366 Days
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March
News Headlines
1
GOERING TO DIRECT 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 days […]
2
U.S.-AUSTRALIAN AIRMEN MAUL JAPANESE CONVOY
Bismarck Sea, Southwestern Pacific Ocean • March 2, 1943 The Battle of Midway (June 4–7, 1942) was America’s first strategic victory against the Japanese Navy and a devastating defeat for the warlords ruling that Asian nation. Lost were four of the six Japanese aircraft carriers (the bulk of the Japanese carrier fleet) that had taken […]
3
MONSTER AIR RAID ON REICH CAPITAL
Berlin, Germany • March 3, 1945 Round-the-clock bombing operations against Nazi 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 for […]
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 unsavory head of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, advocated executing all members of the Polish Officer […]
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 in 1940, the British were reduced to fighting Adolf Hitler’s military juggernaut alone. In alarm they watched […]
7
ALLIES SEIZE LUDENDORFF BRIDGE AT REMAGEN, CROSS RHINE
Remagen, Germany • March 7, 1945 By March 1945 the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) was reeling from horrendous personnel and equipment losses incurred during the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944, to January 25, 1945) in the Ardennes Forest, which lay mostly in Belgium and Luxembourg. The military momentum now clearly favored the Western Allies as […]
8
HITLER CALLS HITLER YOUTH INTO BEING
Munich, Germany • March 8, 1922 Adolf Hitler was just over a decade away from being appointed chancellor of Germany when he announced his intention on this date in 1922 of forming a youth wing for his Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or Nazi Party, of which he was party leader. At first the Nazi youth […]
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 vital military and industrial targets with disappointing results. So U.S. Army Air Forces Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, a veteran of the Eighth Air Forces’ horrific air campaign over Nazi […]
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, an Alpine country […]
13
FINNS, SOVIETS END 1939–1940 WINTER WAR
Moscow, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics • March 13, 1940 (Finnish Time) On this date in 1940, in the Soviet capital of Moscow, Finnish and Soviet delegates initialed the Treaty (or Peace) of Moscow. The terms of the agreement, dated March 12 (Moscow time), ended the so-called Winter War the Soviets had unleashed a little over […]
14
FORMAL FLAG-RAISING OVER BATTERED IWO JIMA
Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands • March 14, 1945 On this date in 1945 the U.S. flag was raised over the 8.1‑sq‑mile island of Iwo Jima in a formal flag-raising ceremony. The Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19 to March 26, 1945)—a battle for the isolated and barren Japanese-held island lying some 760 miles southeast of Tokyo—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 SUNK, ACE SKIPPER CAPTURED
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 in the North Atlantic. By this time Kretschmer, […]
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
USS MASON BREAKS NAVY COLOR BARRIER
Boston Navy Yard, Massachusetts • March 20, 1944 On this date in 1944 the USS Mason, an Evarts-class destroyer escort, was commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard, five months after her keel was laid down. The next month, on April 25, 1944, the USS PC‑1264, a PC‑461-class submarine chaser, was commissioned six months after her keel […]
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 the German Reich’s capital, Berlin, 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 […]
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
ALLIES’ AMPHIBIOUS/AIRBORNE THRUSTS ACROSS RHINE
Xanten, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany • March 23, 1945 In the aftermath of Operation Market Garden, the inventive but failed September 1944 thrust into Adolf Hitler’s Germany, came Operation Plunder, another offensive conceived by British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. (Operation Plunder was the overall name for Montgomery’s 21st Army Group’s crossing the Rhine, but each 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 Rear Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi, 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 food supply […]
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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