News for this May 23rd in 1938 comes from Germany, via the Shortwave Service of Radio Berlin and their daily English newscast.

Reports on border incidents between Czech and German troops, the continuing negotiations between Berlin, London and Paris on the Sudeten question. News regarding meetings between Sudeten-German mouthpiece Konrad Henlein with Czech representatives on the border question. Continuing pressure for a settlement.

And the weather in Berlin was "fine and spring-like".

And that's how this day was rolling if you happened to be around on May 23, 1938 and were dial hopping on your Shortwave radio, listening for Berlin.

News for this day in May 1938 was unsettling. The crisis between Nazi Germany and Czechoslovakia was heating up and the goings on in Prague were taking center stage for the rest of the world.

This broadcast, an English language newscast from Radio Prague on May 16th, 1938 deals with results from the elections held the previous day. Of primary concern was just how influential pro-Nazi Konrad Henlein and his Deutsche Sudeten Party were in securing enough seats in Parliament and how this would eventually effect the proposed land-grab by Berlin.

Negotiations were still going on between England, France and Germany over the Sudeten question, and things would heat up considerably more over the coming weeks before an appeased settlement was brokered by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. The outcome didn't favor the beleaguered Czech people, but it did promise "Peace In Our Time" for the moment.

And that's what happened in Prague, this May 16, 1938.

The rest is history.

This day in 1938 was about the continuing crisis in Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and Czechoslovakia and a piece of disputed territory Germany claimed was theirs.

As the crisis deepened, on the morning of September 23rd 1938, Czech Ambassador to Great Britain Jan Masaryk delivered an appeal to the American audience about the situation and where things stood.

Jan Masaryk: “My people have gone further in self-restraint, discipline, International solidarity in these last few days than anyone could have expected. And I am more proud than I ever was to be a citizen of Czechoslovakia. We shall study Mr. Hitler’s proposal with goodwill and the same spirit of conciliation which made us swallow many little pills, and bitter pills, in the last few days. But I solemnly declare that we shall not give in on the fundamental issues. We believe in Democracy, humanitarianism, freedom of religion and speech and the importance of the individual.”

Within days the picture would emerge that Czechoslovakia would be forced to give in to German demands and a new word became popular, more for its irony than anything else: Appeasement.

Here is the original newscast with breaking bulletins by Robert Trout, H.V. Kaltenborn and Edward R. Murrow from CBS Radio on the morning of September 23, 1938.

The nature of news gathering was changing rapidly, just like the status of the world in general.