- Europe
The June deportation
Soviet authorities deported more than 10,000 people from Estonia to Siberia in a single operation, most of them women, children and the elderly, days before the German invasion.
Era: Occupation, Annexation and the Long Night
Sources: Commemoration in Tallinn of victims of the deportations of June 1941 · Government of the Republic of Estonia (valitsus.ee), Estonia: Independence lost (Soviet occupation, World War II) · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Europe
The Holocaust
Nazi Germany carried out the systematic, state-organised murder of some six million European Jews, alongside the killing of Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners and other victims.
Era: Weimar, the Third Reich and the Second World War
Sources: The Holocaust and World War II: Key Dates · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Europe
The June 1941 deportations
The Soviet regime deported some fifteen thousand people from Latvia to Siberia in a single operation, targeting the country's political, economic and intellectual elite; many never returned.
Era: Occupation, War and the Holocaust
Sources: About the Museum · Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, History of Latvia · Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia
- Europe
Mass deportations to Siberia
The Soviet regime deported well over one hundred thousand Lithuanians to camps and forced settlements, with the largest operations in 1948 and 1949, to crush resistance and impose collectivisation.
Era: War, Soviet Occupation and the Partisan Struggle
Sources: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania · Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (genocid.lt), History of Lithuania · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Asia
Bengal famine
An estimated two to three million people die in Bengal in a man-made famine driven by wartime inflation, export priorities and colonial policy rather than any major shortfall in food production.
Era: The East India Company and the British Raj
Sources: Bengal famine of 1943 · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Bengal famine of 1943 · Wikipedia
- Europe
Deportation of the Hungarian Jews
Between 15 May and 9 July 1944 about 437,000 Jews were deported, mostly to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where some three-quarters were murdered on arrival; Horthy halted the trains on 7 July.
Era: The Second World War and the Holocaust in Hungary
Sources: The Holocaust in Hungary · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Europe
Confiscation under the Beneš decrees
Czechoslovakia confiscated the vast Bohemian and Moravian estates of the House of Liechtenstein under the Beneš decrees, treating the family as German; the seized land, around 1,600 square kilometres, far exceeded the area of the principality.
Era: The Turn to Switzerland, Neutrality and the Beneš Decrees
Sources: History of Czech–Liechtenstein relations (confiscations and 2009 relations) · Czech-Liechtenstein Society, Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany) — case overview · International Court of Justice, Summary of the Judgment of 10 February 2005, Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany) · International Court of Justice
- Asia
- Europe
The man-made famine
A famine aggravated by harsh Soviet grain requisitioning swept Moldavia in 1946-1947, killing well over a hundred thousand people in one of the least-known episodes of Stalinist terror.
Era: Soviet Moldavia: Annexation, Famine and Deportation
Sources: A Moldavian Holodomor? The Great Famine in Soviet Moldova, 1946-1947 · Stanford University, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Moldova: History · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Africa
The twentieth-century famines
Two further droughts brought famines that together killed tens of thousands; starving refugees were interned in camps outside Praia, and survivors emigrated in growing numbers, deepening the diaspora.
Era: Creole culture, the coaling port, and the years of hunger
Sources: Famine in Cape Verde · Wikipedia, History of Cape Verde · Wikipedia, History of Cabo Verde · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Asia
Ashgabat earthquake
A devastating earthquake struck Ashgabat, destroying the city and killing tens of thousands of people in one of the deadliest seismic disasters in Soviet history.
Era: Soviet Turkmenistan
Sources: Turkmenistan: A Country Study (in 'Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan: Country Studies') · Library of Congress, Federal Research Division, Turkmenistan · Encyclopædia Britannica
- Asia
Semipalatinsk nuclear test site
The Soviet Union conducts some 456 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk site in northeastern Kazakhstan between 1949 and 1989, exposing local populations to radioactive fallout with severe long-term health effects.
Era: Soviet Kazakhstan
Sources: Kazakhstan · Encyclopædia Britannica, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan: Country Studies · Library of Congress, Federal Research Division
- Europe
The March 1949 deportations
In Operation Priboi the Soviet authorities deported tens of thousands of Latvians to Siberia, many of them farmers resisting collectivisation, in the largest single act of repression of the postwar years.
Era: Soviet Rule, Restoration and the Return to Europe
Sources: About the Museum · Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, History of Latvia · Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia
- Europe
Operation South deportations
On the night of 5-6 July 1949 Soviet authorities deported tens of thousands of Moldavians condemned as kulaks to Siberia and Kazakhstan, accelerating the forced collectivization of agriculture.
Era: Soviet Moldavia: Annexation, Famine and Deportation
Sources: Moldova Commemorates Victims of Soviet Deportations · Balkan Insight (BIRN), Moldova: History · Encyclopaedia Britannica
Catastrophe in the 1940s
Every event in the Terralore archive tagged catastrophe — plague, famine, earthquake and other disasters, narrowed to the 1940s — 14 of them, drawn from 12 nations, running from 1941 to 1949. Each entry keeps the sources it was verified against and links back to the chronicle it came from.
- Events
- 14
- Nations
- 12
- Earliest
- 1941
- Latest
- 1949
- Europe
- 9
- Asia
- 4
- Africa
- 1
Every entry below is the same record, with the same sources, as the one on its nation’s chronicle.