The Spring and Summer of 1939: Britain’s Balkan Dilemma Begins

Abstract

In the Spring of 1939, Britain’s illusion that Hitler and Mussolini could be contained received its fatal blow. The German invasion of the rump of Czechoslovakia in March, and the Italian occupation of Albania in April ended the fantasy that all the dictators wanted — and Hitler in particular — was to unify all their own ethnic peoples under their direct rule. The new German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was Czech in ethnic make-up, not German, and the Albanians were not ethnically Italian.