Wartime Germany - Dates

Question 1

Georg Elser attempts to assassinate Hitler

Answer 1

November 1939

Question 2

France is invaded

Answer 2

May 1940

Question 3

Nazi order to remove crucifixes from walls in Catholic Bavaria meets opposition

Answer 3

April 1941

Question 4

Invasion of the Soviet Union; Operation Barbarossa begins

Answer 4

June 1941

Question 5

Bishop von Galen publicly challenges the T4 programme

Answer 5

August 1941

Question 6

Germany declares war on the USA

Answer 6

December 1941

Question 7

The Wansee Conference

Answer 7

January 1942

Question 8

German Sixth Army surrenders at Stalingrad (turning point in the war)

Answer 8

January 1943

Question 9

Goebbels’s ‘Total War’ speech

Answer 9

February 1942

Question 10

Executions of Hans and Sophia Scholl

Answer 10

February 1943

Question 11

Operation Flash fails to kill Hitler

Answer 11

March 1943

Question 12

Axis armies surrender in North Africa

Answer 12

May 1943

Question 13

D-Day

Answer 13

June 1944

Question 14

Bomb Plot fails to kill Hitler

Answer 14

July 1944

Question 15

Dresden destroyed

Answer 15

February 1945

Question 16

Bonhoffer executed

Answer 16

April 1945

Question 17

Invasion of Poland

Answer 17

September 1939

Question 18

Dispute between Frank and Himmler over deportation of German Jews to General Government

Answer 18

1939-41

Question 19

By this time, racial policy in the General Government was controlled by the SS (Frank had been marginalised)

Answer 19

1941

Question 20

‘Operation Reinhard’ (building extermination camps to send surviving Jewish ghetto inhabitants)

Answer 20

1941

Question 21

Economic difficulties in Germany which led to the death of million of Polish Jews (foreign labourers needed feeding, thus killed of Jews so they didn’t need to be fed)

Answer 21

1941-42

Question 22

Operation Barbarossa

Answer 22

June 1942

Question 23

In Kiev in this year over a 2 day period, 33,000 Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen

Answer 23

1941

Question 24

Goering gave Heydrich (Himmler’s deputy) an order to draft a plan for a ‘total solution of the Jewish Questions’

Answer 24

July 1941

Question 25

Himmler tells Rudolf Hess (commander of Auschwitz) that 'The Fuhrer has ordered the final solution to the Jewish problem, and we, the SS, are to implement that order'

Answer 25

mid-1941

Question 26

Wannsee Conference

Answer 26

January 1942

Question 27

Killings in Auschwitz had been planned since this date (thus Wannsee not necessarily a huge turning point)

Answer 27

August 1941

Question 28

Law for compulsory Sterilisation of the Mentally ill

Answer 28

1933

Question 29

A-socials began to be sent to concentration camps

Answer 29

1935

Question 30

Reich Office for Combating Homosexuality set up (by Himmler - 50,000 homosexuals arrested)

Answer 30

1936

Question 31

45,000 Jews forced to emigrate due to anti-Semitism following Anschluss

Answer 31

1938

Question 32

Kristallnacht (20,000 Jews sent to concentration camps)

Answer 32

Nov 1938

Question 33

Aryanisation begins (Goering driven due to 4 Year Plan, excluding Jews from economic life)

Answer 33

1938

Question 34

SS establish the Reich Central Office for Emigration (promoting emigration of Jews out of Europe)

Answer 34

January 1939

Question 35

Euthenasia Aktion T4 programme launched

Answer 35

1939

Question 36

Madagascar Plan draw up (removal of 4 million European Jews to Madagascar, eventually abandoned by Hitler in 1941)

Answer 36

1940

Question 37

Einsatzgruppen carry out systematic massacres of Jews in Russia

Answer 37

June 1941

Question 38

Hitler remarks that "The Jews with be hanged one after the other until Germany is completely cleansed"

Answer 38

1922

Question 39

Date of Himmler's appointment diary which states "meeting with Hitler about the Jewish Question: to be exterminated as partisans"

Answer 39

18 December 1941

Question 40

Hitler's 'New Year Message' (saying that Jews will be the 'victims of their own plots to exterminate Europe')

Answer 40

1942

Question 41

Chelmo begin using Gaswagens (mobile gas chambers) as a result of Himmler's influence

Answer 41

Dec 1941