Appeasement: Did you mean...?

A map illustrating the growing instability in Europe in the lead-up to World War II, capturing the aggressive territorial expansion of Nazi Germany and the failure of appeasement. Between 1935 and 1939, a series of bold geopolitical moves...

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933. He gained power by making popular promises like improving Germany's economy and status in Europe, but when he took these policies too far, he was responsible more than anything...

The religion of the Aztec civilization which flourished in ancient Mesoamerica (1345-1521 CE) has gained an infamous reputation for bloodthirsty human sacrifice with lurid tales of the beating heart being ripped from the still-conscious victim...

Montezuma (aka Moctezuma), or more correctly, Motecuhzoma II Xocoyotzin, meaning 'Angry Like A Lord’, was the last fully independent ruler of the Aztec empire before the civilization's collapse after the Spanish Conquest in the early 16th...

Rollo (l. c.860-c.930 CE, r. 911-927 CE) was a Viking chieftain who became the founder and first ruler of the region of Normandy. He converted to Christianity as part of a deal with the Frankish king Charles the Simple (893-923 CE) in 911...

Italy occupied Ethiopia for five years, from 1935 to 1941, following a mass-scale invasion launched by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). However, Ethiopia had been a long-aimed colonial objective of Italy, which had already...

Throughout the 9th century CE, Viking raids on the region of Francia (roughly modern-day France) increased in frequency, destabilizing the region, and terrorizing the populace. The raids seem to have been inspired by the death of the Holy...

The Phoney War was the period from the start of the Second World War (1939-45) when Britain and France declared war against Germany on 3 September until the start of significant military action in the West in the spring of 1940. While Poland...

The Kristallnacht (Reichkristallnacht, 'Night of Broken Glass', or November Pogrom) was an attack on Jews and Jewish property across Germany and Austria on 9-10 November 1938. Orchestrated as part of a systematic and escalating persecution...

The Anschluss ('fusion') of 12 March 1938 was the annexation and formal union of Austria with Germany. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the Nazi leader of Germany, dreamed of an empire which enclosed all German speakers, his 'Greater Germany'. Hitler's...