| < 08 Nov | 10 Nov > |
2006 Markus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf, born on 19 January 1923, who, during most of the Cold War, has been head of the General Reconnaissance Administration, the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (Stasi). He was the son of the Communist writer and physician Friedrich Wolf [23 Dec 1888 – 05 Oct 1953] and brother of film director Konrad Wolf [20 Oct 1925 – 07 Mar 1982]. —(061110)
2006 Kanthaiah Sivanesan, 48, murdered in his home in the Alavetty area in front of Alavetty Arunothaya College in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, while his wife and their two children were not there. —(061110)
2006 Karunamalam Prabhakaran, 32, murdered in Vavuniya, Sri Lanka. —(061111)
2005 Major-General Bashir Nafeh, head of Palestinian military intelligence in the West Bank; Colonel Abed Allun, Palestinian Preventive Security forces official; Jihad Fatouh, commercial attaché at the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo, Mosab Khorma, a Palestinian-US banker and former Paltel CEO; Husam Fathi Mahajna, Israeli Arab businessman from Umm al-Fahm; Rima Akkad, 34; 3 Iraqi suicide bombers: Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, 35; Rawad Jassem Mohammed Abed, 23, Safaa Mohammed Ali, 23; and 51 other persons, including 3 other Iraqis, 1 other Palestinian, 1 other Israeli Arab, 2 others from the US, 33 Jordanians, 2 Bahrainis, 3 Chinese, 1 Saudi, 1 Indonesian; by terrorist bombings at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the Radisson Hotel (Shamari), and the Days Inn Hotel, in Amman, Jordan, between 20:50 and 22:00 (18:50 and 20:00 UT). Some 115 persons are injured, of which some die later, including, on 11 November 2005, Syrian-US Halloween film producer Moustapha Akkad [Jul 1930–], father of Rima Akkad. A 4th would-be suicide bomber, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, 35, wife of Shamari, had her explosive fail (at the Radisson), would later be arrested and confess. She is the sister of Samer (or Thamir) Mubarak Atrous Al Rishawi, who was killed by a US air-to-ground missile in April 2004 in Fallujah, Iraq, and who was a top aide of Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi [20 Oct 1966–], head of al-Qaida in Iraq. Two other of her brothers, Ammar al-Rishawi and Yassir al-Rishawi, were killed in separate attacks against US troops in Ramadi, Iraq. —(051115)
2005 A Belgian woman suicide bomber, 38, targeting a US military convoy just south of Baghdad, Iraq. She converted to Islam after marrying a Moslem. No one else is killed. — (051130)
2005 Six accomplices and Azahari Husin, Malaysian electronics engineer and terrorist born in 1957, who are shot or blow themselves up at 15:30 (08:30 UT) while fighting an attempt to arrested them in the hill resort town Batu, near Malang, East Java, Indonesia, by Detachment 88 anti-terrorism police. Husin is thought to have been involved in terrorist bombings on 12 October 2002 in Bali, on 05 August 2003 at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, on 09 Sep 2004 at the Australian embassy in Jakarta, and on 01 October 2005 in Bali. —(051109)
2004 Some 50 civilians, including 20 on the medical staff of a clinic in Falluja, Iraq, which is hit by an unidentified missile during continuing attack by US troops against insurgents. On 12 November 2004, this and the following, among other atrocities, would be mentioned by Amnesty International in its Iraq: Fears of serious violations of the rules of war in Falluja.
2004 An Iraqi boy, 9, after being hit in the stomach by shrapnel in Falluja, Iraq, during continuing attack by US troops against insurgents.
2004 Staff Sgt. Todd R. Cornell, 38, from West Bend, Wisconsin, of the 1st Battalion, 339th Infantry Regiment, US Army Reserve, when the Iraqi unit he is advising comes under attack by small-arms fire in Falluja, Iraq. — (051108)
2004 Command Sgt. Maj. Steven W. Faulkenburg, 45, from Huntingburg, Indiana, of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, by small arms fire while fighting in Falluja, Iraq. —(051108)
2004 Maj. Horst G. Moore, 38, from San Antonio, Texas, of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), by mortar rounds exploding within his unit's living area in Mosul, Iraq. —(051108)
2004 Sgt. John B. Trotter, 25, from Marble Falls, Texas, of the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, by small-arms fire while on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq. — (051108)
2004 US Marines Cpl. William C. James, 24; Lance Cpl. Nicholas D. Larson, 19; Lance Cpl. Juan E. Segura, 26; Lance Cpl. Abraham Simpson, 19; Staff Sgt. Russell L. Slay, 28; Sgt. Lonny D. Wells, 29; Lance Cpl. Nathan R. Wood, 19; while fighting in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. —(051108)
2004 Two unarmed Palestinian men, shot by Israeli soldiers who saw them crawling toward the electronic Gaza-Israel border fence opposite Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
2003 Sgt. Nicholas A. Tomko, 24, of Pittsburgh PA.; he was the door gunner in a convoy vehicle undergoing a small arms attack in Baghdad, Irak. He was assigned to the 307th Military Police Company, U.S. Army Reserve.
2003 Muhanad al-Kaadi, head of the US-appointed municipal council in the poor, mainly Shiite, Sadr City annex to Baghdad, Iraq, shot by a US occupation soldier guarding the municipal building who stopped his car instead of letting him through. According to the US , “the driver” got out of the vehicle and attacked one of the guards, trying to grab his weapon; another soldier shot the man in the leg and he later died of his wounds. Later the US admits that the man was al-Kaadi, does not repeat the allegation that he attacked a US guard, but says that he died by his own fault for refusing “to follow instructions of the onsite security officer who was enforcing” regulations “in accordance with the rules of engagement.” Al-Kaadi, who spoke fluent English, had been trying to improve relations between the US occupiers and the 2 million residents of Sadr City.
2003: 17 Muslims, by at least two terrorist car bombs, just after midnight, in the west of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the B2 residential compound, which is in the Nakheel neighborhood near the Muhaya shopping center. Some 120 persons are injured. 5 of the dead and 36 of the injured are children.
2002 Israeli Sergeant-Major Madin Grifat, 23, by an explosion close to the Gaza Strip enclave settlement Netzarim, caused by Islamic Jihad to avenge Sawalhe [next].
2002 Iyad Sawalhe, 28, shot by Israeli troops early in the morning in Jenin. Sawalhe was the head of Islamic Jihad's military wing in the northern West Bank and had been the main target of Israeli military incursions in Jenin over the previous two weeks. In revenge, Islamic Jihad militants would ambush and kill twelve Jewish enclave settlers in Hebron on 15 November 2002.
2002 Joshua Guimond, 20, is never seen alive again (except perhaps by secretive criminals), after shortly past midnight when he leaves a card game in an apartment at Metton Court on the north end of Saint John's University in St.Cloud, Minnesota (near I-94), where he was a junior, a political science major.
2001 Some 235 persons in flash floods in northern Algeria.
2000 Hussein Abayat, 33, and two women bystanders, by rocket fired from Israeli helicopter, in Beit Sahur, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. Several others were wounded. Abayat, who was driving a pickup truck, was targeted as a commander of the Tanzim paramilitary group active in the al-Aqsa intifada started on 28 September 2000..
2000 Isa Tsuyev, 59, Russian-imposed Chechen mayor of Alkhan-Kala, near Grozny, Chechnya, killed by independentist guerillas.
1988 John N. Mitchell, 75, former US Attorney General, Watergate convict, heart attack in Washington
1980 Marie Germinova Toyen, Czech artist born on 21 September 1902.
1970 Charles André de Gaulle, 79, general, Free French leader, then French President.
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1970 Charles André
Joseph Marie de Gaulle, born on 22 November
1890, French general, Free France leader, writer, statesman, and architect
of France's Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was the second son of a Roman Catholic, patriotic and nationalist, upper-middle-class family. The family had produced historians and writers, and his father taught philosophy and literature; but as a boy de Gaulle already showed a passionate interest in military matters. He attended the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr and, in 1913, as a young second lieutenant, joined an infantry regiment commanded by Colonel Philippe Pétain [24 Apr 1856 – 23 Jul 1951]. De Gaulle was an intelligent, hardworking, and zealous young soldier and, in his military career, a man of original mind, great self-assurance, and outstanding courage. In World War I he fought at Verdun, was three times wounded and three times mentioned in dispatches, and spent two years and eight months as a prisoner of war (during which time he made five unsuccessful attempts to escape). After a brief visit to Poland as a member of a military mission, a year's teaching at Saint-Cyr, and a two-year course of special training in strategy and tactics at the École Supérieure de Guerre, he was promoted by Marshal Pétain in 1925 to the Staff of the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre. From 1927 to 1929 he served as a major in the army occupying the Rhineland and could see for himself both the potential danger of German aggression and the inadequacy of the French defense. He also spent two years in the Middle East and then, having been promoted to lieutenant colonel, spent four years as a member of the secretariat of the Conseil Supérieur de la Défense Nationale. De Gaulle's writing career began with a study of the relation between the civil and military powers in Germany, La Discorde chez l'ennemi (1924), followed by lectures on his conception of leadership, Le Fil de l'épée (1932). A study on military theory, Vers l'armée de métier (1934), defended the idea of a small professional army, highly mechanized and mobile, in preference to the static theories exemplified by the Maginot Line, which was intended to protect France against German attack. He also wrote a memorandum in which he tried, even as late as January 1940, to convert politicians to his way of thinking. His views made him unpopular with his military superiors, and the question of his right to publish under his name a historical study, La France et son armée (1938), led to a dispute with Marshal Pétain. 
At the outbreak of World War II, de Gaulle commanded a tank brigade
attached to the French 5th Army. In May 1940, after assuming command
as temporary brigadier general in the 4th Armored Division, the rank
that he retained for the rest of his life, he twice had the opportunity
to apply his theories on tank warfare. He was mentioned as “an
admirable, energetic, and courageous leader.” On 06 June 1940
he entered the government of Paul Reynaud [15 Oct 1878 – 21
Sep 1966] as undersecretary of state for defense and war, and he undertook
several missions to England to explore the possibilities of continuing
the war. When the Reynaud government was replaced 10 days later by
that of Marshal Pétain, who intended to seek an armistice with
the Germans, de Gaulle left for England. On 18 June 1940 he broadcast
from London his first appeal to his compatriots to continue the war
under his leadership. On 02 August 1940, a French military court tried
and sentenced him in absentia to death, deprivation of military rank,
and confiscation of property.De Gaulle entered on his wartime career as a political leader with tremendous liabilities. He had only a handful of haphazardly recruited political supporters and volunteers for what were to become the Free French Forces. He had no political status and was virtually unknown in both Britain and France. But he had an absolute belief in his mission and a conviction that he possessed the qualities of leadership. He was totally devoted to France and had the strength of character (or obstinacy, as it often appeared to the British) to fight for French interests as he saw them with all the resources at his disposal. In his country, to the politicians on the political left, a career officer who was a practicing Catholic was not an immediately acceptable political leader; while to those on the right he was a rebel against Pétain, a national hero and France's only field marshal. Broadcasts from London, the action of the Free French Forces, and the contacts of resistance groups in France either with his own organization or with those of the British secret services brought national recognition of his leadership; but full recognition by his allies came only after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. In London de Gaulle's relations with the British government were never easy, and de Gaulle often added to the strain, at times through his own misjudgment or touchiness. In 1943 he moved his headquarters to Algiers, where he became president of the French Committee of National Liberation, at first jointly with General Henri Giraud [18 Jan 1879 – 11 Mar 1949]. De Gaulle's successful campaign to edge out Giraud gave the world proof of his skill in political maneuvering. On 09 September 1944, de Gaulle and his shadow government returned from Algiers to Paris. There he headed two successive provisional governments but, on 20 January 1946, abruptly resigned, apparently owing to his irritation with the political parties forming the coalition government. In November 1946 the Fourth French Republic was declared, and until 1958 de Gaulle campaigned against its constitution, which, he charged, was likely to reproduce the political and governmental inadequacies of the Third Republic. In 1947 he formed the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), a mass movement that grew rapidlyin strength and that to all intents and purposes became a political party during the elections of 1951, when it won 120 seats in the National Assembly. The movement expressed de Gaulle's hostility to the constitution, to the party system, and, in particular, to the French Communists, because of their unswerving loyalty to directives from Moscow. He became dissatisfied with the RPF, however, and in 1953 severed his connection with it. In 1955 it was disbanded. The general made no public appearances in 1955 or 1956 and retired to his home in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, where he worked on his memoirs: L'Appel, 1940–1942 (1954), L'Unité, 1942–1944 (1956), and Le Salut, 1944–1946 (1959). The last volume was completed only after his return to power in 1958. 
De Gaulle's compatriots were deeply divided on the question of his
return to public life. The reasons for their hesitation belong to
the political history of the period. The opportunity presented itself
in May 1958 when the insurrection that had broken out in Algiers threatened
to bring civil war to France. De Gaulle must have seen his return
to politics as the most carefully balanced calculation in a life that
had had its share of political gambles. He was cautious, for it was
by no means certain that the French parliament would accept his return
on conditions that he could accept. He affirmed his determination
not to come to power by other than legal means, and there was never
any evidence of his association with insurgent plans tobring him back;
however, his carefully worded statements (on 15, 19, and 27 May 1958)
certainly helped the insurgents. On 01 June 1958, three days after
President René Coty threatened to resign unless de Gaulle's
return to power was accepted, de Gaulle presented himself before the
National Assembly as a prime minister designate. On the following
day he attended the parliamentary session (after he was duly “invested”
as Président du Conseil des Ministres) that authorized him
to reform the constitution and accorded him the special powers that
he demanded.[< official portrait, 1958] On 21 December 1958, de Gaulle was elected president of the republic. The powers given to the president in the new constitution, which had been approved by 83% of the voters in a referendum on 28 September 1958, and especially the provisions for the use of the referendum and for presidential rule during a state of emergency, reflected his firm conviction that a strong state required a leader with power to make decisions. De Gaulle realized that his fellow citizens would accept him only in a crisis and that he must, therefore, take steps to retain the support of the general public and to disarm the power of “the system of parties” in parliament, always potentially hostile to him. His tactics were first to obtain consent for the personal control of government policy by the president and then to ensure its renewal through elections or referendums. He therefore undertook throughout his presidency what was virtually a continuous election campaign, in the form of provincial tours, in which he visited every département and during which he met ordinary citizens as well as local notables. He appeared on television several times a year. He relied as far as possible on ministers who were compagnons, those whose loyalties went back to the wartime days, and counted on their use of the constitutional provisions to curb the powers of the deputies to obstruct parliamentary business or harass governments. De Gaulle retained the essential function of parliaments in a democracy, namely, the right to criticize governments and to withdraw confidence in them. There were frequent complaints of progovernmental bias on the radio, but these also had been common under pre-Gaullist regimes. Under a law of 1881 insults to the president of the republic constitute an offense, and, while there was certainly more recourse to this law during de Gaulle's presidency than under previous regimes, it presented no obstacle to political criticisms of Gaullist policies and Gaullist ministers in the press and by political parties. Indeed, those criticisms were continual and widespread. De Gaulle's greatest challenge in his early years as president was to find a way to resolve the bloody and extraordinarily divisive Algerian War. France's influential left-wing intellectuals supported Algerian independence and wanted de Gaulle to find a face-saving way to end the war quickly. The European residents of Algeria and their many supporters on the mainland, most of them politically conservative, wanted France to retain Algeria at all costs. The leaders of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), meanwhile, were willing to discuss nothing short of full independence. De Gaulle realized that he had no choice but to end the war, and when he began peace negotiations with the FLN, French military leaders in Algiers turned against him, forming a rebel faction known as the Secret Army Organization (OAS). In April 1961 the OAS seized control of Algiers and threatened to take Paris as well. De Gaulle responded vigorously, using the emergency powers permitted by the constitution of the Fifth Republic. Most French citizens rallied to de Gaulle, and after a tense standoff, the OAS action fell apart. The bulk of the military refused to side with the rebellious generals, and de Gaulle's peace initiative was allowed to proceed. The bloodletting, however, was not over.The OAS, now a full-fledged terrorist organization, undertook a wave of bombings and assassinations (including attempts on de Gaulle) that left some 12'000 victims. But the overwhelming majority of the population supported de Gaulle, allowing him to negotiate Algerian independence (1962) and defeat the OAS. Preoccupied during his first three years with Algeria, de Gaulle was finally in a position to turn to other pressing matters. Beginning in 1962, he moved to strengthen the country's economy, planned the reorganization of the army, developed an independent nuclear deterrent, and prevented fresh “Algerias” in the future by providing for the constitutional transformation of the African overseas territories into 12 politically independent states. From mid-1962 onward, however, with the recognition of an independent Algerian state, he had to consolidate his own position by obtaining a fresh vote of confidence from the electorate, for he was no longer politically indispensable. One lesson that de Gaulle had learned was that his personal position was stronger if he remained, at least in theory, above the political and party battle, as he had tried to do during the wartime and early postwar years. Before the elections of 1958, he had therefore forbidden his supporters to use his name, “even in the form of an adjective,” in the title of any group or candidate. In 1962 he offered the electors the choice between his resignation and acceptance of a constitutional amendment providing for the election of the president by universal suffrage. Under the original constitution, the president was to be chosen by an electoral college of some 80'000 members, mainly mayors and local leaders. The electors favored the amendment overwhelmingly. During the parliamentary general election in November, the Gaullist party won an additional 64 seats, thus obtaining, with the support of some 30 conservative deputies, a majority in the National Assembly. From then on, de Gaulle was in a position to carry out, with public consent, the plans that he regarded as essential to restore France to the status of a great power. As a statesman, de Gaulle fought his political battles like a military campaign, using all the devices that he had learned to transform France's postwar international position of weakness into one of strength and to overcome opposition to his plans at home. These devices have been often described by his fellow citizens: “egoism, pride, aloofness, guile,” according to sociologist and historian Raymond Aron; “empiricism, intuition, flexibility of mind if not of soul,” according to one of the most perceptive of his biographers, Jean Lacouture. From 1962 until his reelection as president in 1965, de Gaulle used the European Economic Community (EEC; now part of the European Union) to serve French interests, especially agricultural interests. France's participation in the supranational North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was progressively withdrawn, because de Gaulle's policy for France was one of “national independence” and of international cooperation based only on agreements between nation-states. This was the main theme of his presidential campaign in 1965. On 21 December 1965 he was reelected, though only on the second ballot, after facing a surprisingly strong challenge from the Socialist François Mitterrand [26 Oct 1916 – 08 Jan 1996]. On 07 March 1966, he announced France's withdrawal from the integrated military command of NATO but not from the alliance. During the remainder of his second term as president, de Gaulle turned his attention increasingly to wider fields. He had already begun a policy of “détente and cooperation” with countries behind the Iron Curtain by encouraging trade and cultural relations with the Soviet Union and the countries of eastern Europe and by recognizing the People's Republic of China in January 1964. As a solution for the Vietnam War, he advocated a policy of neutrality for all nations concerned based on a negotiated peace, of which a necessary preliminary was to be the withdrawal of all US troops from Vietnam. These activities, together with visits to Canada, the Far East, and all of Latin America, formed part of a policy that aimed at increasingthe influence of France, first in French-speaking countries or countries that shared some bond derived from a common attachment to Latin culture, then in Europe, which, in his view, would sooner or later extend beyond the boundaries of the EEC or the division into western and eastern blocs, and finally in the world, where he foresaw the gradual dissolution of the two great blocs. Circumstances worked against his success. He felt obliged to take up attitudes that were generally interpreted as anti-US. His theory of “desatellization,” the progressive loosening of the Soviet hold on the countries of eastern Europe, was brutally invalidated by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Moreover, there was no evidence that France carried any real weight with the countries that it hoped to influence. As the political and economic crisis of May 1968 revealed, France had neither the internal cohesion nor the financial resources to play the role of leader in what de Gaulle called “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.” His strength had been in his appeal for unity against a common enemy: in 1940, Germany; in 1958, subversion and civil disorder. In the students' and workers' revolt of May 1968, the enemy was once again subversion and civil disorder, but the rapid collapse of the revolt and the divisions within the left that it revealed made de Gaulle seem less indispensable than in the past. The solution to the underlying causes of the revolt required the patient negotiation of a government rather than leadership by a man of destiny. A broadcast on 30 May 1968 brought a massive demonstration of support and a landslide Gaullist victory in the subsequent election, but the victory was for peace and normality rather than for the president and his policies. When in April 1969 de Gaulle called once again for a referendum, it was not clear whether he really wanted to remain in power. The referendum, calling for the acceptance of regional reorganization and a reform of the Senate, was presented to voters, as other referenda had been, as a choice between acceptance of both measures (though the second was generally unpopular) or of his own resignation. The diplomatic methods that had been welcomed during his first term as assertions of France's claim to equality with and influence among the great powers now created great unease. His advocacy of neutrality on Vietnam in 1966 was widely interpreted as an expression of personal anti-Americanism. On his visit to Canada in 1967, he seemed actively to encourage French-Canadian separatism. His declarations of neutrality in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War seemed to show a pro-Arab bias. France had not formally withdrawnfrom NATO, and the so-called independent nuclear deterrent that he sought was neither independent nor within France's means. The question “After de Gaulle, who?” was answered by the president himself when he dismissed Georges Pompidou [05 Jul 1911 – 02 Apr 1974] in 1968 after a record six years as prime minister. This left Pompidou free to present himself as a credible and acceptable successor to de Gaulle. On 28 April 1969, following his defeat in the referendum, de Gaulle resigned and returned to Colombey-les-Deux-Églises to retire permanently and to resume writing his memoirs. There he died of a heart attack the following year. His aims and actions as president had drawn more exegesis and speculation than those of any other French statesman. |
1963 Twenty miners by concussion and 438 by carbon monoxide poisoning due to coal-dust explosion in the Mikawa area of the Miike coal mine in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. 839 miners are injured by carbon monoxide. 106 of the 1403 miners in the mine at the time of the explosion (15:12) are unhurt.
1963:: 162 persons in triple collision of trains at Tsurumi Station on Yokosuka line of Japanese National Railroads. 120 persons are injured..
1953 Abdul-Aziz ibn Sa'ud , 73, founder of Saudi Arabia
1953 Dylan Thomas, 39, Scottish author-poet, in NY.
1952 Chaim Weizmann, 57, 1st President of Israel.
1947 Mariano Benlliure y Gil, escultor español.
1942 Graciano Ricalde Gamboa, en Mérida, Yucatán, profesor e ingeniero yucateco, quien a los 16 años se graduó de profesor en la Normal de su Estado. En 1910 realizó estudios sobre el cometa Haley. En 1923 hizo cálculos sobre el eclipse total de sol de ese año. Resolvió la ecuación general de 5º grado, por medio de funciones elípticas.
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1940 Neville Chamberlain, UK Prime
Minister of appeasement. Just months after he was chased (literally) out of office, Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister at the outbreak of the European war, dies. He is best (or rather "worst") remembered for his rather infamous policy of appeasement toward Hitler in the pre-war years. Chamberlain met first with Hitler in private consultations at Berchtesgaden, Hitler's Bavarian mountaintop retreat. The Führer, who Chamberlain described as a "gentleman," convinced the Prime Minister to support Germany's territorial demands in Czechoslovakia. Hitler wanted the Sudetenland, an area in northern Czechoslovakia where three million ethnic Germans lived. On 29 September and 30 September 1938, Chamberlain, Hitler, Premier Daladier of France, and Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, met in Munich to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain convinced Daladier that joining England in support of Hitler's demands would avert war. The German army had already been mobilized, and Hitler had threatened to march into Czechoslovakia. The Munich Pact, signed by all four European leaders in attendance, created a new Czechoslovakia, stripped of the Sudetenland. Hitler was appeased for the moment, but the Pact left Czechoslovakia highly vulnerable for German attack. Returning to England from Munich, Chamberlain boasted the notoriously naïve claim, "I believe it is peace for our time." These words, as well as Chamberlain's umbrella, became widely recognized symbols of appeasement. When Germany invaded Poland on 01 September 1939, Chamberlain issued an ultimatum to Hitler to immediately withdraw from Poland. Hitler ignored the ultimatum, and on Sunday 03 September, Chamberlain declared war. By this point, Britain's faith in its Prime Minister was diminishing quickly. Chamberlain stayed afloat until Germany launched the Denmark and Norway campaign in May 1940. Soon thereafter, one of Chamberlain's supporters stood up in Parliament session and quoted Oliver Cromwell: "Depart, I say, and let us have done with you! In the name of God, go!" Chamberlain was driven from the House amid unanimous chants of "Go! Go! Go!" Two days later, on 10 May, King George VI asked Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to succeed as Prime Minister. |
