I’m continuing my WWII Timeline series with a look at April – June 1933 in this post.
A Timeline of WWII, Spring 1933
April 1, 1933
A week after Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany, he ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores. It was mostly ignored and called off after three days, but it was followed by a series of laws which robbed Jews of many rights.
April 7, 1933
“The Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service” was introduced. ‘Aryanism’ was made a necessary requirement in order to hold a civil service position. All Jews holding such positions were dismissed or forced into retirement.
In Nazi doctrine, Aryan meant a non-Jewish Caucasian, especially of Nordic stock.
April 11, 1933
The Nazis specifically defined non-Aryans with an official decree as “anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan…especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith.”
April 22, 1933
The Nazis enacted a law in which Jews were prohibited from serving as patent lawyers and from serving as doctors in state-run insurance institutions.
April 25, 1933
The Nazis enacted a law against the overcrowding of German schools, which placed severe limits on the number of young Jews allowed to enroll in public schools.
April 26, 1933
Hermann Göring created the Gestapo, the secret state police, in the German state of Prussia. Göring was the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, Plenipotentiary (a person having full power to take independent action on behalf of his government) for the Implementation of the Four Year (economic) Plan, and designated successor to Hitler.
The Gestapo would later be taken over by Heinrich Himmler and terrorize the continent of Europe.
May 6, 1933
The Civil Service law of April 7 was amended to close loopholes in order to keep out Jewish honorary university professors, lecturers and notaries.
May 10, 1933
German students from universities formerly regarded as among the finest in the world, gathered in Berlin and other German cities to burn books with unGerman ideas. Books by Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Jack London, H.G. Wells and many others went up in flames as students gave the Nazi salute.
At the Berlin book burning, which was accompanied by the singing of Nazi songs and anthems, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave a speech to the students, stating…
…The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path…The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death – this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – a deed which should document the following for the world to know – Here the intellectual foundation of the November (Democratic) Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise…
Included in the book burning were works by German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. One-hundred ten years earlier in 1823 in his work, Almansor: A Tragedy, Heine had predicted,
Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.
June 2, 1933
The law of April 22 was amended to prohibit Jewish dentists and dental technicians from working with state-run insurance institutions.
Sources:
This series of posts is based on a compilation of timelines from:
The History Place:
The National WWII Museum Interactive Timeline
Most recent post from the series:
© Cindy Farrar Bryan and The Arrowhead Club, 2018
The Arrowhead Club 