Lithuanian Out Loud

Hi there, I’m Jack and welcome back to Lithuanian Out Loud and the month of January which in Lithuanian is…sausis.  Today is the 63rd anniversary of the Battle of Memel.  Lithuania’s only seaport is on the Baltic Coast.  This city has had two names.  Its German name was Memel and its Lithuanian name is Klaipėda.  In 1938 the Nazi party won 26 of 29 seats in elections of the local assembly or Landtag.  You see, for hundreds of years Klaipėda or Memel was populated mostly by  Germans.  They were the descendants of the German Crusaders we’ve mentioned in previous episodes.  In 1939 the Klaipėda area was at least 80% German and this German population was caught up in the nationalistic fever that swept over German populations in Europe when Adolph Hitler came to power. Nazi Germany pressured the Lithuanian government to hand the city and the surrounding area over to the Third Reich so as to include it in “Greater Germany."  Seeing that neither France nor England were willing to stop the Nazi demands and since the