USSR joins the League of Nations, after Germany leaves the organization

Swedish tenor Jussi Björling makes his debut in Stockholm, in Puccini's Manon Lescaut

15-year-old English ballerina Margot Fonteyn makes her first appearance, dancing as a Snowflake in Nutcracker

In a referendum 38 million German voters say yes to Adolf Hitler becoming Führer, Germany's supreme leader

Hitler tells the party faithful in a Nuremberg rally that their new third Reich will last for 1000 years

Paul Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler is banned by the Nazis and is not performed until 1938 in Zurich

Sergei Kirov, head of the party in Leningrad, is assassinated in his office, giving Stalin the pretext for his first massive purge

Josip Broz, a leading member of the banned Communist Party of Yugoslavia, adopts the name Tito

Openly hostile to the Nazis, the architect Walter Gropius moves to England and three years later makes the USA his home

Adolf Hitler informs Britain and France that he is building up the German armed forces, in contravention of the Versailles treaty

The German composer Kurt Weill moves to New York, where he writes Broadway musicals

Adolf Hitler reinstates Germany's airforce, the Luftwaffe, putting Hermann Goering in command

The people of the rich mining district of the Saar vote to merge with Germany

Adolf Hitler gets away with a calculated international risk when he reintroduces conscription in Germany

The Viipury Library in Finland makes the reputation of a young Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto

Pablo Picasso's Minotauromachy, a masterpiece of etching, prefigures some of the themes of Guernica

Arthur Honegger's opera Joan of Arc at the Stake has its premiere in Basel

Alban Berg writes his Violin Concerto, commissioned by Louis Krasner, in memory of Manon Gropius

Adolf Hitler's rearmament programme begins to reduce German unemployment, and by 1938 eliminates it entirely

T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral has its first performance in Canterbury cathedral

Elias Canetti publishes the novel later translated into English as Auto da Fé

Adolf Hitler gives Karl Dönitz, a submarine commander from World War I, responsibility for Germany's U-boat programme

The Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz describes his experiments on young geese, with their capacity to imprint on human beings

Adolf Hitler promulgates a law prohibiting any sexual relationship between Jews and 'Aryans'

French cabaret singer Edith Gassion acquires the nickname la môme piaf ('the little sparrow'), and so becomes Edith Piaf