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  Background Material Related to My Book Consequences of the evacuation Photos Related to My Book Travel Photos with Commentary Short Stories and Essays Reader Contributions History: Nazi Germany 1933 to 1939 Of necessity, this discussion of the history of Nazi Germany between 1933 when President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolph Hitler to the chancellorship until Hitler’s attack on Poland on 1 September 1939 will be, at best a sketch to show the timeline and the background necessary to give meaning to the subject of the book I am working on. I do not yet have a title for the book. One will suggest itself to me as I begin the actual writing phase. Now, I am still collecting data and trying to organize it into an orderly, comprehensible form. The subject however is easy to define. Following the 1938 annexation of the Sudetenland, a crescent shaped portion of Czechoslovakia bordering on Germany and largely inhabited by ethnic Germans, Hitler realized that it would not be long before he pushed Britain and France into taking military action to stop his drang nach Ost (his expansion of Germany’s territory into ethnically German parts of countries in Eastern Europe. At that time, he ordered the construction of what he called the Westwall. Americans and the British call this line of defensive sites the Siegfried Line. Hitler and his army high command believed that as soon as the inevitable war broke out, the French would immediately attack, first with canon fire from the Maginot Line and then with air strikes and ground assaults. As a result, the land immediately adjacent to the Westwall was expected to become an instant battleground. This area was 650 kilometers long and averaged 10 kilometers wide. On the military’s maps, it was shown by red hatch marks, thusly: ////////////, and was named die Rote Zone (the red zone). At the same time he ordered the building of the Westwall, Hitler order the drafting of plans for the total evacuation of all civilians living within the red zone. This was to both protect them from harm, and to give the Wehrmacht (German army during WWII) total freedom of movement. I believe there was also a third reason for the removal of the civilian population from the red zone – a political reason. None of the source material I have been able to uncover explicitly says that, but the implication lies not far below the surface. Little is known about that 1939 evacuation. I have been researching it since the summer of 1978 and am only now beginning to feel I know enough to write about it.  All Rights Reserved. All text and images appearing in this site are the exclusive property of Malcolm (Mac) Taylor and may not be reproduced, copied, stored or manipulated without the written permission of Malcolm (Mac) Taylor. This website launched on March 20, 2008 and last updated on March 31, 2008
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