July 1934
After the death of President Hindenburg, Hitler becomes “Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor” and abolishes the title of President.

1935
Hitler re-arms Germany with the aim of undoing the Treaty of Versailles and uniting all the German peoples. Military conscription is introduced.

March 1938
The Austrian Chancellor, leader of the Austrian Nazi Party, invites the German army to occupy Austria and proclaim a union with Germany.

September 1938
British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain meets Hitler in Germany. Britain, France and Italy sign the Munich Agreement which gives the Sudetenland (the German populated borderlands of Czechoslavakia), to Germany.

October 1938
German army occupies the Sudetenland.

November 1938
In what is historically referred to as Crystal Night, 7,500 Jewish shops are destroyed and 400 synagogues are burnt. The attack is portrayed as a spontaneous reaction to the death of a German diplomat by a Jewish refugee in Paris. It is actually orchestrated by the Nazi party who also kill many Jews and send 20,000 to concentration camps.

Crystal Night is considered to be the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust, which you can study in more depth. The mass killing represented by the Holocaust raises many questions concerning the development of European civilisation during the twentieth century.