1926
The NSDAP's first Reich Party Congress after its re-establishment takes place in the state capital of Thuringia. Over 7,000 participants come to Weimar for the major event. Thuringia is one of the few states in which Hitler is allowed to appear in public.
1930
The NSDAP emerges from the state elections as the third strongest party with 11.3%. The newly formed government assigns the office of Minister of the Interior and National Education to the National Socialist Wilhelm Frick. Among other things, he issues the decree "Against Negro culture, for German nationalism". This is the first time the NSDAP participates in a German state government.
1932
In July, the NSDAP emerges victorious from the state parliamentary elections, receiving 50.2% of the vote in Weimar. Fritz Sauckel, the Thuringian Gauleiter of the NSDAP, takes over the chairmanship of the state government and becomes Minister of the Interior at the same time.
1933
Reich President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor in Berlin on January 30. Political opponents are arrested en masse and basic democratic rights are suspended. In Nohra near Weimar, the Thuringian Ministry of the Interior sets up the first concentration camp with 200 "protective custody prisoners" in a former school. The most powerful man in Thuringia is Fritz Sauckel, who is appointed Reich Governor. The transformation of Weimar from a classical city to the
capital of the "Schutz- und Trutzgau Thüringen" begins.
1935
In August, the Weimar SA put up signs on the access roads reading "Out" and "Jews not wanted". The Schwansee spa and large hotels had already been similarly marked.
1937
On May 1, Rudolf Hess lays the foundation stone of the Gauforum at the new "Platz Adolf Hitlers". Hitler's court architect Hermann Giesler, who also builds the new Haus Elephant, plans the monumental building for the mass organizations of the NSDAP. A few weeks later, the first 149 prisoners arrive at the Buchenwald concentration camp on the Ettersberg near Weimar. By the end of the war, it was the largest concentration camp in the German Reich. Over 250,000 people from all over Europe were imprisoned here, and more than 56,000 died on the Ettersberg.
1938
After November 9, the so-called Reichskristallnacht, around 10,000 Jewish men arrive at Weimar Central Station. They are taken to Buchenwald by beating SS men to force them to emigrate and give up their possessions.
1939
The exhibition "Degenerate Art" is shown in the State Museum, expanded to include the "Degenerate Music" section created in Weimar. With the invasion of Poland on September 1, the German Reich begins the Second World War. More and more inmates are brought to Buchenwald.
1942
Fritz Sauckel is appointed General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment by Adolf Hitler. He is responsible for the deportation and organization of seven to eight million foreign workers to Germany, who have to perform forced labour for German industry and agriculture.
1943
Within just three months, a ten-kilometre rail link is built between Weimar and Buchenwald. Numerous labor detachments are set up in Weimar, and the prisoners become an increasingly present presence in the cityscape.
1945
On February 9, Allied aircraft bomb the armaments factories and the town. The air raid kills 528 concentration camp prisoners and 462 residents and forced laborers. Weimar surrenders to the advancing US troops on April 12. The Buchenwald concentration camp had been liberated the day before. At the funeral ceremony on April 19, the survivors of the camp swear: "We will not stop fighting until the last guilty person stands before the judges of the nations! The destruction of
Nazism and its roots is our slogan. The construction of a new world of peace and freedom is our goal."