1936: GERMANY: German troops enter the Rhineland. Under the terms of the July 1919 Versailles Treaty, all 9,450 square miles (24 475 square kilometers) of the Rhineland west of the Rhine River, and a 30-mile (48 kilometer) wide zone east of the river, was to be permanently demilitarized to form a buffer between Germany and a perpetually wary France. Germany was not permitted to maintain any armed forces there; existing fortifications were to be dismantled and no new ones built. To ensure compliance, there would be a 15-year period of occupation by Allied soldiers; the Allied soldiers were gone by mid-1930. In May 1935, Chancellor Adolf Hitler had publicly hailed an unarmed Rhineland as Germany's "contribution" to European peace; ten months later the German military invades but it is actually a bluff. The troops are equipped only with rifles, pistols and machine guns, there is not armor or artillery; the planes that were sent up in a show of strength by the Luftwaffe are
not combat-ready; they lacked guns or ammunition or both, and the Luftwaffe pilots keep looking apprehensively westward, expecting a mass onslaught by French planes. Had France moved in, Hitler later admitted, "we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs." The French begin planning a military sweep into the Rhineland, then reconsider and settle for a protest to the League of Nations. The League pronounced Germany guilty of violating the 1925 Locarno Pact which guaranteed the boundaries of European countries, then fail to suggest any way to enforce it. In the end, a rationalthe end, a rationalthe end, a rationale was found for Hitler's coup by the British. After all, the London Times noted, it was not as if the Fuhrer were invading foreign soil: "He is only going into his own back garden." (Michael Ballard and Jack McKillop)
March 7th, 1939 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: London: Singer Al Bowlly records 'The Same Old Story', 'Could Be' and 'Between a Kiss and a Sigh' with Geraldo and his orchestra.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Hitler hands the former Czech province of Ruthenia over to Hungary.
JAPAN: Navy minister Yonai announces a continued naval expansion programme.