1841: German economist Friedrich List publishes National System of Political Economy, espousing settlement farming and agricultural expansion eastwards along with economic industrialization manipulated by the state, and the establishment of a German-dominated European economic sphere as part of the solution to Germany's economic woes (predecessor ideas to Nazi imperialism).[1]
1856: French aristocrat and author Arthur de Gobineau publishes his An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races in which he divides the human species into three races, black, white, and yellow; arguing therein that racial distinctions form a clear and natural genetic barrier of sorts. Gobineau wrote that racial mixing would lead to chaos. While not an anti-Semite, his work is often characterized as philosemitic (since he wrote positively about the Jews), but it is still considered an early manifestation of scientific racism. Historian Joachim C. Fest, in his biography of Hitler, claims that Arthur de Gobineau's negative views on race mixing influenced Hitler and thereby, the ideology of Nazism.[2]
1870s: German chancellorOtto von Bismarck promotes campaigns against Catholics (Kulturkampf) and, later, against the Social Democratic Party, in an attempt to unify Germans in common opposition to a minority. Later referred to as "negative integration," historians cite it as setting a tone of exclusion in early Germany, which had a lasting influence on later German nationalism.[3]
1882: The Linz Program, one of the most notable expressions of early German nationalism in Austria, is published. The program advocates a break with the Habsburg monarchy, the full Germanization of Austria and its annexation to Germany as a single nation. Ironically, several of its authors were Jews.
1888: German jurist and international law reformer, Franz von Liszt argues that criminal characteristics are innate as opposed to being determined by a person's social environment and coins the term, Criminal Biology,[4] a theory that would later influence Nazi anthropologists and racial hygiene proponents in their justification for sterilization and euthanasia.
2 August: Adolf Hitler receives permission to enlist; joins the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment in Munich.
30 October: Adolf Hitler is transferred to regimental staff as a runner.
1 November: Adolf Hitler is promoted to Gefreiter, the equivalent of a senior private or corporal.
1916
Eugenicist Madison Grant publishes The Passing of the Great Race, which promotes the genetic supremacy of the Nordic race while warning of its racial decline, a treatise quickly embraced by members of the German racial hygiene movement.
7 November: 100,000 workers march on the Royal House of Wittelsbach. Kaiser Wilhelm II flees.
8 November: All 22 of Germany's lesser kings, princes, grand dukes, and ruling dukes have been deposed. Kaiser Wilhelm told to abdicate.
9 November: Emil Eichhorn, radical leftist of the Independent Socialists, leads an armed mob and seizes the HQ of Berlin; Kaiser Wilhelm consents to abdicate; Social Democrats demand government from Prince Max; Friedrich Ebert assumes the chancellery; First German Republic established.
19 November: Hitler discharged from hospital at Pasewalk.
25 December: German first World War ex-servicemens' organization, Der Stahlhelm founded by former German Army reserve officer and industrialist Franz Seldte in Magdeburg.
Mid-December: First modern Freikorps unit formed, the Maercker Volunteer Rifles.
1919
January: Independent Socialists and Spartacist League staged large protests, known as the Spartacist uprising; sections of Berlin occupied; decision made for the National Assembly to meet in the city of Weimar instead of Berlin.
12 August 1919: The Weimar Constitution is announced.
12 September 1919: Adolf Hitler attends a meeting of the German Workers' Party (DAP) in the Sterneckerbräu in Munich and joins the party as its 55th member.[6][7] In less than a week, Hitler received a postcard stating he had officially been accepted as a party member.[8]
16 October 1919: Hitler's first pre-arranged public speech as a member of the DAP takes place in the Hofbräukeller.
Late fall: Freikorps fight the Red Army in the Baltic, eventually retreat in chaos; first Silesian uprising, in which many Freikorps see combat.
31 March: Adolf Hitler mustered out of the army.[13]
April: Government stops paying Freikorps units.
3 April: 21 different Freikorps units, under the command of General Baron Oskar von Watter, end the Ruhr Uprising in five days; thousands killed, including summary execution of prisoners by Freikorps.
10 May: Dr. Joseph Wirth and Walter Rathenau announce their "Policy of Fulfillment"; not received well by nationalist groups.
Hermann Erhardt forms Organisation Consul, a paramilitary group, out of former members of his banned Freikorps.
Eugen Fischer, Erwin Baur, and Fritz Lenz publish the standard work of German racialism, Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene, a work which served as a basis for the Nazi racial hygiene policies and their euthanasia campaign.[14]
February 1921: highly effective at speaking to large audiences – Hitler spoke to a crowd of over 6,000 in Munich.[9]
28 July: Adolf Hitler is elected chairman of the NSDAP with only one dissenting vote. Executive Committee of the party is dissolved. Party Founder Anton Drexler is made "Honorary Chairman" and resigns from the party soon after. Hitler soon begins to refer to himself as "Führer" (Leader).[15]
August 1921: NSDAP party membership was recorded at 3,300.[9]
The Prussian State Health Commission for Racial Hygiene works to centralise the institute's research concerning the practical application of racial hygiene, eugenics and anthropology.[16]
12 January: Adolf Hitler sentenced to three months for disturbance of 14 September 1921.
28 January: First Nazi Party Day held under the slogan Germany Awake in Munich.
February: Reichsbank buys back RM; stabilizes RM at 20,000 to US$1
4 May: RM 40,000 = US$1
27 May: Albert Leo Schlageter, a German freebooter and saboteur, executed by a French firing squad in the Ruhr. Hitler declared him a hero that the German people was not worthy to possess.
1 June: RM 70,000 = US$1
30 June: RM 150,000 = US$1
1-7 August: Inflation became hyperinflation: RM 3,500,000 = US$1
16 November: Hitler first speaks at Berlin Sportpalast, Germany's largest venue.
1929
January: Heinrich Himmler appointed chief of the SS. He begins to transform it into a powerful organization
2 August: "Party Day of Composure" occurs in Nuremberg
16 October: Liberty Law campaign officially begins. The Nazi Party joins a coalition of conservative groups under Hugenberg's leadership to oppose the Young Plan.
22 December: The Liberty Law referendum is defeated. Hitler denounces Hugenberg's leadership parlance.
1930
September: Hitler at trial of 3 SA Lieutenants disavows the SA goals of replacing the army and hence appeases the army.
14 September: In a milestone election, Nazis gain 6 million votes in national polling to emerge as the second largest party in Germany.
11 October: Harzburg Front formed of coalition between DNVP, Stahlhelm, and Nazi Party
Himmler recruits Reinhard Heydrich to form the 'Ic Service' (intelligence service) within the SS; later in 1932 it was renamed the Sicherheitsdienst (SD).
December: Unemployment reaches 5.6 million in Germany as people become more and more disillusioned with the German government.
1932
13 March: Hitler convincingly defeated by Hindenburg in first round of German presidential election.
10 April: Hindenburg re-elected Reichspräsident in run-off election with 53% of the vote. Hitler gains 37% and the Communist candidate Thälmann gains 10.2%.
13 April: The SA and SS are banned by Chancellor Brüning.
30 May: Chancellor Brüning (Center) leaves office and is replaced by Franz von Papen.
31 July: Reichstag election: Nazi Party becomes the largest with 13.7 million votes (37.3%) and 230 out of 608 seats.
9 August: Konrad Piecuch, a Polish communist activist who took part in Silesian Uprisings against German rule is murdered in Germany by SA; Hitler defends the murderers in German press.
6 November: Reichstag election: Nazi Party loses ground with 11.7 million votes (33.1%) and 196 out of 584 seats.
17 November: Papen resigns but stays on as head of a caretaker cabinet.
28 February: Hitler awarded emergency powers under the presidential decree, Law for the Protection of People and State ("Reichstag Fire Decree"), the process of exerting totalitarian control over Germany, begins. Over the next five months, the Nazis systematically force all opposition political parties to shut down.
5 March: Reichstag Election results in slim majority for Hitler's coalition, though not a majority for the Nazi Party, which polls 17.2 million votes (43.9%) and wins 288 seats.
24 March: Enabling Act, passed with help of Catholic Center Party, effectively hands the legislative powers of the Reichstag over to the Chancellor for a period of four years. Act permits Chancellor and cabinet to issue laws without a vote of Parliament and to deviate from the Constitution. Process of Gleichschaltung begins.
6 July: At a gathering of high-ranking Nazi officials, Hitler declares the success of the National Socialist, or Nazi revolution.
11 July: The law of 8 July dissolving the second chamber of the Prussian legislature, the Prussian State Council, and creating a reconstituted Prussian State Council as an advisory, non-legislative body comes into effect. The Council President is Hermann Göring and it holds its first session on 15 September.
14 July: "Law Against the Formation of Parties" proclaims the Nazi Party "the only political party in Germany" and all others are banned. The Reich Chamber of Film is established by the "Law for the Establishment of a Temporary Film Chamber."
14 October: Germany officially withdraws from the League of Nations. The Reichstag is dissolved and an election is scheduled for 12 November. Also, all state Landtage are dissolved but no elections are scheduled.
9 November: Freikorps symbolically pledge allegiance to Hitler in a huge ceremony.
12 November: Reichstag election results in the Nazis polling 39.6 million votes (92.1%) and winning all 661 seats in the new single-party state.
30 November: The Gestapo, which had only previously existed in Prussia is given authority throughout Germany.
November: As part of the "war on drugs", the Reichstag passes a law allowing the imprisonment of drug addicts for up to two years, a period that could be extended indefinitely by legal decree.[18]
1 December: "Law to Secure the Unity of Party and State" is enacted, making the Nazi Party a public corporation. Party courts were made official legal institutions of the State and any crime committed against the Party now was a crime against the State. Police, public prosecutors and courts were obligated to provide the Party and the SA with administrative and legal information and investigatory assistance.
Fall: Hitler reveals to his close associates a plan to annex Western Poland and create a ring of puppet states around Germany without any policies of their own[19]
11 April: Pact of the Deutschland: Hitler persuades the top officials of the army and navy to back his bid to succeed Hindenburg as president, by promising to "diminish" the three-million-man-plus SA and greatly expand the regular army and navy.
20 April: The Gestapo is transferred from Göring to Himmler and Heydrich, who begin to integrate it into the SS.
16 May: German officer corps endorses Hitler to succeed the ailing President Hindenburg.
17 June: Reich Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner also becomes Prussian Minister of Justice, uniting positions in a dual mandate.
30 June – 2 July: Night of the Long Knives or Blood Purge: On pretext of suppressing an alleged SA putsch, much of the brownshirt leadership, including Ernst Röhm, are arrested and executed. Kurt von Schleicher, Gregor Strasser and other political enemies are murdered. Papen briefly imprisoned; between 150 and 200 were killed. The SS, formerly part of the SA, now comes to the forefront.[20]
13 July: Defending the purge, Hitler declares that to defend Germany he has the right to act unilaterally as "supreme judge" without resort to courts.
2 August: President Hindenburg dies. The previous day, the cabinet had enacted the "Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich". This law stated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of Reich President would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the Chancellor.[21] The decree is illegal but goes unchallenged. The armed forces swear a new oath to Hitler, personally.[22]
^Woodruff Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 30–31, 36, 78–79.
^Joachim Fest, Hitler (Orlando, FL.: Harcourt, 2002), pp. 210–211.
^Childers, Thomas (2001). "The First World War and Its Legacy". A History of Hitler's Empire, 2nd Edition. Episode 2. The Great Courses. Event occurs at 06:37-11:02. Retrieved 27 March 2023.
^Anton Weiss-Wendt and Rory Yeomans, eds., Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938–1945 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2013), p. 6.
^ a bKershaw 2008, p. 82.
^Stackelberg 2007, p. 9.
^Mitcham 1996, p. 67.
^Kershaw 2008, pp. 75, 76.
^ a b c dKershaw 2008, p. 89.
^Kershaw 2008, p. 87.
^Zentner & Bedurftig 1997, p. 629.
^Shirer 1981, p. 37.
^Kershaw 2008, p. 93.
^Beno Müller Hull, "Human Genetics in Nazi Germany", in Medicine, Ethics and the Third Reich, edited by John J. Michalczyk (Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1994), pp. 27–33.
^Kershaw 2008, p. 83.
^Gretchen E. Schafft, From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), p. 47.
^Green, David B. (21 April 2016). "1933: Nazi Germany Outlaws Kosher Slaughter". Haaretz. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
^Norman Ohler (2017). Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 22. ISBN 978-1328664099.
^Majer, Diemut (2003). Non-Germans under the Third Reich: The Nazi judicial and administrative system in Germany and occupied Eastern Europe with special regard to occupied Poland, 1939–1945. JHU Press. pp. 188–189. ISBN 0801864933.
^Kershaw 2008, pp. 309–316.
^Shirer 1981, pp. 226–227.
^Martin Broszat, Hans Buchheim, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, and Helmut Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates, vol 1. (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967), p. 18.
^Kershaw 2008, p. 318.
General sources
Brustein, William (1996). "Appendix C: A Chrononology of Significant Weimar Events". The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party, 1925–1933. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 191–193. ISBN 978-0300065336. OCLC 185693383.
Kershaw, Ian (2008). Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393067576. OCLC 227016324.
Mitcham, Samuel W. (1996). Why Hitler?: The Genesis of the Nazi Reich. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. ISBN 978-0275954857. OCLC 34514893.
