Timeline of Nazi rule, occupation crimes and postwar trials
The chronology follows the path from the rise of the Nazi movement through legal exclusion, terror, aggressive war and genocide to selected postwar trials. It is not exhaustive. Entries are selected for their value in explaining how decisions, institutions, logistics and direct violence formed connected chains of responsibility.
Profile links without an English translation open the complete Polish archive.
From the rise of Nazism to the collapse of the regime
Key developments in Nazi rule, German aggression, occupation, persecution and mass murder.
Origins of the NSDAP
The German Workers’ Party was founded in Munich in January 1919, and Adolf Hitler joined it later that year. Renamed the NSDAP in February 1920, it adopted a programme based on racism, extreme nationalism and antisemitism. Hitler became party leader in 1921; exclusion and persecution of Jews were present in the movement’s ideology from the outset.
People: Adolf Hitler
Seizure of power and destruction of the rule of law
Hitler became Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933. The Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February suspended fundamental rights, and the Enabling Act of 23 March allowed the government to legislate without parliament. Arrests, torture and murder of political opponents accompanied the construction of the dictatorship.
People: Adolf Hitler · Hermann Göring · Joseph Goebbels · Wilhelm Frick
Dachau and the first campaigns of repression
Dachau concentration camp opened near Munich on 22 March 1933 and became a model for the camp system; Theodor Eicke shaped its brutal regulations. A centrally organised boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April began a succession of measures excluding Jews from public life. Public book burnings followed in May.
People: Heinrich Himmler · Theodor Eicke
The “Night of the Long Knives”
Between 30 June and 2 July 1934, Hitler ordered the murder of at least 85 people, including SA leaders around Ernst Röhm and other political opponents. The regime presented the killings as an act of “state self-defence” and legalised them retrospectively. Himmler’s SS emerged as the principal instrument of terror.
People: Adolf Hitler · Heinrich Himmler · Hermann Göring
Nuremberg Laws
On 15 September 1935, the regime enacted the Nuremberg Laws. Jews were deprived of Reich citizenship, while marriage and sexual relations between Jews and people classified as being “of German blood” were prohibited. Racist classification became a foundation of escalating persecution.
People: Wilhelm Frick · Julius Streicher
Annexation of Austria and the November Pogroms
Germany annexed Austria on 12 March 1938, followed immediately by public violence, humiliation and plunder directed against Jews. On 9–10 November the regime organised pogroms across Germany and Austria: synagogues burned, thousands of businesses and homes were attacked, at least 91 people were killed and about 30,000 Jewish men were imprisoned in concentration camps.
People: Arthur Seyss-Inquart · Joseph Goebbels · Reinhard Heydrich
Invasion of Poland and the beginning of occupation terror
Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, beginning the Second World War in Europe. From the opening days, Wehrmacht and Einsatzgruppen units committed war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war. Western Polish territories were annexed, while the General Government was established in central and southern Poland as an area of displacement, round-ups, forced labour and executions.
People: Adolf Hitler · Hans Frank · Arthur Greiser · Albert Forster
Intelligenzaktion — murder of Polish elites
From autumn 1939 into 1940, German security and paramilitary formations systematically targeted teachers, clergy, officials, physicians, landowners and community leaders in territories annexed from Poland. Einsatzgruppen and Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz units carried out mass shootings, including in the Piaśnica forests. These operations formed an early phase of the German campaign to destroy Polish leadership and society.
People: Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben · Albert Forster · Arthur Greiser
Beginning of “T4” — murder of disabled and ill people
In autumn 1939 Hitler signed an authorisation, backdated to 1 September, for the programme falsely described as “euthanasia”. Philipp Bouhler and Karl Brandt organised the murder of psychiatric patients and disabled people. About 70,000 were killed in the centralised gassing phase by August 1941; decentralised killings continued, and the programme supplied personnel and methods later used in the Holocaust.
People: Philipp Bouhler · Karl Brandt
Auschwitz concentration camp and ghettos in occupied Poland
The first transport of Polish political prisoners reached the newly established Auschwitz camp on 14 June 1940; Rudolf Höss became commandant. German authorities sealed the Łódź ghetto in April and the Warsaw ghetto in November. Starvation, disease, forced labour and executions killed large numbers of residents before and during later deportations.
People: Rudolf Höss · Richard Glücks · Hans Biebow · Hans Frank
AB-Aktion against Polish elites in the General Government
From May to July 1940, the German administration and police conducted the AB-Aktion against the Polish intelligentsia and other groups classified as potential leaders of resistance. Thousands were murdered at concealed execution sites, including Palmiry, while others were sent to concentration camps. Hans Frank authorised the policy and Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger commanded the SS and police apparatus.
People: Hans Frank · Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger
Invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppen mass shootings
Germany attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Einsatzgruppen A–D, assisted by Order Police battalions and local collaborators, murdered Jews, Roma, psychiatric patients and Soviet officials in mass shootings; by 1943 their victims numbered more than one million. About 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war also died in German custody through starvation, disease and execution.
People: Reinhard Heydrich · Otto Ohlendorf · Kurt Daluege · Alfred Rosenberg · Erich Koch
Hunger Plan and criminal Wehrmacht orders
German planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union accepted mass starvation as a consequence of diverting food to the Reich. Herbert Backe helped formulate the Hunger Plan. The Commissar Order and other criminal directives, including Walther von Reichenau’s Severity Order, integrated the Wehrmacht into a war of annihilation and antisemitic violence.
People: Herbert Backe · Wilhelm Keitel · Walter von Reichenau · Erich von Manstein
Babi Yar
On 29 and 30 September 1941, Sonderkommando 4a under Paul Blobel, with forces under Friedrich Jeckeln’s authority, shot 33,771 Jewish women, men and children in the Babi Yar ravine near Kyiv. German units murdered tens of thousands of further victims there in subsequent months.
People: Paul Blobel · Friedrich Jeckeln
Early mass killings by poison gas
In September 1941 the SS used Zyklon B at Auschwitz to murder Soviet prisoners of war and sick prisoners in experimental gassings. On 8 December the Kulmhof killing centre at Chełmno nad Nerem began operating, murdering Jews from the Wartheland in gas vans. Systematic killing by gas now joined mass shooting as a central method of the Holocaust.
People: Rudolf Höss · Arthur Greiser · Wilhelm Koppe
Genocide of Roma and Sinti
Nazi Germany and its allies persecuted and murdered Roma and Sinti alongside the Holocaust of Europe’s Jews. Einsatzgruppen shot Roma in the occupied East, while tens of thousands were confined in ghettos and camps. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the SS murdered about 4,300 remaining prisoners in the so-called Gypsy family camp on 2–3 August 1944. Overall estimates vary substantially and remain the subject of research.
People: Heinrich Himmler · Rudolf Höss · Arthur Nebe
Wannsee Conference — 20 January
At a villa on Lake Wannsee, Reinhard Heydrich chaired a meeting of senior officials to coordinate the deportation and murder of Europe’s Jews. Adolf Eichmann prepared the minutes. The conference did not begin the Holocaust, which was already under way; it coordinated the participation of ministries and agencies in its Europe-wide implementation.
People: Reinhard Heydrich · Adolf Eichmann · Heinrich Müller
Operation Reinhard
The Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka killing centres began operating in 1942 to murder Jews from the General Government. Odilo Globocnik directed the operation and Christian Wirth supervised its killing centres. During the mass deportation from the Warsaw ghetto in summer 1942, about 265,000 Jews were sent to Treblinka and murdered. Estimates for the full operation are approximately 1.7–1.8 million murdered people.
People: Odilo Globocnik · Christian Wirth · Franz Stangl · Heinrich Himmler
Deportations of Jews from Western and Southern Europe
From 1942, officials attached to Adolf Eichmann’s office organised deportations from occupied Western and Southern Europe. The Vél d’Hiv round-up in Paris and transit camps such as Drancy, Westerbork and Mechelen became stages on the route to Auschwitz. Theodor Dannecker and Alois Brunner coordinated transports within police systems led by officials including Karl Oberg and Hanns Albin Rauter.
People: Theodor Dannecker · Alois Brunner · Karl Oberg · Hanns Albin Rauter · Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Attack on Heydrich and German reprisals — Lidice
Czechoslovak parachutists fatally wounded Reinhard Heydrich in Prague on 27 May 1942; he died on 4 June. German reprisals destroyed Lidice on 10 June: 173 men were shot, women were deported to Ravensbrück and most children were murdered. Ležáky was also destroyed. Karl Hermann Frank was a leading authority in the terror that followed.
People: Reinhard Heydrich · Karl Hermann Frank
Aktion 1005 — destruction of evidence
The SS used Sonderaktion 1005 to conceal mass murder. Prisoners forced into special detachments opened mass graves and burned the bodies of people killed in shootings and killing centres. Paul Blobel, formerly commander of Sonderkommando 4a at Babi Yar, directed the operation. The effort destroyed evidence and murdered many of the forced labourers but did not erase the documentary record.
People: Paul Blobel
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Facing final liquidation, fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization and Jewish Military Union resisted German SS and police forces from 19 April 1943. German units suppressed the uprising by 16 May and burned the ghetto building by building. About 13,000 Jews died there, while tens of thousands were deported to killing centres and forced-labour camps.
People: Heinrich Himmler · Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger
Ghetto liquidations and Operation “Harvest Festival”
German forces liquidated ghettos across occupied Poland and the East in 1943, murdering residents locally or deporting them to killing centres. On 3–4 November, during Operation Erntefest, SS and police units shot about 42,000 Jews at Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki in the largest single German mass-shooting operation of the war.
People: Heinrich Himmler
Generalplan Ost and displacement from the Zamość region
Generalplan Ost envisaged the expulsion, exploitation and destruction of millions of people to make territory available for German settlement; Konrad Meyer worked on its planning basis. In the Zamość region, German authorities displaced about 110,000 Poles from 297 villages between November 1942 and March 1943. Families were separated, children subjected to racial selection, and many people sent to Auschwitz or forced labour.
People: Heinrich Himmler · Odilo Globocnik · Konrad Meyer · Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger
Criminal medical experiments
SS physicians conducted coercive and often lethal experiments on concentration-camp prisoners. Karl Gebhardt and Herta Oberheuser carried out sulphonamide and bone experiments at Ravensbrück; Carl Clauberg conducted sterilisation experiments, while Josef Mengele selected victims for experiments at Auschwitz. Wolfram Sievers administered Ahnenerbe projects including the murder of people for a skeleton collection. Karl Brandt occupied a senior coordinating position in the medical apparatus.
People: Karl Gebhardt · Herta Oberheuser · Carl Clauberg · Josef Mengele · Wolfram Sievers · Karl Brandt
Destruction of Hungarian Jewry
After Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, Adolf Eichmann’s unit worked with Hungarian authorities to organise deportations. Between 15 May and 9 July, about 440,000 Jews were deported, most to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the majority were murdered soon after arrival. SS physicians, including Josef Mengele, conducted selections on the arrival ramp.
People: Adolf Eichmann · Rudolf Höss · Josef Mengele
Warsaw Uprising and crimes against civilians
During the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising from 1 August to 2 October 1944, German forces committed mass war crimes against civilians. Tens of thousands were murdered in Wola during the opening days, including by Oskar Dirlewanger’s formation. After the surrender, German authorities expelled the population and systematically destroyed the city.
People: Oskar Dirlewanger · Heinrich Himmler
Death marches
As the fronts approached, the SS evacuated concentration camps into the interior of the Reich. In January 1945 about 56,000 Auschwitz prisoners were forced west on foot in winter conditions; guards murdered people unable to continue. Tens of thousands died during marches and transports from evacuated camps.
People: Richard Glücks
Liberation of camps, German surrender and collapse of the regime
The Red Army liberated Auschwitz on 27 January 1945; in spring, Allied forces reached camps including Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Mauthausen and documented the crimes. Hitler died by suicide on 30 April and Goebbels the following day. Germany surrendered unconditionally on 8 May. Himmler killed himself after capture, while other leaders entered Allied custody.
People: Adolf Hitler · Joseph Goebbels · Heinrich Himmler
Postwar trials and accountability
Selected proceedings that reconstructed different levels of responsibility and also exposed the limits of postwar justice.
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg
From 20 November 1945, the International Military Tribunal tried major German war criminals for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Its judgment of 1 October 1946 imposed twelve death sentences, including one on Martin Bormann in absentia. Hermann Göring died by suicide before execution; ten other condemned defendants were executed on 16 October. The trial became a foundation of modern international criminal law.
People: Hermann Göring · Joachim von Ribbentrop · Wilhelm Keitel · Ernst Kaltenbrunner · Alfred Rosenberg · Hans Frank · Wilhelm Frick · Julius Streicher · Fritz Sauckel · Alfred Jodl · Arthur Seyss-Inquart · Martin Bormann
Subsequent Nuremberg Trials
Twelve proceedings before United States military tribunals examined doctors, jurists, SS economic administrators, Einsatzgruppen commanders, ministries, industrialists and military leaders. Karl Brandt, Karl Gebhardt, Oswald Pohl, Otto Ohlendorf and Paul Blobel were among those sentenced to death. The records documented the role of professional, economic and bureaucratic elites in Nazi crimes.
People: Karl Brandt · Karl Gebhardt · Oswald Pohl · Otto Ohlendorf · Paul Blobel · Hans Lammers
Trials before Poland’s Supreme National Tribunal
In seven proceedings, the Supreme National Tribunal tried perpetrators of crimes committed in occupied Poland. Arthur Greiser, Amon Göth and Rudolf Höss were executed; Albert Forster was sentenced to death in 1948 and executed in 1952. The tribunal also tried members of the Auschwitz staff. Separately, a court in Łódź convicted and sentenced Hans Biebow to death.
People: Arthur Greiser · Amon Göth · Rudolf Höss · Hans Biebow · Albert Forster
Trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem
Captured in Argentina in May 1960, Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Jerusalem on 11 April 1961 for his role in organising deportations and the Holocaust. Testimony from more than one hundred survivors brought victims’ experiences to an unprecedented international audience. The court sentenced him to death in December 1961; he was executed on 1 June 1962.
People: Adolf Eichmann
Frankfurt Auschwitz trial
From 20 December 1963 to August 1965, proceedings in Frankfurt am Main examined 22 former members and functionaries of the Auschwitz complex. About 360 witnesses testified, including many survivors. The judgments included life and fixed-term prison sentences, while the trial confronted West German society with crimes that had long been marginalised in public discussion.
People: Josef Mengele
Trial of Franz Stangl in Düsseldorf
Franz Stangl, former commandant of Sobibór and Treblinka, was extradited from Brazil in 1967 and tried in Düsseldorf in 1970. On 22 December he was sentenced to life imprisonment for aiding and abetting the murder of at least 400,000 people at Treblinka. He died in prison in June 1971.
People: Franz Stangl
Occupied Poland — wave 3 research cluster
A complementary chronology of operations, places and events connected with profiles added in wave 3.
Intelligenzaktion
German operations directed against Polish political, social, religious and professional elites, carried out regionally by the Security Police and SD, SS, police and Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz.
People: Werner Best · Lothar Beutel · Ernst Damzog · Udo von Woyrsch · Rudolf Tröger · Emanuel Schäfer
Sources: przystanekhistoria.pl · encyclopedia.ushmm.org
Operation Tannenberg
A Security Police operation prepared before the invasion of Poland to identify, locate, arrest and eliminate people classified as opponents of German occupation. It provided an operational framework for Einsatzgruppen activities in 1939.
People: Werner Best · Lothar Beutel · Ernst Damzog · Udo von Woyrsch · Emanuel Schäfer
Sources: poznan.ipn.gov.pl · edukacja.ipn.gov.pl
Intelligenzaktion Pommern
A regional complex of exterminatory operations in Pomerania, implemented by Einsatzkommando 16, SS formations, Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz and police under district authorities.
People: Richard Hildebrandt · Rudolf Tröger · Friedrich Class · Kurt Eimann
Sources: przystanekhistoria.pl · muzeumpiasnickie.pl
AB-Aktion
An extraordinary campaign of repression in the General Government directed against Polish elites and groups considered capable of organising resistance. Civil administration, the Security Police and SD, and other police forces implemented it.
People: Josef Meisinger · Ludwig Hahn · Otto Wächter · Max Daume
Sources: edukacja.ipn.gov.pl · palmiry.muzeumwarszawy.pl
Piaśnica mass-execution sites
A complex of execution sites in the Piaśnica forests linking Einsatzkommando 16, SS-Wachsturmbann Eimann, Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, police and district authorities.
People: Richard Hildebrandt · Rudolf Tröger · Friedrich Class · Kurt Eimann
Sources: muzeumpiasnickie.pl · konferencja.isppan.waw.pl
Palmiry mass-execution site
A site where German forces murdered political prisoners and members of Polish elites from the Warsaw District, closely connected with the AB-Aktion and Pawiak prison.
People: Josef Meisinger · Ludwig Hahn · Walter Stamm
Sources: palmiry.muzeumwarszawy.pl · ofiary.ipn.gov.pl
Displacement from the Zamość region
A programme of forced displacement, racial selection, separation of families, deportation and German settlement, implemented by the SS, police, Central Resettlement Office and occupation administration.
People: Hermann Krumey · Richard Wendler · Werner Lorenz · Otto Hofmann
Sources: ipn.gov.pl · majdanek.eu · lekcja.auschwitz.org
Wola Massacre
A series of mass crimes against civilians in Warsaw’s Wola district during the first days of August, committed by SS, police and auxiliary formations while suppressing the Warsaw Uprising.
People: Heinz Reinefarth · Alfred Spilker · Ludwig Hahn
Sources: ipn.gov.pl · muzeumwarszawy.pl
Crimes in Warsaw hospitals during the Uprising
Documented murders of patients and staff and violent expulsions from hospitals in several Warsaw districts. The category does not collapse the distinct sites, units and chains of command into one event.
People: Heinz Reinefarth · Paul Otto Geibel · Bronislav Kaminski
Sources: edukacja.ipn.gov.pl · encyclopedia.ushmm.org
Dulag 121 Pruszków and the expulsion of Warsaw’s population
A transit camp and central node in the expulsion, selection and onward deportation of Warsaw residents during and after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.
People: Paul Otto Geibel · Heinz Reinefarth · Max Frauendorfer
Sources: encyclopedia.ushmm.org · eng.ipn.gov.pl
Wave 4 — chains of the occupation apparatus
Events connecting administrative decisions, regional police offices, plunder logistics and direct violence.
Bydgoszcz: transition from military rule to police terror
In autumn 1939, successive Wehrmacht, Einsatzgruppen, Gestapo and Selbstschutz structures formed an interconnected but institutionally distinct system of arrests, selections and executions.
People: Walter Braemer · Jakob Lölgen · Rudolf Tröger
Order establishing the Łódź ghetto
A connected mechanism involving the regional government, municipal administration, ghetto administration and Gestapo: from creating and isolating the ghetto to exploitation, plunder and deportations to Kulmhof.
People: Friedrich Uebelhoer · Werner Ventzki · Hans Biebow · Otto Bradfisch · Günter Fuchs
Sonderkommando Lange murders psychiatric patients
The special Security Police unit commanded by Herbert Lange murdered psychiatric patients in the Wartheland. Its personnel and experience later formed a core of the killing apparatus at Kulmhof.
People: Herbert Lange · Wilhelm Koppe · Arthur Greiser
Police summary court meets in Block 11 at Auschwitz
The Security Police body issued sentences in accelerated proceedings against people classified as enemies of the occupier. Sessions in Block 11 frequently ended in immediate execution.
People: Rudolf Mildner · Maximilian Grabner
Werterfassung seizes property after deportations from the Warsaw ghetto
The apparatus inventoried, sorted and transferred property stolen from deported and murdered residents. It formed an economic and logistical component of the ghetto’s liquidation.
People: Franz Konrad · Jürgen Stroop · Ludwig Hahn
Kulmhof reactivated and deportations from Łódź resumed
Sonderkommando Bothmann rebuilt the killing infrastructure in 1944, and deportations of residents of the Łódź ghetto to be murdered in gas vans resumed.
People: Hans Bothmann · Arthur Greiser · Otto Bradfisch · Günter Fuchs
Liquidation of Radogoszcz prison
Radogoszcz was a German prison in occupied Łódź marked by systematic violence, torture and deaths in custody. During its liquidation, the staff massacred prisoners and set the building on fire.
People: Walter Pelzhausen · Otto Bradfisch