Exile Governments, Academics, and Activists in the Capital of Free Europe, 1940–1945
When Nazi Germany invaded mainland Greece in April 1941, the Greek King Georg II formed a government that first departed to Crete. As the Germans were occupying Crete, the government fled to Egypt in...
Thanking his voters in a tweet on the night of his re-election on December 12, 2019, Boris Johnson hailed the United Kingdom as “the greatest democracy in the world”.[1] In a similar vein, the...
Compared to the rest of Britain, London features an above-average percentage of ethnic minorities, which make up almost 20% of the population (4.2% Caribbean, 6.6% Indian, 7.0% African).[1] However, only 4% of London’s approximately...
The “London Moment” was characterised by deprivation and shortages. War economy took its toll on Brits and immigrants alike, influencing every aspect of daily life – food, transportation, mail, reading. At the same time, refugee...
Karel Čapek (1890-1938) belongs to the modern canon of literature as one of rather few Czech authors. He wrote his major plays and novels (R.U.R, War with the Newts, The White Disease or Krakatit)...
Eric Hobsbawm did not live during the 19th century but he wrote a great book about the long century. Christopher Clark did not experience the First World War but he wrote one of the...
The Anglo-Czechoslovak relationship stretches through centuries of religious, institutional and personal connections. Its ties could have been in a scope similar to those Britain built with France, Germany or the Netherlands, but were impeded...
Opening Scene: A heated debate is raging in the British Parliament: Clement Attlee, head of the opposition Labour Party, explains to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain what he thinks of his appeasement policy and explains his condition for a coalition government: His condition is called Winston Churchill. (Not Lord Halifax, as favoured by the Conservatives.) Thus, Churchill is present in the film before he even appears for the first time.
Happy new year! The new year’s edition of Berlin’s daily newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel” published an article by Julia Eichenberg on Queen Wilhelmina and the exiled European governments in London:
From 1940 onwards, European exiles increasingly populated London. The general attitude towards them changed quickly: After fearing a wave of penniless migrants, the British public slowly warmed to those European exiles who made it...
Out now: The current issue of “Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History” (3/2018), edited by Nikola Tietze and Bettina Severin-Barboutie focuses on Flight and Migration: Actors, Actions, Contexts. Julia Eichenberg contributed an article...
Only two years after the end of the war India became independent – reason enough to take a closer look at the connections between London and India during the Second World War in the...
On 22 September 1941, five young Frenchmen, together with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine, sat in the garden of the house at 10 Downing Street. Accompanied by a mutual friend,...
Photo credit: The Lotte Meitner-Graf Archive The onslaught on Jewish scholars in Germany as well as the increasingly difficult situation for other jurists in the occupied parts of Europe forced many among them to...
On Whitehall in Westminster, London’s government district, the cenotaph commemorates the British soldiers killed in the First World War. Until today, it is at the centre of Remembrance Day service, taking place on the...
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"Capital of Europe" is a blog following the Freigeist research project "The London Moment. Transnational Collaboration of Governments-in-exile during the Second World War and its Impact on European History". The project, coordinated by Dr. Julia Eichenberg, the Principle Investigator, is based at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and funded by the Volkswagen-Stiftung.
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