The border in a town partly called Baarle-Hertog and the other Baarle-Nassau, is quite complex. A belgian stepped to court to know whether he lived on Belgian or Dutch soil.

For more than a century everyone had managed to get along just fine, even though part of the town was called Baarle-Hertog and was Belgian, and the other was called Baarle-Nassau and was Dutch. Then one day in 1939, a Belgian named Sooi Van Den Eijnde decided to lead his…

The Netherlands made precautions in reply to a continuing concentration of German troops along the Dutch border.

Some years before World War I, the Kaiser took Queen Wilhelmina—a plump, sweet-faced young matron—out to his Army maneuvers. Intending to impress his little neighbor with Germany’s military might, he pointed out to her a strapping unit of the Prussian Guard.

“They are all eight feet tall,…