Events, Verisoph

30 January 1933 Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany 0 cit. Adolf Hitler became Chancellor after the Depression shattered the Weimar Republic's centre parties and left millions jobless. The documented path ran from economic collapse to political extremism, the outcome of failed policy rather than any banker conspiracy. economy / politics ●●●●●

17 March 1933 Schacht returns to lead the Reichsbank under Hitler 0 cit. Hjalmar Schacht was reappointed President of the Reichsbank soon after Hitler took power. He put his financial skill to work funding the new regime's economic and military plans. economy / politics ●●●

1933 Nazi regime and total dictatorship 0 cit. Hitler turned a democracy into a totalitarian state that controlled the courts, press, and daily life and crushed all opposition. It became the most extreme case of the modern total state. politics / war ●●●●●

14 July 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany's forced sterilization law 0 cit. The Nazi Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, enacted in 1933, led to the forced sterilization of roughly 400,000 people deemed genetically unfit. The program drew directly on American eugenic laws and preceded the regime's mass murder of disabled people. politics / war ●●●●●

1933 to 1977 North Carolina Eugenics Board sterilizations 0 cit. North Carolina's Eugenics Board ordered the sterilization of about 7,600 people between 1929 and 1974, increasingly targeting poor Black women in the postwar years. The state began paying compensation to survivors in 2013. politics / society ●●●●

10 May 1933 The Nazi book burnings 0 cit. German students burn tens of thousands of books by Jewish, leftist, and 'un-German' authors, part of a campaign against so-called cultural Bolshevism. The archetypal image of a regime destroying speech it fears. culture / politics ●●●●

26 April 1933 Gestapo established as Nazi Germany's secret police 0 cit. Hermann Göring created the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo, initially in Prussia, to suppress political opposition to the Nazi regime. Under Heinrich Himmler it was absorbed into the SS security apparatus and given sweeping powers to arrest and detain people without judicial review, sending opponents to concentration camps. The Gestapo relied heavily on a network of civilian informants and became a defining instrument of Nazi terror. politics ●●●

27 February 1933 The Reichstag Fire is used to justify emergency powers contested 0 cit. A fire destroys the German parliament building weeks after Hitler becomes chancellor. The Nazi government blames Communists and uses the fire to persuade President Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree the next day, suspending civil liberties and enabling mass arrests of political opponents. Historians still debate exactly who set the fire, but its use as a pretext for emergency rule is documented fact, not conspiracy theory. politics ●●●

23 March 1933 The Enabling Act lets the Reichstag vote away its own power 0 cit. With Communist deputies already arrested and the chamber ringed by intimidating SA paramilitaries, the Reichstag passes the Enabling Act by the required two-thirds majority, allowing Hitler's cabinet to enact laws without parliamentary approval. It is the clearest documented case in modern history of a parliament legally dissolving its own authority, and it is the founding case study for later scholarship on how democracies collapse from within. politics ●●●

November 1933 Fiorello La Guardia elected mayor 0 cit. Fiorello La Guardia, running as a Fusion reform candidate against Tammany, was elected mayor of New York City. His three terms in office reduced Tammany's control over city jobs and contracts through civil service reform and federal relief programs that bypassed the machine's patronage system. politics ●●●

c. 1 March 1933 North Carolina Establishes Eugenics Board 0 cit. North Carolina created a state Eugenics Board with authority to approve sterilizations of people in state custody and, eventually, people receiving public welfare assistance outside institutions. Unlike many states, North Carolina's program grew after World War II and increasingly targeted poor women and Black women referred by county welfare departments and social workers, sterilizing more than 7,600 people before it ended. politics / society ●●

14 July 1933 Nazi Germany Passes Sterilization Law 0 cit. The Nazi government enacted the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, mandating compulsory sterilization of people with conditions including schizophrenia, epilepsy, and hereditary blindness or deafness. German eugenicists, including Eugen Fischer and Ernst Rudin, had studied American sterilization statutes and cited California's program in particular as proof such a law could be implemented at scale. The law took effect January 1, 1934, and roughly 400,000 people were sterilized under it. politics / science / war ●●●

27 February 1933 Reichstag Fire 0 cit. The German parliament building was set ablaze weeks after Hitler became chancellor, and the Nazi government blamed a lone Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, who was tried and executed. The fire was used to suspend civil liberties and consolidate Nazi power. Whether the Nazis themselves secretly set the fire as a false-flag pretext, or opportunistically exploited a fire genuinely set by van der Lubbe acting alone, has been debated by historians for decades and remains formally unresolved; this event should be treated as contested, not settled. politics / war ●●●

15 June 1933 National Defense Act amendments create the dual-status Guard 0 cit. Amendments to the National Defense Act created the National Guard of the United States as a distinct federal reserve component, so that Guard members simultaneously held membership in their state militia and in a reserve of the United States Army. The change let the president order Guard units into federal active duty without going through the older, more cumbersome militia-draft process. It fixed the modern dual state-federal legal status that still governs the Guard. politics / war ●●●

5 December 1933 Prohibition repealed, enforcement bureau dissolved 0 cit. Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment ended national Prohibition and, with it, the rationale for the Bureau of Prohibition, which was dissolved the following year. Its residual alcohol-tax functions passed to a Treasury unit that evolved into the Alcohol Tax Unit, the direct institutional ancestor of the later Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. economy / politics ●●

27 February 1933 Reichstag Fire and the emergency decree 1 cit. The Reichstag building burns and the Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe is arrested at the scene. The Nazis blame a communist plot and the next day issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, opening a wave of arrests. Historians still debate whether van der Lubbe acted alone or the fire served Nazi aims, but its use to crush opposition is clear. politics ●●●

23 March 1933 Enabling Act passed in Germany 1 cit. With communist deputies barred and SA men filling the hall, the Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, letting the cabinet make laws without parliament. The act gives Hitler dictatorial powers under a veneer of legality and marks the legal end of the Weimar Republic. politics ●●●●

1933 The 1933 identity cards fix ethnicity in law 1 cit. The Belgian administration carried out a census and issued identity cards that stamped every Rwandan as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa, often using crude measures like cattle counts and physical features. What had been a shifting social category became a fixed, inherited, state-recorded race that a person could not escape. These cards followed families for generations and were later used at roadblocks in 1994 to sort who would live and who would die. Scholars widely name this colonial race classification as the documented engine of later ethnic violence. politics / society ●●●

c. 1933 The documented driver was colonial policy, not any secret lodge unproven 2 cit. Fringe conspiracy writing sometimes blames Masonic or secret-society plots for Rwanda's ethnic engineering. There is no credible evidence for any such claim, and serious historians do not entertain it. The documented driver is plain and well-recorded: Belgian colonial administration and Church thinking turned a fluid social order into a racial hierarchy through census, identity cards, and Hamitic race theory. Naming a hidden lodge only distracts from the real, traceable chain of colonial policy. politics / society ●

1933 The International Relief Association is founded at Einstein's suggestion 0 cit. American activists set up the International Relief Association to help Germans suffering under Adolf Hitler's new regime, at the urging of Albert Einstein, who had just fled Germany himself. This body was the direct ancestor of the International Rescue Committee. Its first work was aiding anti-Nazi refugees, trade unionists and Jews. politics / society ●●●

1933 The Nazis weaponize the Jewish finance lie legendary 1 cit. Nazi propaganda made the myth of Jewish financial and world control a core message, casting Jews as the hidden power behind both banking and communism to justify persecution. This lie helped pave the road to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered. The trope of international Jewish finance is not a harmless exaggeration; it was central to the deadliest genocide of the modern era and is false in every part. politics / war ●●●

1933 The Estado Novo and the drive to hold the colonies 0 cit. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar builds an authoritarian regime, the Estado Novo, and binds its legitimacy to keeping the African empire. As other powers began to let their colonies go, Portugal recast Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea as overseas provinces and refused to give them up. politics ●●

August 1933 Leaving Moscow as Padmore breaks with the Comintern 0 cit. The Comintern dissolved the ITUC-NW and Padmore resigned from the Communist Party in protest, later attacked in the Soviet press. Kenyatta left the Soviet Union and returned to London in August 1933. Biographers read his Moscow period as more tactical than doctrinaire, and he never joined the Communist Party; how deep his communism ever ran is still debated. politics ●●

c. 1933 MI5 Keeps a File on Kenyatta 0 cit. British intelligence treated Kenyatta as a subversive to be watched, not an asset to be groomed. The Security Service (MI5) opened and kept a file on him, now in the KV 2 series at the National Archives, tracking his contacts with the Communist Party, the League Against Imperialism, and his 1932-33 study in Moscow. The surveillance, and the later rigged Kapenguria trial, are the documented evidence that the colonial establishment feared him rather than cultivated him, a point that cuts against the theory that the British quietly built his career from the start. politics / society ●●

c. 1933 MI5 opens a file on Jomo Kenyatta 0 cit. MI5 began tracking the Kenyan nationalist Jomo Kenyatta in the 1930s, when he lived in Britain and visited Moscow. His personal file in the released KV series runs across decades of surveillance. The future first president of Kenya was watched as a suspected subversive long before Britain negotiated the handover of power to him. politics / society ●●●

1933 Arrested by the Nazis and deported from Germany 0 cit. After Hitler took power in 1933, Padmore was arrested in Hamburg, held in prison, and then deported. The Nazi crackdown shut down his base of operations in Germany. He made his way to Britain, where he would spend most of the rest of his life. politics / society ●●

c. 1933 The Comintern winds down its anti-colonial work 0 cit. As Moscow shifted toward a popular front against fascism, it sought alliances with Britain and France and softened its attacks on their empires. The International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers was scaled back and effectively dissolved. Historian Leslie James argues that Padmore saw anti-colonial work being sacrificed to Soviet foreign policy, which drove his break. diplomacy / politics ●●●

20 February 1933 German industrialists back Hitler at a private meeting 1 cit. Three weeks after Hitler became chancellor, some two dozen leading German industrialists met privately with him and Hermann Goering. Hitler promised to crush the labor movement and rebuild the military, and the businessmen pledged large sums for the coming election. The meeting, arranged with Hjalmar Schacht, tied big German business to the new regime. economy / politics ●●●●

1933 German business pays into the Adolf Hitler Endowment 1 cit. After Hitler took power, major companies paid regular contributions into a fund known as the Adolf Hitler Endowment of German Industry. It channeled business money to the Nazi leadership on an ongoing basis. The arrangement bound German industry to the regime and bought a measure of quiet cooperation. economy / politics ●●

October 1934 to 1935 The Long March 0 cit. Chinese communist forces retreat some 9,000 kilometers from Jiangxi to Shaanxi under Nationalist attack. The march secures Mao Zedong's leadership and becomes the founding legend of Chinese communism. politics / war ●●●

19 June 1934 Communications Act of 1934 creates the FCC 0 cit. The Communications Act merged oversight of radio, telephone and telegraph under a new Federal Communications Commission. The FCC became the main federal regulator of American media. politics / technology ●●●●

c. 1934 to c. 1975 Sweden runs decades-long sterilization program 1 cit. Sweden forcibly or coercively sterilized around 60,000 people, mostly women, under eugenic and social policy. The program showed that eugenics took hold in democracies, not only under the Nazis. politics / society ●

November 1934 Marriner Eccles becomes head of the Federal Reserve 0 cit. Marriner Eccles, a Utah banker who backed government spending to fight the Depression, took charge of the Federal Reserve. Under the Banking Act of 1935 he reshaped the Fed into a stronger, more centralized institution. economy / politics ●●●

August 1934 Schacht becomes Minister of Economics and launches the New Plan 0 cit. Schacht took over the Economics Ministry and imposed the New Plan, using trade deals and exchange controls to steer resources toward rearmament. His management kept Germany's war buildup financed despite scarce foreign currency. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1934 Cult of personality around a leader 0 cit. Dictators such as Stalin built cults that portrayed the leader as wise, heroic, and almost superhuman. The personality cult became a common tool of personalist dictatorship. culture / politics ●●●

18 June 1934 Indian Reorganization Act 0 cit. Also known as the Wheeler-Howard Act, this law ended further allotment of tribal land, extended the trust period on existing allotments, and encouraged tribes to adopt formal constitutions and elected governments. It reversed decades of allotment policy but was imposed somewhat uniformly across tribes with very different governance traditions, and some tribes rejected it. It marked the first major reversal of federal assimilation policy since the 1880s. politics ●●

c. 1 January 1934 Nazi Eugenics Officials Praise the California Model 2 cit. Nazi officials and eugenicists publicly credited American sterilization laws as their inspiration. Dr. Falk Ruttke, a Nazi legal official, and Dr. Fritz Lenz both praised California's program, and a German eugenics researcher wrote to Human Betterment Foundation co-founder Paul Popenoe that his organization's work "had been studied with great interest by the National Socialist Government." Historian Stefan Kuhl documented extensive correspondence and personal exchanges between American and German eugenicists in this period. diplomacy / politics / science ●●

c. 10 July 1934 Stalin's secret police: OGPU and the NKVD 0 cit. The Cheka was reorganised through the GPU and OGPU in the 1920s, then folded into the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1934. Under Stalin the NKVD ran the Gulag labour camp system and carried out the mass arrests and executions of the Great Terror of 1937 to 1938. This period fixed the security service's reputation as a tool of state repression on a vast scale. The date shown marks the NKVD's consolidation, though the terror and camp system spanned many years. politics / society ●●

8 November 1934 Swiss banking secrecy is written into law 0 cit. The Swiss Banking Act made it a criminal offense for a bank to reveal client information, hardening a tradition of secrecy into national law. Over the following decades this helped make Switzerland a hub for hidden wealth and a template for offshore finance. Bank secrecy gave corporations and wealthy individuals a legal way to place money beyond the reach of their home governments. economy / politics ●●

1934 After the Crash, the SEC makes audits the law 0 cit. In response to the 1929 crash and the fraud exposed in the Depression, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission and required public companies to file audited financial statements. Independent audit stopped being a courtesy to investors and became a legal duty, which vastly expanded the accounting profession and its power. economy / politics ●●●

1934 Kuznets invents a measure for the whole economy 0 cit. The economist Simon Kuznets built the first national income accounts for the United States, giving government a single figure for the nation's output during the Depression. The work grew into Gross Domestic Product. Kuznets himself warned that the measure left out much of what matters and that the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from it, a caution often forgotten. economy / politics / science ●●●

1934 Independent schools and churches break from the missions 0 cit. In the wake of the circumcision crisis, Kikuyu founded their own bodies, the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association and the Kikuyu Karing'a Educational Association, along with independent churches such as the African Independent Pentecostal Church. These ran schools and worship free of missionary control and kept Kikuyu customs. The movement built an African-led alternative to mission education and helped shape later nationalist leadership. politics / religion / society ●●●

1934 Special Districts and the Neglect of the North 0 cit. The Special Districts Administration Ordinance of 1934 gave officials in the north sweeping powers of collective punishment, letting them seize the stock and restrict the movement of whole communities for the acts of a few. Combined with the closed-district system, it locked the region into policing and underdevelopment. The frontier's peoples entered independence far behind the rest of Kenya, and the unresolved anger helped drive the Shifta secession war of the 1960s, covered elsewhere. politics / war ●●

1934 The Special Districts Ordinance hardens the pass system 0 cit. The Special Districts (Administration) Ordinance formalised the closed-district regime: entering or leaving the north required a permit, and district officers held sweeping powers of collective punishment, stock seizure, and detention. The north was governed as a quarantined zone rather than a citizenry. This framework of passes and non-development shaped the region until independence and beyond. politics / society ●●●

1934 The Kikuyu Independent Schools Association is founded 0 cit. Out of the exodus grew the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association, which built and ran schools free of missionary control so Kikuyu children could gain a modern education without renouncing their customs. The independent schools spread quickly and became nurseries of literacy, self-reliance, and later nationalist leadership. They proved the community could educate itself outside the mission system. culture / politics / society ●●

February 1934 Breaks with Moscow and is expelled from the Comintern 0 cit. Padmore resigned his posts and was expelled from the communist movement in early 1934. He concluded that the liberation of colonized Africans, not the Moscow party line, had to come first. Historians including Leslie James and Hakim Adi note that the exact terms of the split are debated, but agree it turned him decisively toward independent Pan-Africanism. diplomacy / politics ●●●

1934 George Padmore breaks with Moscow 0 cit. George Padmore left the Communist movement after Moscow dissolved the Negro workers' organization he led, a step he saw as selling out Black liberation to court the imperial powers. He turned to Pan-Africanism and later mentored figures who would lead African states to independence. His break, set out in his book Pan-Africanism or Communism?, became a landmark case of a colonial radical abandoning Moscow. politics ●●

8 November 1934 Switzerland makes banking secrecy a crime 0 cit. The Swiss Federal Banking Act of 1934 made it a criminal offence for a bank to reveal a client's identity. The law turned discretion into a legal wall and cemented Switzerland's role as the world's private vault. A popular story that the law was written to shield Jewish savings from the Nazis has been challenged by historians, who trace it to an earlier French tax scandal. economy / politics ●●●

1934 Schacht engineers Nazi rearmament finance 0 cit. As Reichsbank president and economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht designed the financial machinery that funded German rearmament, including off-the-books credit instruments known as Mefo bills that hid the true scale of military spending. His skill kept the regime solvent while it rebuilt its forces. He was later tried at Nuremberg and acquitted. economy / politics / war ●●●

1934 Special Districts Ordinance entrenches separate rule in the north 3 cit. The Special Districts (Administration) Ordinance gave officials in the northern districts sweeping powers to restrict movement, seize livestock and detain people with little check. It formalised the closed-district system, treating the north as a security zone rather than a place to be developed. The framework shaped how the state dealt with Somalis for decades. politics / society ●●●

1934 The Talai clan is deported from the tea highlands 5 cit. Under the Laibons Removal Ordinance of 1934, the colonial government deported the Talai, the Kipsigis ruling clan whose orkoiik led resistance, away from the highlands to Gwassi in South Nyanza. The removal broke community leadership and cleared people from land wanted for settlement and tea. The Talai remained in detention and exile for decades. politics / society ●●●

8 December 1935 Hoare-Laval Pact 0 cit. Secret Anglo-French plan to end the Abyssinian crisis by giving much of Ethiopia to Fascist Italy. Its leak caused public outrage, the fall of both ministers, and lasting damage to the League of Nations. diplomacy / politics ●●

1 April 1935 Founding of the Reserve Bank of India 0 cit. The Reserve Bank of India begins operations in Calcutta as the central bank of British India, later moving to Bombay. Nationalized in 1949, it manages the currency and banking system of what becomes the world's most populous country. economy / politics ●●●●

15 September 1935 Nuremberg Laws enacted 0 cit. The Reichstag, convened at the Nuremberg party rally, strips Jews of German citizenship and bans marriage between Jews and other Germans. Nazi racial ideology becomes the law of the state. politics / society ●●●●

March 1935 Triumph of the Will 1 cit. Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will, released in 1935, staged the 1934 Nazi Party rally as monumental spectacle. It is studied as a landmark and a warning about the persuasive power of film propaganda. culture / politics ●●●

2 August 1935 The Government of India Act of 1935 0 cit. The act granted provincial self-government and expanded the Indian electorate while keeping ultimate power in British hands. It was the last major constitutional reform before independence. politics ●●●

15 September 1935 Nuremberg Laws codify Nazi racial hierarchy 1 cit. The Nazi regime stripped Jews of citizenship and banned marriage between Jews and other Germans, giving racial hygiene the force of law. The laws laid legal groundwork for persecution that led to the Holocaust. politics / society ●●●

16 September 1935 Morgan Stanley splits from J.P. Morgan 0 cit. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 forced banks to separate commercial and investment banking. J.P. Morgan stayed in commercial banking while partners founded the investment bank Morgan Stanley in September 1935. economy / politics ●●●●

1935 to 1976 Sweden's state sterilization program 0 cit. Sweden sterilized around 63,000 people, most of them women, under laws in force from 1935 to 1976, with many procedures coerced. The program showed that eugenic sterilization extended well beyond Nazi Germany into liberal welfare states. politics / society ●●●

1935 The Frankfurt School flees the Nazis to America contested 0 cit. After Hitler takes power, the Institute relocates and its members find refuge in the United States, several affiliating with Columbia University. Critical theory takes root in American academic life, the fact that later conspiracy theories would seize on and distort. culture / politics ●●●

c. 1935 The Nazis appropriate Norse runes and symbols 2 cit. Nazi Germany adopts Norse and Germanic runes, such as the SS sig-runes and the sun-wheel, as symbols of a mythic Aryan past, and the Ahnenerbe institute mined the myths for propaganda. The theft still shadows Norse symbols, which modern white-nationalist groups continue to misuse. The symbols are ancient; this political use is a documented distortion. politics / religion ●●●

1 July 1935 Bureau renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation 0 cit. The agency is officially renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Under Hoover, the FBI expands its jurisdiction over kidnapping, bank robbery, and organized crime, and cultivates a heavily promoted public image through radio, film, and press relationships Hoover personally managed. politics ●●

1 March 1935 Hitler publicly reveals the Luftwaffe 0 cit. Adolf Hitler publicly announced the existence of the Luftwaffe as an independent air force, openly violating the disarmament terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had secretly been training pilots and developing aircraft designs for years beforehand. The Luftwaffe was rapidly built into one of the most powerful air forces in the world and became central to Nazi Germany's blitzkrieg strategy. politics / war ●●

1935 Eye of Providence placed on the one-dollar bill 0 cit. At the urging of Vice President Henry Wallace, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau approves putting both sides of the Great Seal, including the pyramid and Eye of Providence, on the redesigned one-dollar bill. The choice reflected Wallace's interest in the Seal's symbolism, not an Illuminati or Masonic directive; claims that the dollar bill proves ongoing Illuminati control of US government are widely circulated but are not supported by documentary evidence and are treated here as contested. economy / politics ●●

1935 Ludendorff Publishes Der Totale Krieg 0 cit. Former World War I commander Erich Ludendorff published Der Totale Krieg (The Total War), arguing that modern war required mobilizing an entire nation's economy, population, and politics under military direction, with civilian leadership subordinated to the demands of war. The book argued explicitly against the idea of civilian control over military strategy, inverting the standard civil-military relationship. It became an influential statement of militarist ideology in the interwar period. politics / war ●●

c. September 1935 Fischer's race theories cited in drafting the Nuremberg Laws 2 cit. Nazi legal drafters and race theorists cite Eugen Fischer's earlier work, including his 1908 study of the Rehoboth Basters, as scientific grounding for the Nuremberg Laws banning marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Historians treat this as a documented, direct intellectual line from German colonial race science in South-West Africa to Nazi racial law. politics / science ●●

August 1935 Texas Rangers absorbed into the Department of Public Safety 0 cit. The Texas Legislature created the Texas Department of Public Safety and folded the Rangers into it as one of its divisions, ending the Rangers' history as a separate, loosely regulated state force. The reorganization was driven partly by scandals during Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson's administration, when Ranger commissions had been handed out as political patronage, and it imposed civil-service standards, training, and a modern chain of command that the force had previously lacked. politics ●●●

c. 1935 The Pan-African circle: James, Makonnen, Nkrumah, Abrahams, Du Bois 0 cit. Through the later 1930s Kenyatta moved in a tight Pan-African network with C.L.R. James, the Guyanese organiser Ras Makonnen, the young Kwame Nkrumah, the writer Peter Abrahams, and the elder statesman W.E.B. Du Bois. Many worked through Padmore's International African Service Bureau. These friendships, more than Moscow, shaped the politics he carried home. politics / society ●●

1935 Protesting Italy's invasion of Ethiopia 0 cit. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 galvanised Black activists in Britain, and Kenyatta joined the campaigns defending the one African state that had kept its independence. The cause bound the London Pan-Africanists together and sharpened their anti-colonial edge. It was a formative moment for the movement that met again in 1945. politics / war ●

c. 1935 The negritude movement takes shape in Paris 0 cit. Black students from the French colonies, among them Aime Cesaire of Martinique, Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, and Leon Damas of Guiana, launched the journal L'Etudiant noir. Cesaire is credited with coining the term negritude, which affirmed Black identity and African cultural values against French assimilation. The movement gave Pan-Africanism a strong literary and cultural voice in the French-speaking world. culture / politics / society ●●

1935 Makhan Singh builds militant trade unionism 0 cit. The Sikh activist Makhan Singh reorganised the Labour Trade Union of Kenya into the Labour Trade Union of East Africa, pushing a militant, multiracial model of organised labour. He argued that workers should combine across race against colonial employers. He is widely regarded as a father of the Kenyan trade union movement. economy / politics ●●

c. 1935 MI5 tracks George Padmore in London 0 cit. The Trinidadian pan-Africanist George Padmore, after breaking with the Communist International, settled in London and was watched by MI5 and Special Branch. He became a mentor to a generation of African and Caribbean nationalists, including Kwame Nkrumah. British intelligence saw his flat as a hub of dangerous anti-colonial organising. politics / society ●●

1935 John F. Kennedy enrols at the LSE 0 cit. The young John F. Kennedy, future president of the United States, enrolled at the LSE in 1935 to study under the political theorist Harold Laski. He fell ill soon after and returned home before he could take up his studies in full. The brief episode is often cited as a mark of the School's global draw. politics / society ●

c. 1935 Settles in London and reunites with C.L.R. James 0 cit. Padmore settled in London in the mid-1930s and reconnected with C.L.R. James, his boyhood friend from Trinidad. The two men, close allies and sometime rivals, became central to the city's anti-colonial scene. Their partnership helped turn London into an organizing center for African freedom. culture / politics / society ●●

October 1935 Italy invades Ethiopia and galvanizes Pan-African organizing 0 cit. Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935 outraged Africans and their diaspora, since Ethiopia stood as a symbol of independence. Padmore and C.L.R. James helped form the International African Friends of Abyssinia to rally support. The crisis pulled a scattered network into organized political action. diplomacy / politics / society ●●●

1935 Nkrumah enrolls at Lincoln University in the United States 0 cit. In 1935 Nkrumah sailed to the United States and enrolled at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a historically Black college. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics and sociology in 1939 and later a bachelor of theology. He supported himself with menial jobs and read widely in Pan-African and socialist thought. politics / society ●●

July 1935 The Comintern retreats from colonial work at its Seventh Congress 0 cit. At its Seventh Congress the Comintern adopted the Popular Front line, seeking alliances with Britain and France against fascism. To avoid antagonizing those imperial powers, it softened its anti-colonial agitation and wound down bodies like the Negro workers' committee. Historians describe this as the moment Moscow put its own security ahead of the colonial cause, exposing the limits of Soviet support. diplomacy / politics ●●●

c. 1935 Pass laws and grazing controls hem in Somali movement 3 cit. Under the closed-district regime, Somalis needed permits to move between areas, and the state controlled grazing and stock across the north. The rules cut into the mobility that pastoral life depended on. They also kept the region sealed from the wider colony and its economy. economy / politics ●●

7 March 1936 Remilitarization of the Rhineland 0 cit. German troops re-enter the demilitarized Rhineland in open breach of Versailles; Britain and France do nothing. politics / war ●●●

20 July 1936 Montreux Convention 0 cit. Convention giving Turkey control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles and regulating passage of warships in and out of the Black Sea. Its rules still govern the straits today. diplomacy / politics / war ●●●

August 1936 Founding of the World Jewish Congress 0 cit. Jewish delegates from 32 countries hold a first plenary assembly in Geneva, founding the World Jewish Congress as a permanent representative body of Jewish communities amid rising Nazi persecution. diplomacy / politics / religion ●●

c. 1936 to c. 1938 The Great Terror 0 cit. Stalin's purges sweep the Soviet party, army, and society, with show trials of old Bolsheviks and mass executions by the NKVD. Around 750,000 people are shot and over a million sent to the Gulag. politics ●●●●

19 July 1936 to 1937 Anarchist revolution in Catalonia 0 cit. After defeating the military uprising in Barcelona, the anarchist CNT-FAI leads the collectivization of industry and land across Catalonia and Aragon. The experiment is rolled back after fighting among the Republican factions in May 1937. politics / society ●●●

1936 to 1939 The 1936-39 Arab Revolt 0 cit. Palestinian Arabs staged a widespread revolt against British rule and Jewish immigration from 1936 to 1939. Britain suppressed it and later curbed Jewish immigration. politics / war ●●●

26 September 1936 France abandons the gold standard 0 cit. France and the last members of the gold bloc finally devalued and left gold after years of grinding deflation. Countries that had clung to gold longest suffered the deepest and longest slumps. economy / politics ●●●

1 August 1936 The Berlin Olympics become a Nazi propaganda showcase 0 cit. Nazi Germany hosts the Summer Games and uses elaborate ceremony, architecture, and Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia to project an image of national strength and unity to the world. The Games are documented as the clearest case of a state using the Olympics as deliberate soft-power propaganda, notwithstanding Jesse Owens's four gold medals undercutting the regime's racial claims. culture / politics ●●●

1 August 1936 1936 Berlin Olympics opening ceremony 0 cit. Adolf Hitler's government used the Berlin Games as a propaganda showcase for Nazi Germany, staging a massive opening ceremony filmed by Leni Riefenstahl for her documentary Olympia. This Games introduced the Olympic torch relay from Olympia, Greece to the host city, an idea devised by sports official Carl Diem specifically for these Games and continued at every Olympics since. The event is documented as a deliberate use of mass spectacle for political image-building, separate from any conspiracy claims about the games. culture / politics ●●●

c. 1 January 1936 Palestine Police CID expands during the Arab Revolt 0 cit. During the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt, the Palestine Police CID and its political intelligence branch greatly expanded surveillance, informant networks, and interrogation of Arab nationalist organizers. Zionist paramilitary and political groups were also monitored, and the CID's methods and personnel later influenced British colonial policing elsewhere, including Malaya. politics / war ●●

17 July 1936 Military uprising ignites the Spanish Civil War 0 cit. A group of generals launches a coup against the elected Republic, splitting Spain into war. Franco takes command of the Nationalist side, which absorbs the fascist Falange and receives troops and aircraft from Hitler and Mussolini. The war becomes a proving ground for the Axis powers. politics / war ●●●

1 November 1936 Proclamation of the Rome-Berlin Axis 0 cit. Mussolini declares that the agreements with Nazi Germany form an axis around which European states can turn, giving the alliance its name. The bond deepens through the Pact of Steel in 1939 and later draws in Japan, forming the wartime Axis. diplomacy / politics ●●●

June 1936 The Somoza dynasty rules Nicaragua 0 cit. Anastasio Somoza Garcia seizes power and founds a family dynasty that ran Nicaragua as a private estate for over four decades. Backed by the US-trained National Guard, the Somozas relied on long American support during the Cold War. The often-quoted line that a US president called Somoza "our son of a bitch" is likely apocryphal, but it captured how Washington tolerated the dictatorship. diplomacy / politics ●●

1936 Nazi racial science targets the Roma 3 cit. Under the Nazis, the Roma were classed both as asocial and as racially inferior. The psychiatrist Robert Ritter and his Racial Hygiene Research Unit examined and catalogued Roma to sort them by supposed racial type, work that fed later deportation lists. Around the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Roma in the capital were rounded up into a guarded camp at Marzahn. Forced sterilizations of Roma followed under the regime's racial laws. politics / science / society ●●●

1936 Italy folds Somaliland into Italian East Africa 0 cit. After Fascist Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia in 1935 and 1936, it merged Italian Somaliland, Eritrea, and conquered Ethiopia into the colony of Italian East Africa. For a brief period much Somali-inhabited land, including the Ogaden, sat under one administration. Italian rule was harsh and short-lived, ended by British conquest during the Second World War. politics / war ●

30 June 1936 Haile Selassie appeals to the League of Nations 0 cit. In exile after the fall of Addis Ababa, Haile Selassie stood before the League of Nations in Geneva and described the gassing of his people and the failure of collective security. He warned that if the world let Ethiopia fall, the same fate would reach other small nations, a line often paraphrased as it is us today, it will be you tomorrow. The speech made him a global figure and a symbol of principle against appeasement, even as the League did nothing. diplomacy / politics ●●●

1936 Publishes How Britain Rules Africa 0 cit. Padmore published How Britain Rules Africa, a detailed indictment of colonial administration, land seizure, and forced labor across the continent. The book combined reporting with sharp political argument. It cemented his standing as a leading anti-colonial writer in Britain. culture / economy / politics ●●

28 May 1937 Founding of Volkswagen 0 cit. The Nazi labor front founds Volkswagen to build Ferdinand Porsche's 'people's car,' with a factory at what becomes Wolfsburg. After the war the Beetle becomes the best selling car in history and VW a global auto giant. economy / politics / technology ●●●●

July 1937 The Peel Commission Partition Proposal 0 cit. A British commission in 1937 proposed partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Zionist leaders were divided and Arab leaders rejected it, and the plan was shelved. politics ●●

14 March 1937 Mit brennender Sorge condemns Nazism 0 cit. Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical, read from German pulpits, that attacked the racism and idolatry of the Nazi state. It was a rare open Church criticism of the regime. politics / religion ●●

c. 1937 to c. 1970 Puerto Rico's mass sterilization of women 0 cit. Under US-backed policy from the late 1930s, so many Puerto Rican women were sterilized that by the 1960s about a third of women of childbearing age had undergone the procedure, the highest rate in the world. Many were poorly informed and the practice became known simply as la operacion. politics / society ●●●●

19 February 1937 Yekatit 12 Massacre in Addis Ababa 0 cit. After an assassination attempt on Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, Italian forces and Blackshirt militia carried out three days of reprisal killings against the civilian population of Addis Ababa. Estimates of the dead range from about 3,000 in early Italian accounts to 19,000 or more according to Ethiopian government estimates presented after the war, with historian Ian Campbell's more recent research supporting a toll of around 19,000-30,000. The massacre was followed by further executions of educated Ethiopians and Orthodox clergy in the following weeks. politics / war ●●●