Abstract
Before World War II broke out in Europe in September, 1939, Nazi Germany had acted aggressively for several years in pursuing its objective of world domination. First of all, Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, which was a part of the overall rearmament program. Secondly, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the unification of all German-speaking people, those in Austria and the Sudeten Germans in parts of Czechoslovakia. Involved in the latter problem was the infamous Munich Conference, where the word "appeasement" became a term associated with treason.
Hitler then launched his third step to world domination, Drang Nach Osten, with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by the end of March, 1939. Then, in order to get Poland without opposition from Russia, Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union just a few days before German troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.
This paper includes a survey of Germany's policies from 1936 to 1939, in order to provide perspective for the study of the journalistic attitudes in an interior region of the United States. This paper is also an investigation of whether the isolationist interior was greatly concerned with foreign developments in the period from 1936 to 1939. If so, conclusions will be made regarding the attitudes and opinions expressed in this southern Minnesota reaction.
The plan of this study is to examine each of the events mentioned above and the reaction to these events by the editorials found in eighteen selected southern Minnesota newspapers. These newspapers were selected because of their widespread geographical location in southern Minnesota and also because most of them were daily newspapers. There were no "Letters to the Editor" used in this study, thus trying to get one point of view from each newspaper. In a few cases, some of these newspapers had a change in editor and, of course, the larger newspapers probably had several editorialists. Finally, an attempt will be made to draw conclusions from these editorials.
Advisor
William E. Lass
Committee Member
Rubert Kress
Committee Member
William M. Ransom
Date of Degree
1969
Language
english
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Arts (MA)
Program of Study
History and Political Science
Department
History and Gender Studies
College
Humanities and Social Sciences
Recommended Citation
Knudsen, F. K. (1969). Southern Minnesota reaction to policies of Nazi Germany, 1936-1939 [Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1616/
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