Czechoslovakia is founded after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. The country comprises the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia, Subcarpathian Rus [today part of Ukraine known as Transcarpathia] and parts of the Austrian region of Silesia, and is home to a variety of ethnic groups including Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, and Slovaks.
Convened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Evian Conference is designed to address increasing numbers of mostly Jewish refugees fleeing the Reich. More than 30 countries attend, but no country--with the exception of the Dominican Republic-- significantly increases its immigration quota to meet the crisis of Jewish refugees.
Soviet forces had remained in Hungary after liberating the country from Nazi occupation in 1944. After the war, Hungary had held democratic elections, but under Soviet influence the Communists successively neutralized all other parties until, in 1949, voters were presented with ballots with only one party list. The newly elected Communist legislature adopted a new, Soviet-style constitution and became a Soviet satellite.
Reports of the Nazi plan to murder all of the Jewish people in Europe begin to circulate in the second half of 1942 and are widely reported in U.S. newspapers in late November. On December 17 1942, the Allied governments denounce the mass murder of European Jews under Nazi control. Though Nazi crimes are now publicized, Allied forces do not target Nazi killing installations or prioritize the rescue of Jews.
In an attempt to disrupt the Allied supply of oil and other material by targeting their points of origin in the Caribbean, German and Italian submarines torpedoed 263 ships in the Caribbean, including two Dominican ships. The S. S. Presidente Trujillo and the San Rafael, both named by the Dominican president after himself, were sunk, and 25 crew members were killed.