Chronology of a disaster

Submitted by cathy n on 20 March, 2007 - 2:34

1930: Slump hits Germany. Unemployment rises to three million. Heinrich Bruening of the Centre Party becomes Chancellor and takes emergency powers to rule by decree. Nazis get 18% of the vote in September 1930 elections (they had got only 2.8% in 1928).
1932: April: the Nazi militias, the SA and SS, are banned. May: Franz von Papen becomes Chancellor. June: he repeals the ban on the SA. Hundreds are killed or injured in street battles. July: he sacks the Social-Democratic state government in Prussia.
1933: January: President Hindenburg appoints Hitler as Chancellor. February: on pretext of Reichstag fire, constitutional freedoms suspended, thousands of Communists and Social-Democrats arrested. March: new elections, with CP and SPD banned from campaigning. Nazis get 44%. New parliament votes dictatorial powers to Hitler. April: “Day of Boycott” against Jews. May: despite offers by Social-Democrat trade unions to cooperate, Hitler takes over the unions, turns them into a state “Labour Front”, and sends union leaders to concentration camps.
1935: September: Nuremberg laws deprive Jews of civil rights.
1936: March: Hitler occupies the Rhineland zone demilitarised under the Treaty of Versailles after World War 1.
1938: March: Hitler annexes Austria. September: Hitler grabs the Sudeten areas of Czechoslovakia. November: “Kristallnacht”, organised pogroms against Jews throughout Germany.
1939: March: Hitler seizes rest of Czechoslovakia. August: Hitler-Stalin pact. September: Germany and USSR invade Poland. World war breaks out.
1942: Wannsee conference fixes details of mass slaughter of Jews. Up to six million killed.

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