For more than one hundred years, from 1856 to 1956, the Boston Post was this city's largest daily newspaper.
Founded in 1831 by Boston businessmen Charles G. Greene and Williams Beals, the paper was later sold to Edwin Grozier who, along with his son Richard, built it into the most respected paper in New England. Such was the influence of the Post that, after winning election to the United States Senate in 1956, John F. Kennedy is said to have remarked that without the paper's endorsement, he would have been "licked."
In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain traveled to Munich to meet with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. There, Chamberlain and other European nations signed the Munich Pact, forcing Czechoslovakia, which was not invited to the talks, to cede the Sudetenland to Germany.
The Munich Pact was Britain's and France's attempt to avoid war. Chamberlain believed that Europe could appease Hitler by offering the Sudetenland as a sacrificial lamb. Upon returning to London, Chamberlain claimed that the Munich Pact had achieved "peace for our time." Winston Churchill responded to Chamberlain, saying, "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war." World War II commenced less than a year later.
