Germany invades Poland, beginning the European war

In a Reichstag speech, Hitler threatened the “annihilation” of Jews in Europe if war came, using antisemitic conspiracy claims to frame Jews as a collective enemy. The speech is evidence of...

German troops occupied the Czech lands and established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Jewish residents came under Nazi rule; expansion of the Reich exposed more communities to discriminatory...

The German liner St. Louis left Hamburg carrying more than 900 mostly Jewish refugees seeking safety in Cuba. Cuban authorities denied entry to most passengers; the voyage exposed how immigration...

Britain’s White Paper capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years and proposed ending it thereafter without Arab consent. It constrained refuge as Nazi persecution escalated, within a colonial...

Cuban authorities denied landing to most passengers aboard the St. Louis, despite many holding documents they believed would admit them. After the ship was turned away from the United States, Britain,...

Reinhard Heydrich instructed security-police leaders to concentrate Jews in larger towns near rail lines and establish Jewish councils to implement German orders. These measures created conditions for...

Governor General Hans Frank ordered Jews aged ten and older in the General Government to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David. Forced identification marked people for segregation,...

The French-German armistice divided metropolitan France and left the Vichy government in control of colonial Algeria and the protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia. Nazi domination thus worked through...

The Vichy government promulgated a law defining Jews and excluding them from public service and several professions, without being directly ordered by Germany. Vichy officials used state...

Vichy annulled the 1870 Crémieux Decree, stripping most Algerian Jews of French citizenship and returning them to a subordinate legal status. This decision operated within French settler colonial rule...