are fought in Picardy.

1914 September 22 The German cruiser Emden bombards Madras, India.

1914 September 22 The German U-9 sinks three British cruisers in quick succession off the Dutch coast.

1914 September 26 U.S. Secretary of State Bryan protests Britain's Order of Council and the confiscation of cargoes from U.S. ships. (See August 20)

(Note: The U.S. has begun to profit from the war and is sending cargoes to all belligerents including Germany, which is getting its goods funneled through neutral countries.) (Schlesinger I)

1914 September 27 Heavy fighting at Artois until October 10.

1914 September 28 A general Austrian-German advance begins in Galicia. Hindenburg moves to assist the defeated Austrians and prevent the Russian invasion of Silesia. Four German corps of the Eighth Army are transferred by rail to the vicinity of Krakow.

1914 September 30 Before Grand Duke Nikolai, the Russian supreme commander, can move through Poland into Silesia, the heart of Germany's mineral resources, Hindenburg attacks their left flank.

1914 October 9 The Belgian fortress of Antwerp falls.

1914 October 9 Germans troops under Hindenburg reach the Vistula River south of Warsaw.

1914 October 12 The first battle for the Belgian city of Ypres begins.

1914 October 12 Hindenburg outnumbered more than three to one, halts the Polish offensive.

1914 October 15 The U.S. declares it will not prohibit shipments of gold or the extension of credit to belligerents. (See August 15)

1914 October 15 The British cruiser HMS Hawk is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat.

1914 October 17 Hindenburg skillfully withdraws, leaving a ravaged Polish countryside behind him.

1914 October 18 A German U-boat raid on Scapa Flow, although unsuccessful, results in the temporary transfer of the British Grand Fleet to Rosyth on the Scottish coast while antisubmarine nets are installed at Scapa.

1914 October 21 Hitler is assigned to the Western Front and soon becomes a regimental orderly and dispatch runner.

1914 October 22 The Revenue Act passes the U.S. Congress. It imposes the first income tax on incomes over $3,000 to offset loss of tariff money brought about through enactment of the Underwood-Simmons Act of 1913. (See October 3, 1913) (Schlesinger I)

1914 October 22 The U.S. formally withdraws its demand that Britain keep to the letter of the Declaration of London and cease confiscating American cargoes. The British are now willingly paying for the confiscated goods, and Americans are making a good profits without loss of life to their crews. Thereafter, Britain contains the German fleet in harbor and dries to a trickle the flow of goods to the Central Powers. Smarting under the impact of the blockade, Germany is forced to increase its U-boat activity. (Schlesinger I)

1914 October 27 The British battleship Audacious sinks after striking a German submarine-laid mine off the Irish coast.

1914 October 29 Turkey, encouraged by the Germans, declares war against the Allies, announcing its entrance into the war with a surprise bombardment of the Russian Black Sea coast.

1914 November 1 Hindenburg is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian-German Eastern Front. Ludendorff remains his chief of staff.

1914 November 1 Adm. Graf von Spee's China Squadron, two heavy and three light cruisers, sinks two British heavy cruisers without losing a single ship in the Battle of Coronel, off the coast of Chile. Some time later the British battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible, under Vice Adm. Sir Frederick Sturdee, sought out Spee, who had taken his squadron around Cape Horn into the South Atlantic. Spee had planned to raid the British wireless and coaling station at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, but discovered Sturdee's squadron there, refueling. The surprised Germans fled and were pursued and destroyed; approximately 1,800 Germans--including Admiral Spee--perished on the sunken ships.

1914 November 2 Britain declares the entire North Sea a military area. Neutral ships bound for neutral ports now become subject to search and seizure. (Schlesinger I)

1914 November 3 General Moltke is officially replaced as German Chief of Staff.

1914 November 5 A reinforced Austrian army begins a third offensive in Serbia.

1914 November 5 Great Britain responding to Turkey's recent alliance with Germany annexes Turkish Cyprus.

1914 November 7 The Japanese capture Tsingtao, the only German base on the China coast. Japan also occupies Germany's Marshall, Marianas, Palau, and Caroline Island groups.

1914 November 9 The German cruiser Emden is sunk in action with the Australian cruiser Sydney in the Cocos Islands.

1914 November The first battle of Ypres comes to and end, concluding the so-called "race to the sea" after the German defeat at the First Battle of the Marne.

1914 November 22 Hermann Pohl writes to Julius Rüttinger, Master of the Franconian Germanenorden province, who is serving at the front. Pohl tells him that the order is in financial difficulty because half of the brethren are serving in the armed forces. "A great number of the brothers have already been killed in action." (Roots)

1914 December American Magazine runs an article saying that Ray Stannard Baker reported in 1909 that the Christian churches in America had "awakened as never before to the so-called Jewish problem"

1914 December 2 Adolf Hitler is awarded the Iron Cross, second class, for bravery under fire.

1914 December 2 A reinforced Austrian army succeeds in occupying Belgrade.

1914 December 3 Marshal Putnik's Serbian troops counterattack after receiving much needed ammunition from France.

1914 December 8 The Battle of the Falkland Islands.

1914 December 11 Serbians troops recapture Belgrade.

1914 December 14 England breaks the German war code, so that "By the end of January 1915, (British Intelligence was) able to advise the Admiralty of the departure of each U-boat as it left for patrol..." (Simpson)

1914 December 15 Putnik's troops recapture Belgrade and soon drive the Austrian invaders from Serbia. Austrian casualties in this savagely fought campaign are approximately 227,000 out of 450,000 engaged. Serbian losses are approximately 170,000 out of 400,000.

1914 December 17 Britain declares a protectorate over Egypt, previously subject to Turkey, and begins moving troops there to defend the Suez Canal.

1914 December 25 The French battleship Jean Bart is torpedoed by an Austrian submarine in the Straits of Otranto.

1914 Giacomo della Chiesa becomes Pope Benedict XV, succeeding Pius X.

1914 Benito Mussolini, editor of the Milan Socialist party newspaper Avanti!, is at first opposed to Italy's involvement in the war but soon reverses his position and calls for Italy's entry on the side of the Allies. Expelled from the Socialist party for this stance, he founds his own newspaper in Milan, Il popolo d'Italia which will later become the party newspaper of the Fascist movement. Mussolini will serve in the Italian army until wounded in 1917.

1914 Jean Monnet obtains a lucrative monopoly contract for the shipment of vital war materials from Canada to France, making a fortune as a war profiteer.

1914 Lazar Kaganovich moves to Kiev, takes a factory job and begins to organize a Bolshevik union of sales employees. After several strikes, Lazar is fired. He then finds work as a leather dresser across town and continues to organize, though more cautiously.

1914 Guido von List publishes GLB 6 (Die Ursprache der Ario-Germanen und ihre Mysteriensprache) his so-called "masterpiece" of occult linguistics and symbology. (Roots)

1914 Albert Einstein returns to Germany to occupy the most prestigious and best-paying post a theoretical physicist can hold in central Europe: professor at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin, but does not reapply for German citizenship. He is one of only a handful of German professors who remained a pacifist and did not support Germany's war effort. Although he held a cross-appointment at the University of Berlin, from this time on, he will never again teach regular university courses, but remains on the staff until 1933.

1914 The Panama Canal is completed, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

1914 U.S. Marines land at Veracruz, Mexico, and President Huerta resigns.

1915 January 3 The Turks plan a wide envelopment of the Russians at the Battle of Sarikamis In the Caucasus between Russia and Turkey. The Russians counterattack, smashing the Turkish army.

1915 January 14 Turkish commander Djemal Pasha secretly sets out across the Sinai Peninsula from Beersheba with an army of 22,000, intending to seize the Suez Canal.

1915 January 19-20 Bombing attacks on Britain by Zeppelin dirigibles, under the control of the German navy, result in few casualties, causing more anger than panic. During the year, 18 more raids will take place.

1915 January 23 A German battle cruiser squadron under Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper moves out to raid the English coast and harass the British fishing fleet.

1915 January 24 British Admiral David Beatty's battle cruiser squadron attacks Hipper off the Dogger Bank. Hipper wisely flees, but Beatty, with superior speed, catches him, sinking one cruiser. Both flagships are damaged.

1915 January 30 Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson's good friend and advisor, sails to Europe on the Lusitania to try to mediate a peace settlement. Both sides still feel they can get what they want and are unwilling to settle the conflict so quickly. (Schlesinger I)

1915 January 31 The Central Powers, reinforcing their armies in the east, launch a great offensive under Hindenburg in the Battle of Bolimov, a feint aimed at Warsaw to distract Russian attention. Poison gas shells are used for the first time, but are not highly effective in the freezing temperatures, and the Russians do not report the gas attack.

1915 January Winston Churchill orders a mostly British, Allied fleet to force the Dardanelles, then steam on to Constantinople (Istanbul) to dictate peace terms.

1915 February Hitler writes a long, autobiographical letter to his lawyer and friend, Ernst Hepp. (Hepp Letter)

1915 February The German submarine blockade of Great Britain begins.

1915 February 2 Advance elements of Djemal Pasha's army strike across the Suez canal in pontoon boats, but are repelled. No further Turkish assaults are made against the canal, but the threat holds back reinforcements from Gallipoli.

1915 February 4 Germany proclaims a war zone around the British Isles in retaliation for the blockade of its ports. Germany intensifies its submarine campaign against Allied merchant ships and attacks neutral ships.

1915 February 8 The new German Tenth Army hits the Russian right. The Russians are driven back into the Augustow Forest, barely escaping encirclement. 90,000 Russian prisoners are taken by the end of the month.

1915 February 10 President Wilson warns Germany that the U.S. will hold it "to a strict accountability" for "property damaged or lives lost." German submarine warfare is taking a heavy toll on neutral shipping, including American.

(Note: U-boat captains are in a difficult position because they cannot safely surface to allow enemy crews to board liferafts before being sunk. The fragile U-boats themselves are easily sunk by small-caliber deck guns.)

1915 February 19 A Franco-British fleet under British Admiral Sackville Carden begin a systematic reduction of the Turkish fortifications lining the Dardanelles.

1915 February 19 A German submarine sinks a Norwegian ship in British waters.

1915 February 25 The outer Turkish forts are silenced and Allied vessels enter the Dardanelles.

1915 March 10 A British attack at Neuve Chapelle fails after nearly achieving a breakthrough.

1915 March 11 Britain declares a blockade of all German ports.

1915 March 18 Turkish fortifications on the Dardanelles are attacked by sixteen British and French battleships. After the bombardment silences the Turkish shore batteries, three battleships are sunk in a minefield and three others are disabled.

1915 March 22 The Austrian garrison at Przemysl, Galicia, surrenders after a siege of 194 days. 110,000 troops are taken prisoner by the Russians.

1915 March 30 President Wilson protests the blockade of German ports and asks the British to allow neutrals to continue their trade as usual. Britain refuses.

1915 April 22 The second Battle of Ypres in Belgium begins when the Germans disrupt a planned Allied offensive. A German poison gas attack, the first on the Western Front, demoralizes Allied troops and creates a large gap in their lines, but the Allies retrieve the situation after a bitter struggle. (About 5,000 cylinders of chlorine gas was used by the Germans.)

1915 April List convenes an HAO meeting in Vienna. A number of well-known, Austrian public figures gather to hear Guido von List's Easter address. (Roots)

1915 April 25 Sir Ian Hamilton lands a force of British and Anzacs (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) troops on the narrow Gallipoli Peninsula. The Turks ring the tiny beachheads with entrenchments, and the British find themselves locked in trench warfare much like that on the western front.

1915 April 26 The Allied powers sign the secret Treaty of London with Italy, which pledges to enter the war against Austria in exchange for territorial concessions. Although Italy fulfills its obligation, it receives only part of the territories promised when peace is concluded (1918-19).

1915 May-June The Allies renew their offensives in the north, but are repulsed in the Second Battle of Artois. Costly and unsuccessful assaults during the first half of the year have exhausted the Allies, who spend the rest of the summer resting, reorganizing, and reinforcing, as do the Germans. Both sides come perilously close to expending their ammunition reserves and now wait for munitions production to catch.

1915 May In Mesopotamia, British commander Gen. Sir John Nixon, lured by the prospect of capturing the legendary Baghdad, sends forces under Gen. Charles Townshend up the Tigris.

1915 May 1 A German U-boat torpedoes the American tanker Gulflight, causing three deaths. Germany quickly offers to make reparations and promises not to attack again without warning, unless the enemy ship tries to escape. Germany refuses to abandon submarine warfare, the only maritime warfare it can successfully carry out.

1915 May 1 The German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, issues a warning in the New York newspapers stating that it is unwise to travel into a war zone on vessels carrying cargoes vital to the Allies.

1915 May 7 A German submarine torpedoes and sinks the British passenger liner Lusitania off Kinsale Head, Ireland. 1,198 are lost, including 124 Americans. According to the Germans, the ship is carrying munitions, although the British deny this. Roosevelt calls it "murder on the high seas." (See May 1)

1915 May 10 Count von Bernstorff offers his condolences for the tragic loss of life upon the sinking of the Lusitania, but this only serves to rub salt into the wounds. (Schlesinger I)

1915 May 13 Secretary of State Bryan sends a note to Germany demanding disavowal of the attack upon the Lusitania and immediate reparations. Unfortunately, Bryan then proceeds to informs the Austrian Ambassador that the note "means no harm, but had to be written in order to pacify excited public opinion." The German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman, quickly learns of Bryan's indiscretion and claims to have called the American "bluff." Bryan is later forced to resign and the Germans never make a disavowal or pay reparations. (See June 8) (Schlesinger I)

1915 May 23 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary. The Italian army, commanded by General Luigi Cadorna, is about 875,000 strong.

1915 May 25 The second Battle of Ypres comes to an end. The British suffer approximately 50,000 casualties, the French 10,000, and the Germans about 35,000.

1915 May 30 Colonel House confides in his diary, " I have concluded that war with Germany is inevitable..." adding that he will persuade President Wilson to act.

1915 May 31 Townshend, in Mesopotamia, overwhelms a Turkish outpost near Qurna in an amphibious assault, and begins to move inland.

1915 Summer Five hundred German housewives stage a protest against the war in Berlin.

1915 June 3 Austrian-German armies retake Przemysl in Galicia.

1915 June 8 Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigns on the grounds that as a pacifist he cannot sign a strongly worded second Lusitania note to the Germans that has been written by President Wilson and other members of the Cabinet. Bryan says "a ship carrying contraband should not rely upon passengers to protect her from attack -- it would be like putting women and children in front of the army." (Schlesinger I)

1915 June 9 Wilson sends the second Lusitania note to the Germans, demanding an end to their procrastination over reparations for sinking the unarmed passenger ship. Wilson refuses to recognize the previously non-existent "war zone" set up by Germany around the British Isles.

1915 June 17 The League to Enforce Peace is organized at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It is a prototype for the future League of Nations. William Howard Taft is made president.

1915 June 22 Lemberg is occupied by Austrian-German forces.

1915 June 23 Two Italian armies, each of approximately 100,000 troops, attack toward Gorizia during the First Battle of the Isonzo. They batter in vain against the heavily fortified Austrian defenses.

1915 July 2 Erich Muenter, a German instructor at Cornell University, explodes a bomb in the U.S. Senate reception room.

1915 July 3 Erich Muenter shoots J.P. (Jack) Morgan, Jr., for representing the British government in war contract negotiations. Muenter is quickly arrested and jailed. (Schlesinger I)

1915 July 6 Erich Muenter commits suicide while in police custody.

1915 July 15 Dr. Heinrich Albert, head of German propaganda in America, accidentially leaves his briefcase on a subway in New York. A secret service agent retrieves it and exposes the existence of an extensive espionage network and subversive activities across the nation. German consuls, embassy staff, officials of the Hamburg-American Steamship Line and many German-Americans are implicated.

1915 July 15 Rudolf von Sebottendorff marries Berta Anna Iffland, the divorced daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, a wealthy Berlin merchant. The marriage takes place in Vienna. (Roots)

1915 July 21 President Wilson sends a third Lusitania note to the Germans. It warns that any future infringement of American rights will be deemed "deliberately unfriendly." (Schlesinger I)

1915 July 25 A U-boat sinks the American cargo ship Leelanaw off the coast of Scotland.

1915 July 27 Wireless communications are set up between Japan and the U.S.

1915 July The Warburg Bank sends a telegram to the Imperial Navy Cabinet warning of the mounting anti-German mood in America after the sinking of the Lusitania. (Warburgs)

1915 August 5 Gen. Max von Gallwitz's new German Twelfth Army captures Warsaw.

1915 August 6 Hamilton attempts new landings at Gallipoli after the arrival of reinforcements, but because of the fear of German submarines, no battleships are available to provide artillery support and the operation fails. Russia is permanently cut off from its allies.

1915 August 10 General Leonard Wood sets up a military training camp in Plattsburg, New York. It will train 1,200 volunteers who pay for their own travel expenses, food and uniforms. By the summer of 1916, 16,000 men will be in unofficial military training.

1915 August 16 Leo Frank is taken from his prison hospital by a mob and lynched on the outskirts of Marietta, Ga.

1915 August 19 The British liner Arabic is sunk, with the loss of four more American lives.

1915 August 25 Brest-Litovsk falls and the entire Russian front is in complete collapse.

1915 September A circular of the Franconian Germanenorden clarifies its aims, rules and rituals. The principal aim of the order is the monitoring of the Jews and their activities by the creation of a center to which all antisemitic material would flow for distribution. Subsidiary aims include mutual aid of brothers in respect to business introductions, contracts and finance. Lastly, all brothers are committed to the circulation of völkisch journals, especially the Hammer, their "sharpest weapon against Jewry and other enemies of the people." (Roots)

(Note: The articles of the Germanenorden state that all nationals, male or female, of flawless Germanic descent are eligible for admission. Application forms request details about the color of the applicants hair, eyes and skin. The ideal coloration was blond to dark blond hair, blue to light brown eyes, and pale skin. Details regarding the parents, grandparents and spouse are also required. A guide to recruitment states that physically handicapped or "unpleasant looking" people were barred.) (Roots)

1915 September 1 Germany announces cessation of unlimited submarine warfare. The Germans, fearing U.S. involvement in the war on the side of the Allies, agrees to pay indemnities and guarantees that submarines will not sink passenger liners without warning.

1915 September-October The Allies again launch unsuccessful offensives in the Second Battle of Champagne and Third Battle of Artois. Casualties are more than 200,000 French, nearly 100,000 British, and 140,000 Germans. Sir Douglas Haig replaces French as commander of the BEF.

1915 September 5 Czar Nicholas II takes command of the Russian armies. Many consider it a grave mistake.

1915 September 6 On the Eastern Front, the German and Austrian "great offensive" has conquered all of Poland and Lithuania. Russia has lost 1 million men to date.

1915 September 18 The German occupation of Vilna climaxes a colossal 300 mile advance. Russian Grand Duke Nikolai skillfully keeps his armies intact, withdrawing in fairly good order, while evading German envelopment.

1915 September 24 Grand Duke Nikolai is unceremoniously relieved of command in Poland by the Czar and soon takes command in the Caucasus.

1915 October 6 Two armies, one Austrian and one German, drive south across the Serbian Sava-Danube border.

1915 October 11 Two Bulgarian armies strike west, one on Nis, the other on Skopje.

1915 Oct 12 British nurse, Edith Cavell, charged with espionage is executed by a German firing squad.

1915 October 13 The largest Zeppelin raid of the war kills 59 people in London.

1915 October 14 Britain and France declare war on Bulgaria.

1915 October 15 Sir Ian Hamilton is relieved at Gallipoli and replaced by General Sir Charles Monro, who soon directs a masterful evacuation.

1915 October 15 U.S. bankers arrange a $500 million loan to the British and French.

1915 October 15 Admiral Henning von Holzendorff visits Max Warburg at his home to ask his opinion on the economic impact of intensified U-boat warfare. Warburg tells him that unrestricted U-boat warfare will only draw America into the war. (Warburgs)

1915 October 18 The Italians, reorganized, reinforced, and supported by 1,200 guns strike once more at Gorizia and are again repulsed in the Third Battle of the Isonzo.

1915 October 21 Siegmund von Sebotendorff dies in Wiesbaden. His funeral is attended by Rudolf von Sebottendorff and his wife. (Wiesbaden Zeitung, November 23; Roots)

1915 November 7 The Italian liner Ancona, carrying 27 Americans, is sunk without warning by an Austrian submarine.

1915 November 13 Norman Hapgood in Harper's Weekly says that a sharp line separates Jews from Gentiles in America and concludes that antisemitic prejudice is becoming more distinct. "Americans do not deprive Jews of any rights," he wrote, "but they do not on the whole like them."

1915 November 22 Townshend attacks Ctesiphon, in Mesopotamia, but after 4 days of bitter fighting withdraws to Kut.

1915 November 25 The almost dormant Ku Klux Klan is revived in Atlanta, Georgia, by Colonel William J. Simmons.

1915 November Late in the month, the remnants of the Serbian army, accompanied by a horde of civilian refugees, reaches the Adriatic, pursued by the Austrians.

1915 November 30 Sabotage is suspected in an explosion at the DuPont munitions plant in Wilmington, Delaware.

1915 December Violent anti-war demonstrations break out in Berlin.

1915 December In an Allied conference at Chantilly, Joffre succeeds in obtaining agreement from Britain, Russia, Italy, and Romania that coordinated Allied offensives will be launched on the Western, Eastern, and Italian fronts, about June, when Russia should be ready.

1915 December 4 "To get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas," Henry Ford begins fitting out a "Peace Ship" on which he plans to travel to Europe to end the war. (Schlesinger I)

1915 December 6 Töpfer, Rüttinger's successor in the Nuremberg Germanenorden province, writes Julius Rüttinger complaining that the brothers are now weary of the ritual, ceremony and banquets, which Pohl seems to regard as the main purpose of the Order. (Roots)

1915 December 7 President Wilson asks for a standing army of 142,000 and a reserve of 400,000.

1915 December 7 General Townshend at Kut, in Mesopotamia, is besieged by the Turks.

1915 December 10 After suffering extremely heavy casualties, the bulk of the Allied troops and supplies at Gallipoli are evacuated by this date.

1915 December 31 Appalling losses have been suffered during 1915 on both sides: 612,000 Germans, 1,292,000 French, and 279,000 British. The year ends with no appreciable shift in the battle lines scarring the landscape from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps. Russian casualties on the Eastern Front are more than 2 million men, about half of whom had been captured. Combined German and Austrian casualties exceed 1 million.

1915 Sir Douglas Haig replaces Sir John French as the Commander-in-Chief of British forces.

1915 Albert Einstein, after a number of false starts, publishes his General Theory of Relativity, the definitive form of his general theory.

1915 Radical, antisemitic poet and journalist Dietrich Eckart returns to Munich after being gassed at the front.

1915 Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels coins the word Ariosophy. Its earliest mention is in Ostrara I, 82. (Roots)

1915 The Allied governments retain J.P. Morgan & Co. as their agent to handle purchases of war supplies in the United States. Thomas Lamont, of the House of Morgan, appoints Edward R. Stettinius, Sr. to oversee this vast operation. Stettinius soon becomes a partner, heading a special department that apportions British and French orders of war materiels among U.S. steel mills, powder plants, tool works and dozens of other industries.

1916 January 7 Germany notifies the U.S. State Department that it will abide by strict international rules of maritime warfare.

1916 January 8-9 The remaining 35,000 Allied troops at Gallipoli are secretly withdrawn without alerting the Turks. Allied casualties for the entire campaign are estimated at 252,000, with the Turks suffering about 251,000.

1916 January 10 General Francisco "Pancho" Villa, in an attempt to embroil the U.S. in the turmoil in Mexico, forces 18 American mining engineers off a train and shoots them in cold blood.

1916 January 11 General Yudenich, one of the most capable Russian commanders, advances from Kars toward Erzerum in the Caucasus.

1916 February 13 General Yudenich reaches Erzerum and breaks through its ring of forts in a 3-day battle (February 16).

1916 February 21 Following an enormous bombardment, the crown prince's German Fifth Army attacks the fortified but lightly garrisoned area around Verdun. The assault gains considerable territory, capturing a key position, Fort Douaumont. Joffre prohibits any further retreat and sends Gen. Henri Philippe Petain with reinforcements to defend the region.

1916 January 24 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a federal income tax is constitutional.

1916 March Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and 17 other Social Democrats are expelled from the party's Reichstag delegation for their radiacal extremism.

1916 March 6 The second German attack at Verdun, launched on the western face of the salient, is eventually checked by French counterattacks. For the remainder of the month, attacks and counterattacks litter the battlefield with corpses. The watchword for the defense becomes France's motto for the rest of the war: Ils ne passeront pas! ("They shall not pass!")

1916 March 9 Pancho Villa leads a raid into New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.

1916 March 11 The Italians launch the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. Like its predecessors, this battle is a succession of inconclusive conflicts.

1916 March 12 Russian General N. N. Baratov reaches Karind and advances on Baghdad.

1916 March 18 The Russians, responding to French appeals, launch a two-pronged drive in the Vilna-Naroch area as a counter to the German Verdun assault in the west. The Russian assault soon breaks down in the mud of the spring thaw, costing 70,000 to 100,000 casualties and 10,000 prisoners. German losses are about 20,000 men.

1916 March 24 German U-boats torpedo another passenger ship, the Sussex, and several more Americans are killed, despite Germany's guarantees of 1915.

1916 April Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and their associates found the radical Independent Socialist Party, commonly referred to as the Spartacus League.

(Rosa Luxemburg, while in prison (1916-18) for revolutionary activity writes the so-called Spartacus Letters.)

1916 April 9 The third German offensive at Verdun strikes both sides of the salient, but is checked by May 19.

1916 April 18 General Yudenich captures Trebizond (Trabzon), facilitating Russian logistical support

1916 April 20 The Lafayette Escadrille, a French squadron made up of American volunteers, flies in action for the first time on the Western Front.

1916 April 29 In Mesopotamia, General Townshend's besieged and starving force at Kut-el-Amara capitulates, surrendering 2,070 British and 6,000 Indian troops to the Turks. The British had already taken 21,000 casualties in a series of unsuccessful rescue attempts.

1916 Spring Prescott Bush, the father of future President George Bush, and Roland "Bunny" Harriman are chosen for membership in the elite Yale secret society known as Skull and Bones.

1916 May 9 President Wilson orders mobilization of U.S. troops along the Mexican border. This will lead Carranza, the Mexican president, to order U.S. troops out of Mexico.

1916 May 10 Germany announces abandonment of its extended submarine campaign. During this period Great Britain, seeking to maintain a blockade, illegally seizes American vessels with such frequency, that Wilson threatens to provide convoys for all American merchant ships to guarantee their neutrality rights.

1916 May 15 The Austrians begin a long-planned offensive in the Trentino area, catching the Italians unprepared.

1916 May 30 The German High Seas Fleet under Adm. Reinhard Scheer puts to sea, led by Hipper's scouting fleet--40 fast ships with a nucleus of five battle cruisers. Following well behind is the main fleet of 59 ships.

1916 May 30 Alerted by German radio chatter, the British Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe heads toward the Skagerrak. Leading is Beatty's scouting force of 52 ships, including 6 battle cruisers and 4 new super-dreadnoughts. Following behind is Jellicoe's main fleet of 99 vessels. Overall, the British have 37 capital ships: 28 dreadnoughts and 9 battle cruisers; the Germans had 27: 16 dreadnoughts, 6 older battleships, and 5 battle cruisers.

1916 May 31 At about 3:30pm, The Battle of Jutland, the most important naval engagement of the war begins. Fewer than four hours later the British have lost three battle cruisers, three cruisers, and eight destroyers; with 6,784 casualties. The Germans have lost only one old battleship, one battle cruiser, four light cruisers, and five destroyers; with 3,039 casualties. The Battle of Jutland is the end of an era: the last great fleet action in which both opponents slug it out within eyesight of one another. Yet neither side can claim a victory, and the German High Sea Fleet will not put to sea for the remainder of the war.

1916 June 1 Turkish commander Halil Pasha repulses a Russian attack at Khanikin in Mesopotamia.

1916 June 4 The Austrian spring offensive against Italy brings yet another appeal to Czar Nicholas for help. General Aleksei A. Brusilov, the commander of the Russian Southwestern Army Group, attacks along a 300- mile-long front. Well-planned and well executed, The Brusilov Offensive devastates the Austro-German line in two places and drives forward.

1916 June 5 British Minister of War, Lord Kitchener, dies when HMS Hampshire is sunk.

1916 June 5 An Arab revolt breaks out against the Turks in the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia. The revolt spreads to Palestine and Syria under the leadership of British archaeologist T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), a brilliant tactician who joins forces with Husayn Ibn Ali. Lawrence, with a force of only a few thousand Arabs, threatens the Turks' entire line of communications through Syria to the Taurus Mountains.

1916 June-September The Brusilov Offensive, although successful, demoralizes the Russians, and costs them one million men, significantlycontributing to the hardships and resentments that lead to the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

(Note: Austrian losses were even greater, and their defeat by the Russians was the single most important element in the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire.)

1916 June-July Renewed German assaults at Verdun almost break the French line, but the French hang on to their positions until demands for replacements on the Eastern Front drain 15 German divisions from Verdun.

1916 June 10 The Austrian drive in the Trentino area is halted by difficult terrain and arrival of Italian reinforcements. An Italian counteroffensive and the desperate need to rush troops to the Eastern Front causes the Austrians to withdraw to defensive positions. Italian casualties reach more than 147,000; Austrian 81,000.

1916 June 12 Rudolf Hes