Adolf Hitler abolishes the War Ministry and creates the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces), giving him direct control of the German military. In addition, he dismisses political and military leaders considered unsympathetic to his philosophy or policies. General Werner von Fritsch is forced to resign as Commander of Chief of the German Army following accusations of homosexuality, and replaced by General Walther von Brauchitsch. Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath is dismissed, and replaced by Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first cel-animated feature in motion picture history, is released in the United States, following a premiere on December 21 of the previous year.
The Santa Ana River in California, United States, spills over its banks during a rainy winter, killing 58 people in Orange County, and causing trouble as far inland as Palm Springs.[8]
Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany, presents a proposal to Hitler for an international consortium to rule much of Africa (in which Germany would be assigned a leading role), in exchange for a German promise never to resort to war to change her frontiers; Hitler rejects the British offer.
March 12 – Anschluss: German troops occupy Austria; annexation is declared the following day.
March 14 – French Premier Léon Blum reassures the Czechoslovak government that France will honor its treaty obligations to aid Czechoslovakia, in the event of a German invasion.
March 27 – Italian mathematician Ettore Majorana disappears suddenly under mysterious circumstances, while travelling by ship from Palermo to Naples.
March 28 – At a meeting with Hitler in Berlin, Konrad Henlein is instructed to make increasing demands concerning the status of the Sudetenland, but to avoid reaching an agreement with Czechoslovak authorities.
Édouard Daladier becomes prime minister of France. He appoints as Foreign Minister a leading advocate of the policy of appeasement, Georges Bonnet, effectively negating Blum's reassurances of March 14.
In a result that astonishes even Hitler, the Austrian electorate in a national referendum approves Anschluss by an overwhelming 99.73%.
April 16 – The UK and Italy sign an agreement that sees Britain recognise Italian control of Ethiopia (formally on November 16), in return for an Italian pledge to withdraw all its 10,000 troops from Spain, at the conclusion of the civil war there.
April 18 – Superman first appears in Action Comics #1 (cover date June). The date is established in court documents released during the legal battle over the rights to Superman (on April 18, 2018, DC Comics released Action Comics #1000).
General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the German Army's General Staff, submits a memorandum to Hitler opposing Fall Grün (Case Green), the plan for a war with Czechoslovakia, under the grounds that Germany is ill-prepared for the world war likely to result from such an attack.
May 12 – U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull rejects the Soviet Union's offer of a joint defence pact, to counter the rise of Nazi Germany.
May 23 – No evidence of German troop movements against Czechoslovakia is found, and the May Crisis subsides. Germany is, nevertheless, perceived to have backed down in the face of Czechoslovak mobilization and international diplomatic unity, but the issue of the future of the Sudetenland is far from resolved.
The Soviet ambassador to the United States, A. A. Troyanovsky, declares Moscow ready to defend Czechoslovakia.
May 28 – In a conference at the Reich Chancellery, Hitler declares his decision to destroy Czechoslovakia by military force, and orders the immediate mobilization of 96 Wehrmacht divisions.
May 30 – Hitler issues a revised directive for Fall Grün ("Case Green") – the invasion of Czechoslovakia – to be carried out by October 1, 1938.
June 5 & 7 – The 1938 Yellow River flood is created by the Nationalist government in central China, breaching embankments during the early stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War, in an attempt to halt the rapid advance of Japanese forces. The flood kills at least 400,000, covers and destroys thousands of square kilometers of farmland, and shifts the mouth of the Yellow River hundreds of kilometers to the south.
July 5 – The Non-Intervention Committee reaches an agreement to withdraw all foreign volunteers from the Spanish Civil War. The agreement is respected by most Republican International Brigades, notably those from England and the United States, but is ignored by the governments of Germany and Italy.
July 6 – The Evian Conference on Refugees is convened in France. No country in Europe is prepared to accept Jews fleeing persecution, and the United States will take only 27,370.
July 18 – Wrong Way Corrigan takes off from New York, ostensibly heading for California. He lands in Ireland instead.
July 22 – Britain rejects a proposal from its ambassador in Berlin, Nevile Henderson, for a four-power summit on Czechoslovakia consisting of Britain, France, Germany and the U.S.S.R., as London will under no circumstances accept the U.S.S.R. as a diplomatic partner.
July 24 – The north face of the Eiger in the Alps is first ascended.
August 10 – At a secret summit with his leading generals, Hitler attacks General Beck's arguments against Fall Grün, winning the majority of his senior officers over to his point of view.
August 18 – Colonel General Ludwig Beck, convinced that Hitler's decision to attack Czechoslovakia will lead to a general European war, resigns his position as Chief of the Army General Staff in protest.
August 23 – Hitler, hosting a dinner on board the ocean liner Patria in Kiel Bay, tells the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, that action against Czechoslovakia is imminent and that "he who wants to sit at the table must at least help in the kitchen", a reference to Horthy's designs on Carpathian Ruthenia.
September 6 – What eventually proves to be the last of the "Nuremberg Rallies" begins. It draws worldwide attention because it is widely assumed that Hitler, in his closing remarks, will signal whether there will be peace with or war over Czechoslovakia.
September 12 – Hitler makes his much-anticipated closing address at Nuremberg, in which he vehemently attacks the Czech people and President Beneš. American news commentator Hans von Kaltenborn begins his famous marathon of broadcast bulletins over the CBS Radio Network, with a summation of Hitler's address.
September 13 – The followers of Konrad Henlein begin an armed revolt against the Czechoslovak government in Sudetenland. Martial law is declared and after much bloodshed on both sides order is temporarily restored. Neville Chamberlain personally sends a telegram to Hitler, urgently requesting that they both meet.
September 17 – Neville Chamberlain returns temporarily to London, to confer with his cabinet. The U.S.S.R. Red Army masses along the Ukrainian frontier. Rumania agrees to allow Soviet soldiers free passage across her territory to defend Czechoslovakia.
During a meeting between Neville Chamberlain, the recently elected Premier of France, Édouard Daladier, and Daladier's Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, it becomes apparent that neither the British nor the French governments are prepared to go to war over the Sudetenland. The Soviet Union declares it will come to the defence of Czechoslovakia only if France honours her commitment to defend Czechoslovak independence.
Mussolini makes a speech in Trieste, Italy, where he indicates that Italy is supporting Germany in the Sudeten crisis.
In the early hours of the day, representatives of the French and British governments call on Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, to tell him France and Britain will not fight Hitler if he decides to annex the Sudetenland by force. Late in the afternoon, the Czechoslovak government capitulates to the French and British demands.
Following the capitulation of the Czech government to Germany's demands, both Poland and Hungary demand slices of Czech territory where their nationals reside.
The 1938 New England hurricane in the United States strikes Long Island and southern New England, killing over 300 along the Rhode Island shoreline and 600 altogether.
Unable to survive the previous day's capitulation to the demands of the English and French governments, Czechoslovak premier Milan Hodža resigns. General Jan Syrový takes his place.
Neville Chamberlain arrives in the city of Bad Godesberg, for another round of talks with Hitler over the Sudetenland crisis. Hitler raises his demands to include occupation of all German Sudeten territories by October 1. That night after a telephone conference, Chamberlain reverses himself and advises the Czechoslovaks to mobilize.[12]
As the Polish army masses along the Czech border, the Soviet Union warns Poland that if it crosses the Czech frontier, Russia will regard the 1932 non-aggression pact between the two countries as void.
Sir Eric Phipps, British Ambassador to France, reports to London, "all that is best in France is against war, almost at any price", being opposed only by a "small, but noisy and corrupt, war group". Phipps's report creates major doubts about the ability and/or willingness of France to go to war.[14]
At 1:30 AM, Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain conclude their talks on the Sudetenland. Chamberlain agrees to take Hitler's demands, codified in the Godesberg Memorandum, personally to the Czech Government. The Czech Government rejects the demands, as does Chamberlain's own cabinet. The French Government also initially rejects the terms and orders a partial mobilization of the French army.
September 26 – In a vitriolic speech at Berlin's Sportpalast, Hitler defies the world and implies war with Czechoslovakia will begin at any time.
September 28 – As his self-imposed October 1 deadline for occupation of the Sudetenland approaches, Adolf Hitler invites Italian Duce Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edourd Deladier and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to one last conference in Munich. The Czechs themselves are not invited.
Colonel Graham Christie, former British military attaché in Berlin, is told by Carl Friedrich Goerdeler that the mobilization of the Royal Navy has badly damaged the popularity of the Nazi regime, as the German public realizes that Fall Grün is likely to cause a world war.
Munich Agreement: German, Italian, British and French leaders agree to German demands regarding annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak government is largely excluded from the negotiations, and is not a signatory to the agreement.
October 1 – German troops march into the Sudetenland. The Polish government gives the Czech government an ultimatum, stating that Trans-Olza region must be handed over within twenty-four hours. The Czechs have little choice but to comply; Polish forces occupy Trans-Olza.
Nuremberg Laws: In Nazi Germany, Jews' passports are invalidated, and those who need a passport for emigration purposes are given one marked with the letter J ("Jude" – "Jew").[16]
October 16 – Winston Churchill, in a broadcast address to the United States, condemns the Munich Agreement as a defeat, and calls upon America and western Europe to prepare for armed resistance against Hitler.
October 18 – The German government expels 12,000 Polish Jews living in Germany; the Polish government accepts 4,000 and refuses admittance to the remaining 8,000, who are forced to live in the no-man's land on the German-Polish frontier.
October 21 – In direct contravention of the recently signed Munich Agreement, Adolf Hitler circulates among his high command a secret memorandum stating that they should prepare for the "liquidation of the rest of Czechoslovakia" and the occupation of Memel.
November 9 – Holocaust – Kristallnacht: In Germany, the "night of broken glass" begins as Nazi activists and sympathizers loot and burn Jewish businesses (the all night affair sees 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned, 91 Jews killed and at least 25,000 Jewish men arrested).[17]
November 11 – Celâl Bayar forms the new government of Turkey (10th government; Celal Bayar had served twice as a prime minister).
November 12 – French Finance Minister Paul Reynaud brings into effect a series of laws aiming at improving French productivity (thus aiming to undo the economic weaknesses which led to Munich), and undoes most of the economic and social laws of the Popular Front.
November 25 – French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet informs Léon Noël, the French Ambassador to Poland, that France should find an excuse for terminating the 1921 Franco-Polish alliance.
The Czechoslovak parliament elects Emil Hácha as the new president of Czechoslovakia.
Benito Mussolini and his Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, order "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, demanding that France cede Tunisia, Nice, Corsica and French Somaliland to Italy. This begins an acute crisis in Franco-Italian relations, that lasts until March1939.
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader of the Romanian fascist Iron Guard, is murdered on the orders of King Carol II of Romania. Officially, Codreanu and the 13 other Iron Guard leaders are "shot while trying to escape".
A general strike is called in France by the French Communist Party, to protest the laws of November 12.
December 1 – Slovakia is granted the status of an autonomous state, under Catholic priest Fr. Joseph Tiso.
December 6 – German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop visits Paris, where he is allegedly informed by French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet that France now recognizes all of Eastern Europe as being in Germany's exclusive sphere of influence. Bonnet's alleged statement (he subsequently always denies making the remark) to Ribbentrop is a major factor in German policy in 1939.
^""Bondi's Black Sunday""(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 27 September 2011. (113 KB), Waverley Library Local History. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
^Emizet Francois Kisangani; Scott F Bobb (2010). Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Scarecrow Press. p. 398. ISBN9780810863255.
^"Library Catalog". Davenport University Libraries. Retrieved October 11, 2024.
^Andrews, William L.; Foster, Frances Smith; Harris, Trudier, eds. (1997). The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 404 ff.
^Nick Carey (12 January 2000). "Karel Čapek". Český rozhlas. Archived from the original on 6 April 2017. Retrieved 12 September 2024.
^Izvestia, 8 January 1991. Reproduced according to ed. – Osip Mandelstam and his time: Sat. memories. – Publisher L'Age d'Homme – Nash Dom, 1995 480 p. – p. 402. [1]
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