Word: berlins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most impressive of the new public buildings was the Olympic stadium in Berlin, and there Hitler welcomed the powerful and famous of other lands -- for example, the celebrated American aviator Charles Lindbergh -- to his refurbished capital. And despite the fuss over a black American, Jesse Owens, winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the team that scored the most points overall was Nazi Germany...
...assassins arrested. Italy, which had guaranteed Austrian independence, mobilized four divisions on the frontier. Hitler backed down. By 1938, however, he had built a threatening army and had won the support of Italy's Mussolini (they had signed a secret protocol in 1936 creating what Mussolini called the Rome-Berlin axis). It was time to try again...
...Nazi mobs had encircled the Chancellery, shrieking "Sieg Heil! Heil Hitler!" On the telephone from Berlin, Goring dictated a telegram to Seyss- Inquart in which "the provisional Austrian government" asked Germany to send troops to restore order. On March 12 the Wehrmacht came streaming across the border -- not only unopposed but warmly welcomed by thousands of Austrians who genuinely wanted union with Germany. Next day, Seyss-Inquart issued a decree that announced, "Austria is a province of the German Reich." Hitler returned in triumph to the Vienna where he had once lived as a virtual derelict. Papen described...
...Austria, Hitler's war of nerves began with a wave of terrorist bombings and street riots. Berlin sponsored this violence with payments to Konrad Henlein, leader of Czechoslovakia's Sudeten German Party. It also gave him his instructions, which Henlein himself once summed up: "We must always demand so much from the Czechs that we can never be satisfied." When Czech President Eduard Bene first asked Henlein what he wanted, the list included political autonomy, payment of damages, separate citizenship for Sudeten Germans and freedom to practice "the ideology of Germans." Bene refused...
Rumors, possibly false, suddenly spread in May 1938 that German troops were concentrating on the Czech frontier. Bene ordered a partial mobilization, the British expressed "grave concern," and the French warned Berlin that they were ready to fight. One of Hitler's top generals thereupon announced that it had all been a mistake, that there had been no German troop movements. By appearing to stand firm for the first time, the Allies seemed to have made Hitler back down. But this apparent victory had two important results: the Allies were appalled at how near to war they had come...