Prague, Czechoslovakia · August 3, 1945 Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, Czechoslovakia’s president Edvard Beneš pursued a policy of “no mercy” toward the roughly three million ethnic Germans and Hungarians living in his country. The 61‑year-old Beneš had held the same office of president in prewar Czechoslovakia when, abandoned by his French and British allies,…
Berlin, Germany · July 19, 1940 Military operations between France and the Axis powers—that is, Germany and Italy—ended on June 25, 1940. Three and a half weeks later, on this date in 1940 in Berlin, victorious Wehrmacht troops marched through the Brandenburg Gate for the first time since Kaiser Wilhelm I’s victory over France in the Franco-Prussian…
Berlin, Germany · May 28, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler informed his senior military commanders of his plans to march into neighboring Czechoslovakia and erase that country from the map. No serious objections were raised by those who heard Hitler ring the death knell for Czechoslovakia and for the European order that…
Warsaw, Poland · May 5, 1939 In 1923 Poland’s Baltic neighbor to the north, Lithuania, unlawfully annexed Memel Territory (now Klaipėda Region in present-day Lithuania) that had been, up to 1918, part of Prussia under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Like the Danzig enclave in Poland and the Saar Territory in the Rhineland, Memel was a League of…
London, England · October 1, 1938 The storm clouds of war in Europe seemed to have parted on this date in 1938 in London, one day after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned from his triumph in Munich. Three visits to Germany had been required to part the clouds: the first to Berchtesgaden in the…
Salzburg, Austria · August 11, 1939 On this date in 1939 near Salzburg, Austria, Adolf Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop told Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, about Hitler’s decision “to set Europe on fire.” “We want war,” Ribbentrop said to Ciano, though he omitted saying that Hitler had just signed the…
Prague, Czechoslovakia · August 3, 1945 Following Germany’s defeat in 1945, Czechoslovakia’s president Edvard Beneš pursued a policy of “no mercy” toward the roughly three million ethnic Germans and Hungarians living in his country. Beneš held the same office of president in prewar Czechoslovakia when, abandoned by his French and British allies, he was compelled…
Berlin, Germany · July 19, 1940 Military operations between France and the Axis powers, that is, Germany and Italy, ended on June 25, 1940. Three and a half weeks later, on this date in 1940 in Berlin, victorious Wehrmacht troops marched through the Brandenburg Gate for the first time since Kaiser Wilhelm I’s victory over…
Berlin, Germany · May 28, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler informed his senior military commanders of his plans to march into neighboring Czechoslovakia and erase that country from the map. No serious objections were raised by those who heard Hitler ring the death knell for Czechoslovakia and for the European order that…
Warsaw, Poland · May 5, 1939 In 1923 Poland’s Baltic neighbor to the north, Lithuania, unlawfully annexed Memel Territory (now Klaipėda Region in present-day Lithuania) that had been, up to 1918, part of Prussia under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Like the Danzig enclave in Poland and the Saar Territory in the Rhineland, Memel was a League of…