Nazi state adopts hereditary-health sterilization law

President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor after conservative elites brokered a political deal. The appointment did not result from a majority vote for the Nazi Party, but gave it...

The SS opened Dachau near Munich, initially imprisoning political opponents and other people defined by the regime as enemies. The camp became a model for the concentration-camp system; the legal...

The Nazi Party and affiliated organizations staged a nationwide boycott of Jewish-owned shops, lawyers, and doctors. The action made exclusion visible in public space and foreshadowed the state-backed...

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service enabled the dismissal of Jewish civil servants and people labeled politically unreliable, with limited exceptions that were later...

Nazi student groups burned works by Jewish, socialist, liberal, and other writers in public ceremonies in Berlin and other cities. The spectacle linked cultural censorship to the regime’s wider...

The Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor defined Jews by ancestry, stripped them of full political citizenship, and criminalized relationships...

German forces entered Austria and the Nazi government annexed it. Austrian Jews were immediately exposed to a wave of public humiliation, dispossession, and coercive emigration; expansion carried Nazi...

Delegates from 32 countries met at Évian-les-Bains to discuss refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Most governments kept restrictive immigration rules, leaving Jews with few safe destinations;...

A German decree required passports issued to Jews to be marked with a red letter J, following pressure from other states seeking to identify Jewish refugees. The measure shows how Nazi persecution...

German authorities forcibly expelled thousands of Jews who held Polish citizenship, many of whom had lived in Germany for years. Poland initially refused many entry, leaving families stranded at the...