Chronicle Volume 1935

At the end of March 1935, the British Foreign Secretary traveled to Berlin on his long-planned visit to hold disarmament talks with the National Socialist government. An event that had far-reaching consequences for the Jews living in the German Reich was underestimated and misunderstood internationally: In September 1935, the Reichstag passed the so-called Nuremberg Laws, which established a legal basis for anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews. Not least, the relatively favorable economic development legitimized the National Socialist system in the eyes of the German population. Unemployment in particular had fallen unusually sharply in international comparison since the catastrophic global economic crisis in the early 1930s. The reintroduction of a conscript army with a peacetime strength of 500,000 men took a correspondingly large number of potential job seekers off the streets. By building up the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe and a submarine fleet, the German government tore up the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which explicitly prohibited each of these steps.

The chronicle shows these events, but it also shows how people lived back then and brings history to life. This makes the 1935 Chronicle a unique gift.