A Timeline of the “Final Solution”
24 January 1939: Hermann Göring commissions Security Police Chief
Reinhard Heydrich is commissioned to effect the comprehensive emigration
of Jews from German territory
30 January 1939: Hitler gives “genocide prophecy” speech on the sixth
anniversary of his accession to power in 1933.
1 September 1939: German invasion of Poland; the “Euthanasia Decree”
(backdated to 1 September 1939)
October-December 1939: Ghettos are set up in Poland
January 1940: “Euthanasia” killings begin
9 April 1940: German invasion of Denmark and Norway
27 April 1940: Construction begins on the Auschwitz “Prisoner
of War Camp” (Auschwitz II)
10 May 1940: German invasion of France and the Low Countries
25 May 1940: Himmler proposes the “Madagascar Plan” to Hitler
22 June 1940: France capitulates
August 1940: The “Madagascar Plan” is scuttled
October 1940: The Warsaw ghetto is established
18 December 1940: Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa” Directive, authorizing
the invasion of the Soviet Union
13 March 1941: Military Directive No. 21 enacts Hitler’s assignment
of “special tasks for the preparation of political administration” to Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
26 March 1941: The Military and the Security Police reach an agreement
delimiting the responsibilities of “Special Task Forces” (Einsatzgruppen)
6 June 1941: Military guidelines stipulate summary execution of political
commissars of the Soviet Communist Party
22 June 1941: German invasion of the Soviet Union; mobile killing squads
begin open-air shootings
2 July 1941: Heydrich instructs SS and Police Leaders to execute of
all senior and middle-rank Communist functionaries and all “Jews in the
service of the Party or the State”; pogroms are to be encouraged
Late July 1941: Reinforcements increase the number of troops engaged
in open-air killing of Jews in the Soviet Union; systematic killings of
Jewish women and children begin; number of Jews killed increases dramatically.
31 July 1941: Göring commissions Heydrich to formulate a “final
solution to the Jewish problem”
3 September 1941: First experimental gassings with Zyklon-B at Auschwitz
I
29-30 September 1941: Mass executions at Babi Yar, near Kiev
15 October 1941: Deportations of German Jews to Minsk, Kovno (Kaunas),
and Riga; deportees are shot on arrival
Mid-October 1941: Encirclement battles at Vyazma and Bryansk
15 November 1941: German civilian authorities in the occupied territories
are instructed not to interfere with the actions of Einsatzgruppen.
29 November 1941: Invitations to the Wannsee Conference are sent out
5 December 1941: Soviet counteroffensive before Moscow
7 December 1941: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
8 December 1941: First gassings at Chelmno
9 December 1941: The Wannsee Conference is postponed indefinitely
9 December 1941: Date originally scheduled for the Wannsee Conference
8 January 1942: Invitations for the rescheduled Wannsee Conference are
sent out
20 January 1942: The Wannsee Conference
March-July 1942: Gassings begin at the “Operation Reinhard” camps:
Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka
4 May 1942: Gassings begin at Auschwitz
September 1942: Gassings begin at Majdanek
19 October 1943: “Operation Reinhard” is declared complete; Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka are closed down
27 November 1944: Himmler orders an end of gassings
7 May 1945: Germany surrenders