366 Days
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March
News Headlines
1
GOERING TO HEAD GERMAN AIR FORCE
Berlin, Germany · March 1, 1935 On this date in 1935 Adolf Hitler appointed World War I air ace Hermann Goering, last commander of the famous “Red Baron” Richthofen Fighter Squadron, to the position of Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief. Goering held the post until the final days of the Third Reich. A faithful Nazi from the earliest […]
2
PIUS XII IS NEW VATICAN HEAD
Rome, Italy • March 2, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Vatican City, Roman Catholic Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected pope on his sixty-third birthday. His coronation took place ten days later. Son of a Vatican lawyer, Pacelli took the name Pius XII. Pius’ actions during the Holocaust are controversial. Critics have accused him of […]
3
MASSIVE AIR RAID ON REICH CAPITAL
Berlin, Germany · March 3, 1945 Round-the-clock bombing operations against Germany began on March 3, 1944, with a U.S. 800‑plane daylight raid that dropped 2,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. On this date in 1945 American bombers mounted a daylight raid on Berlin that left 3,000 people dead and 100,000 homeless. Luftwaffe bombers retaliated, attacking Britain […]
4
BRITISH ARMY IN FIERCE BATTLE IN BURMA
Central Burma · March 4, 1945 The British Fourteenth Army was a multinational force that took part in the Burma Campaign (January 1942 to July 1945). Units were drawn from the British Army and the Indian Army, with significant contributions from Ghurkha and West and East African regiments. The Fourteenth Army has often been referred […]
5
POLISH NATIONALISTS TO DIE
Moscow, Soviet Union · March 5, 1940 In a proposal written on this date in 1940 to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and other members of the Soviet Politburo, Lavrentiy Beria, who was the head of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, advocated executing all members of the Polish Officer Corps […]
6
CHURCHILL PROCLAIMS BATTLE OF ATLANTIC
London, England · March 6, 1941 By January 1941 the Allies had lost 1,300 merchant vessels, almost half of them to German U‑boats. Following the enslavement of 120 million people in seven Western and Eastern European countries by Nazi Germany the previous year, the British were reduced to fighting Adolf Hitler’s military juggernaut alone. In […]
7
BRITISH RUSH TROOPS TO AID GREECE
Cairo, Egypt • March 7, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Greece, a British expeditionary force from Egypt arrived just two days before the army of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini started its last unsuccessful campaign against Greek forces. The previous October the Italian Army had crossed Greece’s northwestern frontier from neighboring Albania, launching the […]
8
DUTCH SURRENDER EAST INDIES
Batavia (Jakarta), Dutch East Indies • March 8, 1942 The mineral- and oil-rich Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia) was Japan’s next colonial target in the Pacific Theater—this after Allied resistance had collapsed in the British Crown colony of Singapore (February 15, 1942) and all but did so in the U.S. Philippines with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces holed […]
9
HUGE B-29 RAID DESTROYS JAPANESE CAPITAL
Tokyo, Japan · March 9, 1945 Apart from Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s April 1942 raid on the Japanese capital, Tokyo, early air raids on Japan focused on military and industrial targets with disappointing results. So U.S. Army Air Forces Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, a veteran of the horrific air campaign over Nazi Germany, filled each […]
10
RHINELAND CAMPAIGN DELAYS CAPTURE OF GERMANY’S RUHR
SHAEF HQ, Versailles, France • March 10, 1945 On this date in 1945 three sets of battles fought during the final stages of the European war ended in Allied victories and marked the beginning of the Allied invasion of Nazi Germany. The Battle of the Reichswald (German, Imperial Forest), known also as Operation Veritable, was […]
11
U.S. SUB’S DECK GUNS SINK JAPANESE VESSEL
Aboard the USS Pollack in Pacific Ocean • March 11, 1942 On this date in 1942 the USS Pollack made the first submarine attack using only its deck guns. Its targets were two Japanese fishing boats. During 1942 U.S. submarines reported 34 gun attacks on sampans and trawlers. The number of attacks increased to 64 in 1943, […]
12
HITLER INVADES AUSTRIA
Linz, Austria · March 12, 1938 After abolishing Germany’s Ministry of War on February 4, 1938, and creating in its place the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, or Supreme Command of the Armed Forces) with himself at its helm, Adolf Hitler now focused on a peaceful takeover of Europe beginning with his native Austria. (Hitler was […]
13
U-BOAT SHOOTS SHIPWRECK SURVIVORS
U-852 in Mid-Atlantic Ocean • March 13, 1944 On this date in 1944 German U‑boat 852, skippered by 28‑year‑old Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, torpedoed the British-chartered Greek freighter SS Peleus as it steamed west across the Atlantic from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. After the Peleus sank, U‑852 patrolled the large debris field for five […]
14
FORMAL FLAG-RAISING OVER BATTERED ISLAND
Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands · March 14, 1945 On this date in 1945 the U.S. flag was raised over the 10‑sq‑mile island of Iwo Jima in a formal flag-raising ceremony. The battle for the barren Japanese-held island lying some 760 miles southeast of Tokyo was the most bitterly contested of the war. Its capture was […]
15
HITLER INVADES CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Prague, Czechoslovakia • March 15, 1939 From the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in November 1918 a half-dozen new states emerged. Among them were Austria and Czechoslovakia. When Austria was incorporated into Adolf Hitler’s Greater German Reich in March 1938, Czechoslovakia found itself inside a German pincer. On October 1, 1938, following the Munich Agreement signed […]
16
FIRST LIQUID-FUEL ROCKET LAUNCHED
Auburn, Massachusetts · March 16, 1926 On this date in 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, Dr. Robert Goddard (1882–1945) conducted his first successful rocket flight. His liquid-propellant rocket rose 41 ft, traveled 184 ft, and burned no more than 3 seconds, but it proved the concept of rocket flight worked. Goddard, who received limited support for his research and […]
17
U-BOAT ACE CAPTURED, SUB SUNK
Aboard the HMS Walker in the North Atlantic · March 17, 1941 On this date in 1941 U-99, skippered by Otto Kretschmer, one of Germany’s most famous U‑boat commanders, had just fired the last of her torpedoes when she was spotted by a British destroyer southeast of Iceland. By this time Kretschmer, on his eighth […]
18
HITLER, MUSSOLINI HOLD SUMMIT
Brenner Pass, Austria • March 18, 1940 On this date in 1940 on the Austro-Italian border, German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian strongman Benito Mussolini met for their fifth face-to-face meeting. Hitler had requested the summit in order to force Il Duce (Italian, “the leader”) to take sides within the framework of the so-called Pact of […]
19
FIRST BLACK FIGHTER SQUADRON FORMED
Chanute Field, Rantoul, Illinois · March 19, 1941 Pressed on one side by Black news media and civil rights groups demanding that pilot training be opened up to African Americans and on the other by an upcoming re-election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 authorized the creation of a segregated flight school and an all-Black […]
20
JAPANESE NAVY ORDERS SHIPWRECK SURVIVORS SHOT
Japanese Naval Base, Truk Lagoon, South Pacific • March 20, 1943 Although Japanese submarines attacked far fewer ships than the Allies or Germany did, they were involved in a dozen or so documented atrocities—naval war crimes—against crew survivors. On this date in 1943 Rear Admiral Takero Kouta, commander of the First Submarine Group at the large Japanese […]
21
HITLER ESCAPES ASSASSIN’S BOMB
Berlin, Germany · March 21, 1943 Adolf Hitler was the target of assassins on at least 30 occasions. On this date in 1943 in Berlin, German army officers made the second of two attempts in March to kill Hitler with a bomb. The week before, two staff officers had planted a bomb aboard Hitler’s private plane. […]
22
PATTON’S THIRD ARMY CROSSES RHINE
Oppenheim, Germany • March 22, 1945 On this date in 1945, one day before the mixed British-Canadian 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery was due to launch Operation Plunder, the long-awaited northern offensive across the Rhine River at Rees and Wesel in North Rhine-Westphalia, Gen. George S. Patton sneaked 5th Division soldiers […]
23
JAPAN PUSHES SOVIETS FOR NEUTRALITY PACT
Moscow, Soviet Union (USSR) • March 23, 1941 On this date in 1941 Japanese Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka (1940–1941) arrived in Moscow after a 7‑day journey by train from the Siberian port city of Vladivostok. On this his first of two visits to senior Soviet officials, Matsuoka met Soviet Premier Vyacheslav Molotov. At the top of […]
24
NEW MILITIA TO DEFEND JAPANESE HOMELAND
Tokyo, Japan • March 24, 1945 On this date in 1945 the Japanese Deputy Minister of War, Lt. Gen. Kaneshiro Shibayama, informed the Japanese Diet (Parliament) of the formation of a militia for the defense of the Home Islands. A home militia was critical to the nation’s survival because 60 percent of the roughly 4.6 million Japanese combat […]
25
YUGOSLAVIA JOINS AXIS PACT
Vienna, Austria • March 25, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Vienna, the government of Yugoslav regent Prince Paul signed a protocol of adherence to the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Tripartite Pact, thereby setting the stage for a complex guerrilla war against Germans, Italians, and their Yugoslav allies, and within the Yugoslav resistance forces themselves. Not two […]
26
SUICIDE PILOTS MAKE LETHAL SHOW
U.S. Navy Offshore Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands • March 26, 1945 Late in 1944 Vice Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, recently appointed commander of the First Air Fleet in Japanese-held Manila, the Philippine’s capital, championed a special attack force (tokubetsu kogeki tai, abbreviated as tokkotai) that would inflict maximum damage on Allied naval vessels squeezing the island empire: Japan’s […]
27
FRANCE BEGINS TO EMPTY ITSELF OF JEWS
Paris, Occupied France • March 27, 1942 On May 10, 1940, Adolf Hitler, having ended Poland’s existence in September 1939, turned his wrath on the democracies in the West. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg capitulated to his war machine in May. Representatives of 84‑year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain, who had recently been named president of the […]
28
EISENHOWER TO DIVIDE GERMANY IN MIDDLE
SHAEF HQ, Reims, France • March 28, 1945 On this date in 1945 Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower telegrammed Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that he proposed, after encircling Germany’s Ruhr district, to advance on an west-east axis through the center of Germany to the Upper Elbe River, 50 miles west of Berlin, there to await […]
29
NAZI MINISTER TO QUASH HITLER’S “NERO ORDER”
Berlin, Germany • March 29, 1945 By 1945 everything was falling apart for the Nazi regime. Most of the conquered areas in the Soviet Union and Western Europe had been recaptured from the Germans. The Wehrmacht’s last gambit in the west, the Ardennes Offensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge (mid-December 1944 to […]
30
CHINESE “QUISLING” OUSTS CHIANG KAI-SHEK REGIME
Nanjing (Nanking), China • March 30, 1940 By 1940 Japan had close to a decade’s worth of experience in administering conquered Chinese territory, having installed a puppet government in 1932 in Manchuria, which the Japanese called Manchukuo. On this date in 1940 in Nanjing (Nanking), China, the Japanese installed Wang Jingwei (Ching-wei) as head of […]
31
BRITAIN GUARANTEES POLAND’S INDEPENDENCE
London, England • March 31, 1939 On this date in 1939, two weeks after German troops entered Prague and all of Czechoslovakia fell under the German boot, the British government, followed a few days later by the French, pledged to guarantee the independence (though interestingly not the territorial integrity) of Poland. “If any action clearly […]
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