In 1955 Soviet States sign the Warsaw Pact.
In 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation or NATO was established uniting 12 (initially) Western nations in a military alliance. Originally the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland and Portugal signed the treaty.
Originally after WWII governance of Germany was divided between the main four powers of the Allies (United Kingdom, France, United States and Russia) and the capital city of Berlin was also divided in a similar manner. In the same year that NATO was created the Western countries joined their divisions together, forming the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or BRD) on the 23rd of May 1949. This infuriated the Soviets Union and shortly after, on the 7th of October 1949, the Soviet controlled side or Eastern side became the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or DDR).
On the 9th of May 1955 Western Germany or the Federal Republic became a member of NATO and the Soviets felt this was a direct threat against East Germany. In response on this day in 1955 Soviet States signed Warsaw Pact” which was a similar military union with eight soviet countries comprising of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Albania. The Warsaw Pact gave the Soviet Union control of the armed forces of all that signed, but also meant that they would aid any member in the event of military attack by any non-member nation.
On the 25th of February 1991, following the start of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was officially disbanded and many members would later join NATO.
In 1938 at the start of a football match the English team caused anger at home when they gave a NAZI salute to the German team.
The players had been ordered to give the salute to the opposing team as a sign of appeasement to the NAZI’s by Neville Chamberlin’s government. In a few months on the 30th of September the UK, France, Italy and Germany signed the Munich agreement which said that Britain, France and Italy would support Germany’s take over of Sudetenland on the understanding that Germany makes no more attempts of expanding its borders. Chamberlin announced that the agreement brought “Peace in our time”, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. It was not the first time that football had been hijacked in the name of politics and it would not be the last. England’s 6-3 win was a bitter sweet victory in the shadow of an ill-advised political agenda.
