Word: prewar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...After a prewar tour of duty in Lima, Peru, he was ambassador to Russia for nearly three hard years through the Hitler-Stalin pact and the Nazi invasion. Even when the Germans seemed likely to take Moscow, Steinhardt remained confident that the Russians would hang on. He laid in a 100-day food supply at an emergency refuge outside the city, an extra stock of surgical supplies, and prepared his staff for a long siege. President Roosevelt called him "a good fixer and boss trader." In 1942 F.D.R. switched him to Turkey, where Steinhardt was matched against Germany...
Because so many of its citizens could not read or write, prewar Yugoslavia adopted the rubber ballot. Under this system, in full view of election officials, the voter holds a little rubber ball in his fist, dips his fist into all the ballot boxes, drops the ball where he chooses, finally shows his empty fist...
What with all the diversion (and very good business), Bangkok's colony of Westerners has doubled since prewar days, new numbers 1,200, including 400 Americans. Foreigners love Siam. Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld was entranced until he met with a painful accident. A doctor explained that his swollen cheek was caused by a poisonous moth. "How," cried Hirschfeld, "can I tell people at home I was bitten by a moth...
...cousin, Fritz von der Schulenburg, was hanged by the Nazis for his part in the unsuccessful 1944 coup against Hitler, and an uncle, Friedrich, prewar ambassador to Moscow, was shot...
...Pope's chambers. Church politics are examined, from curates parochial gripes to Vatican policy on Hitler and Mussolini. Figures in the novel include three Popes, many cardinals and archbishops whom readers may think they recognize, a powerful Boston-Irish contractor and political boss, high personages in prewar Italian society...