King Ottokar's Sceptre
"King Ottokar's Sceptre" was not the first Tintin adventure to draw specifically on contemporary events; Hergé had for instance previously made use of the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria as a political backdrop for the setting in "The Blue Lotus". This time, Hergé had closely observed the unfolding events surrounding the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany. In producing this story, he was particularly influenced by the "Anschluss", the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938. The Munich Agreement and the subsequent Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland followed in October 1938. Three weeks after "King Ottokar's Sceptre" finished serialisation, Germany invaded Poland. By this point, the threat to Belgian sovereignty posed by Nazi expansionism was becoming increasingly clear. By 1939, the events surrounding the Italian annexation of Albania made Hergé insist his editor publish the work to take advantage of current events as he felt "Syldavia is Albania". Later Hergé denied that he had just one country in mind.