1933--Nazis come to power in Germany.

Social Darwinism underlying ideology--Henry Ford a contributor to Mein Kampf.

Key support from German industrialists like Krupps, Farbens

Himmler organizes SS based on Jesuit order, Hitler's cleansing machine.

1st people, communists, taken to concentration camps.

Hitler rejects all foreign debts.

10,000 join pro-nazi rally in Madison Sq. Garden.

1935--Passage of Nuremburg (Racial Purity) laws banning relations with Jews. Appealed to anti-semitism in Christianity and European Culture. 7th Congress of Comintern .

1936--Spanish Civil War begins.

Nazis enter Rhineland.

Axis formed.

Radio Priest, Fascist Father Coughlin in Michigan, gains mass audience.

1939--Hitler announces threat to eradicate European Jews

Nazis take Austria.

September--Germany invades Poland. All of Poland to be "resettled". Nazis win Spain.

Britain + France declare war on Germany.

1940--25,00 hold pro-nazi rally in madison Sq. Garden.

In Poland, all Jews ordered into ghettos.

Churchill becomes Prime Minister. France surrenders.

1941--June, Germany invades USSR. Soviets retreat.

September, Leningrad encircled, Nazis at Moscow.

SS begins work on exterminating 3 million Polish and 5 million Russian Jews. All camps (modeled on Dachau) important to German war production.

Some Jews, organized by Judenrat (collaborators) pay for the train trip to Auschwitz. Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

1942--September, Germans reach Stalingrad. Stalin orders, "Not one step back". Russian resistance halts Germans.

1943--January 31, Germans surrender at Stalingrad

February--Russians crush siege of Leningrad.

Germans begin permanent retreat in face of Red Army. Germans begin effort to hide genocide.

April 19, Warsaw ghetto uprising led by Jews and communists.

May 15, Comintern dissolved.

May 16, Nazis smash Warsaw ghetto uprising.

1944--Rommel Commits suicide. June 6, D-day.

1945--April 29, Hitler commits suicide. Soviets enter war on Japan. A-bomb employed. August, Japan surrenders . War criminals flee west, away from Russians

20 million Russians died. 6 million Jews died. Only 3,000 Jews remained in post-war Poland. About 500,000 Americans died. A few war criminals were tried at Nuremburg but many escaped to the west with assistance of Catholic church. (Warner von Braun, head of U.S. space program, for example. War criminal Kurt Waldheim later becomes head of the U.N) @Richard Gibson 7/94