Curated category
Short-lived countries
- German occupation of AlbaniaOn the 8th of September 1943, Italy signed an armistice with the Allied forces. Within days, German troops were crossing into Albania, and the question of…
- Federal State of AustriaThe Federal State of Austria lasted just four years, from 1934 to 1938, but its story is one of the most compressed political dramas in modern European…
- Vichy FranceVichy France began on the 10th of July 1940, the day the French National Assembly voted by 569 votes to 80 to hand absolute power to an 84-year-old military…
- Confederate States of AmericaOn the 12th of April 1861, artillery shells arced over Charleston Harbor and slammed into the walls of Fort Sumter. The Confederate States of America had…
- Republic of MahabadThe Republic of Mahabad lasted exactly 327 days. Proclaimed on the 22nd of January 1946 in a small Kurdish city in northwestern Iran, it vanished on the 15th…
- State of KatangaThe State of Katanga declared its independence from Congo-Léopoldville on the evening of the 11th of July 1960, when Moïse Tshombe accused the new central…
- Azerbaijan People's GovernmentThe Azerbaijan People's Government was proclaimed in Tabriz in 1945, and for just over a year it controlled a slice of northern Iran that Soviet forces had…
- Italian Social RepublicThe Italian Social Republic existed for just 19 months, yet its name carries a weight that still shapes Italian politics today.
- Democratic Federal YugoslaviaDemocratic Federal Yugoslavia was born not in a capital city or a palace, but in the town of Jajce, deep in occupied Bosnia, on the 29th of November 1943.
- Principality of ElbaThe Principality of Elba existed for well under a year, and it had exactly one ruler: Napoleon Bonaparte. On the 11th of April 1814, the Treaty of…