March 1943

Month of 1943 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following events occurred in March 1943:

March 13, 1943: Liquidation completed of 10,000 Jews from Krakow Ghetto
March 1, 1943: First war ration point tokens issued by U.S. government [1]
March 2–4, 1943: U.S. and Australian forces sink 12 Japanese Navy ships in battle at Bismarck Sea
March 27, 1943: U.S. War Department announces the existence of the first rocket-launcher weapon, the bazooka
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March 1, 1943 (Monday)

  • The U.S. Office of Price Administration implemented rationing of canned goods, which had been barred from retail sale since February 20. Under the new rules, American consumers would be allowed 48 ration points worth, per person, per month of canned and bottled fruits, vegetables, soups, baby food and dehydrated fruit, while canned meats and fish remained unavailable. On the average, the affected canned goods would count for 12 points apiece.[2]
  • In the heaviest single air raid on the Nazi German capital, Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Force bombers struck Berlin in a 30-minute raid. German radio conceded that at least 89 people were killed and 213 injured. By the end of the week, the radio reported 486 dead and 377 seriously injured.[3]
  • The Koriukivka massacre took place in the Ukrainian SSR when the 6,700 residents of the city of Koriukivka, became victims of the German SS. After burning down the buildings in town, the SS troopers killed the survivors.
  • Risto Ryti was inaugurated for a second term as President of Finland, and urged citizens to keep fighting for the Axis powers.[4]
  • Operation Buffalo (Operation Büffel) began, German forces of Army Group Centre conducted a series of local retreats on the Eastern Front. This movement eliminated the Rzhev Salient and shortened the front line by 230 miles (370 km), releasing 21 divisions.[5]
  • The Nazi collaborationist Belarusian Central Council, led by Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse, was established in what is now Belarus, in the German-occupied Reichskommissariat Ostland.[6]
  • Born: Richard H. Price, American physicist; in New York City[7]

March 2, 1943 (Tuesday)

  • The Battle of the Bismarck Sea began. U.S. and Australian forces sank a convoy of Japanese ships, taking out all 8 troop transports and 4 escorting destroyers. Nearly 2,900 Japanese servicemen were killed over three days.[8] The convoy had been discovered serendipitously the day before when Lt. Walter Higgins of the U.S. Army descended to a lower altitude while flying over the Pacific in a Liberator bomber.[9]
  • In a single day, 1,500 Jewish men, women and children were deported from Berlin after the citywide roundup three days earlier, and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp; 1,350 of them were executed upon their arrival at Auschwitz.[10]
  • The drama film The Human Comedy starring Mickey Rooney was released.
  • Born:

March 3, 1943 (Wednesday)

  • A panic during an air raid killed 62 children and 110 adults in London who were trying to enter an air-raid shelter at the underground (subway) station at Bethnal Green, and another 90 were injured. Survivors reported that the stampede was triggered when a woman tripped and fell while descending the stairs, and an elderly man fell over her body, and then 300 more people were caught in the crush.[11] The woman who tripped was rescued, but the baby she had been carrying suffocated.[12] The trigger for the fleeing of residents to the station had been the noise from the launching of British defensive weapons, a salvo of anti-aircraft rockets from Victoria Park.[13]
  • The German minelayer Doggerbank was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-43, whose captain mistakenly believed that he was firing at an enemy ship. Captain Hans Joachim Schwantke then ordered U-43 to depart, under orders not to rescue the survivors because of the Laconia incident. Only one of the 365 people on board, Fritz Kuert, survived. Kuert, who had been able to escape safely from three other sinkings of ships, endured for 26 days with almost no food or water, was rescued on March 29 by the Spanish ship Campamor.[14]
  • Mohandas K. Gandhi ended his fast after 21 days, drinking a glass of orange juice brought to him in prison by his wife, Kasturba.[15]
  • "Why Have I Taken Up the Struggle Against Bolshevism", an open letter by Andrey Vlasov, was published in the newspaper Zarya.[16]
  • The Josef von Báky-directed fantasy comedy film Münchhausen premiered in Germany.
  • Died: Edward FitzRoy, 73, British Conservative politician and Speaker of the House from 1928 until his death

March 4, 1943 (Thursday)

March 5, 1943 (Friday)

March 6, 1943 (Saturday)

Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

March 7, 1943 (Sunday)

March 8, 1943 (Monday)

March 9, 1943 (Tuesday)

March 10, 1943 (Wednesday)

  • The Soviet Union established "Laboratory No. 2", the secret atomic energy research facility, with Igor Kurchatov as the lab's "chief".[45]
  • Banco Bradesco, at one time the largest bank in Brazil, was founded by Amador Aguiar in the city of Marília.
  • Germany announced new rationing of nonessential goods, prohibiting the manufacture of suits, costumes, bath salts, and firecrackers, and restricting telephone use and photography.[46]
  • The comedy film It Ain't Hay starring Abbott and Costello was released.
  • Died: Tully Marshall (stage name for William Phillips), 78, American character actor of stage and film[47]

March 11, 1943 (Thursday)

  • The Lend-Lease program of aid to the Allies was extended by the United States for another year after President Roosevelt signed legislation into law. Earlier in the day, the U.S. Senate voted 82–0 in favor of the resolution, and the day before, the House had approved it 407–6.[48]
  • Inventor John C. Donnelly received acknowledgment for his development of dehydrated foods.[49]
  • The entire Jewish population of the Yugoslavian cities of Skopje, Štip and Bitola— all three now part of the Republic of Macedonia— was deported to German's Treblinka II death camp by the German SS with the assistance of Bulgarian soldiers, with 7,240 being shipped out. The day before, the Jewish community in Bitola had been warned by the local Communist Party about the impending raid, though only a few were able to escape.[50]
  • The British destroyer HMS Harvester was sunk by the U-432, a German submarine. U-432 was then rammed and sunk by a French ship, the corvette Aconit, which rescued the few survivors of the Harvester. The day before, the Harvester had sunk another German sub, the U-444. There were 41 men lost on U-444, 26 on U-432, and 145 on the Harvester.[51]

March 12, 1943 (Friday)

March 13, 1943 (Saturday)

  • In a plot called Operation Flash, German officer Henning von Tresckow attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by arranging for an unwitting officer to carry a bomb-laden parcel aboard Adolf Hitler's plane. The pretext was that the package contained a gift of liquor. All went according to plan and Hitler's plane took off from Smolensk with the parcel aboard, bound for Rastenburg, but the bomb failed to explode due to a faulty detonator.[57]
RMS Empress of Canada
  • The Canadian Pacific Ocean liner RMS Empress of Canada, converted to war use, was torpedoed and sunk by the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci, 400 miles off of the coast of Africa. The ship had been carrying 1,800 people, including Italian servicemen who had been captured as prisoners of war. While 1,400 people survived, 392 were killed, half of them Italian POWs.[58]
  • Finland signed a trade agreement with Germany and its Nazi government at Helsinki, with the Nazis providing food to the Finns in what was described by the Axis press as the "traditional Finnish-German spirit of friendship and comradeship in arms".[59]
  • The German submarine U-163, which had torpedoed the gunboat USS Erie on November 12, was depth charged and sunk with the loss of all 57 crew in the Atlantic Ocean by the Canadian corvette Prescott.[60] On the same day, the German submarine U-130 was sunk west of the Azores by depth charges from the destroyer USS Hobby with the loss of all 53 crew.[61]
  • Born: André Téchiné, French film director; in Valence, Tarn-et-Garonne
  • Died:

March 14, 1943 (Sunday)

  • The final liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto was completed as German SS forces under the command of Untersturmführer Amon Göth removed the last of the 7,000 Jews remaining in the Polish city. The 2,000 Jews deemed able to work were transported to the nearby Plaszow labor camp, while another 2,000 deemed unfit for work were killed by collaborators ("Trawniki men") who had volunteered to assist, and the remaining 6,000 sent to Auschwitz.[65]
  • The British submarine HMS Thunderbolt was sunk off Sicily by the Italian corvette Cicogna, killing all 59 crew. On June 1, 1939, as the Thetis, the submarine had been lost during sea trials with all 99 people on board, before being salvaged and relaunched as the Thunderbolt.[66][67]

March 15, 1943 (Monday)

  • The Third Battle of Kharkov ended in the Ukrainian SSR after 24 days of fighting between Germany's Army Group South (commanded by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein) and seven units of the Soviet Red Army. More than 45,000 of the 210,000 Soviet troops were killed, compared to 4,500 German deaths.Glantz & House 1995, p. 296[68] Although the German Army was successful, the battle would later be described by historian Bevin Alexander as "the last great victory of German arms in the eastern front"[69] and would be followed by German defeat five months later in the largest battle in history, the Battle of Kursk.
  • The American submarine USS Triton was shelled, sunk and lost off New Guinea's Kairiru Island by Japanese warships, with the loss of all 74 crew.[70]
  • Born:

March 16, 1943 (Tuesday)

  • Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sent a letter to U.S. President Roosevelt urging that a second front be opened in Europe. Stalin wrote, "The Soviet troops have fought strenuously all winter and are continuing to do so, while Hitler is taking important measures to rehabilitate and reinforce his Army for the spring and summer operations against the USSR; it is therefore particularly essential for us that the blow from the West no longer be delayed, that it be delivered this spring or early summer."[73]
  • In the largest North Atlantic U-boat "wolfpack" attack of the war against Allied shipping, 22 merchant ships from Convoy HX 229 and Convoy SC 122 (consisting of 90 merchant ships and 16 escort warships) were sunk by a total of 38 U-boats.[74] There were 361 merchant seamen from the convoys killed, with 249 from HX 229, including 80 from the U.S. freighter Harry Luckenbach. HX 229 sustained 112 deaths, including 55 from the British cargo ship SS Clarissa Radcliffe. The German U-boat U-384, with its crew of 49, was the only attacker to be sunk.[75]

March 17, 1943 (Wednesday)

March 18, 1943 (Thursday)

  • German forces eliminated the last pockets of Soviet resistance in Kharkov, thereby completing the reconquest of this Ukrainian SSR city that had been briefly retaken by the Soviet Red Army.[82]
  • The pro-Vichy administration in French Guiana was overthrown by a pro-Allied committee.[83]
  • Deportation of Jews began from Thrace, which had been added to the Kingdom of Bulgaria after being conquered by German and Bulgarian soldiers, with the first convoy passing through Bulgaria on the way to the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland.[84]
American Nazi leader Kuhn
  • Fritz Kuhn, the German born leader of the American Nazi movement, was revoked of his United States citizenship by the U.S. District Court in New York City. Kuhn, who had once led the German American Bund, had been incarcerated at the Clinton Prison at Dannemora, New York, after having been convicted of embezzling the Bund's treasury.[85]
  • German police in the town of Köpenick, a suburb of Berlin arrested a petty thief, Bruno Lüdke, after bringing him to the station for questioning in an investigation of the January 31 strangulation of a woman. Lüdke confessed to the crime, as well as the murder of several other victims, while under interrogation and was soon accused of having murdered at least 51 people, mostly women, from 1928 until his apprehension.[86][87] Never placed on trial and declared legally insane, Lüdke would be sent to a mental institution for experimentation, and die there on April 8, 1944.[88] More than 70 years later, reviewers would conclude not only that the 51 murders showed no similarities, but that Lüdke was unlikely to have committed any of them.[89][90][91]
  • The drama film Keeper of the Flame starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, was released.
  • Born: Kevin Dobson, American TV actor known for portraying Detective Crocker on Kojak; in Jackson Heights, New York (d. 2020)[92]

March 19, 1943 (Friday)

  • The Sigurimi, the secret police agency for Albania, was organized by Communist resistance leader Enver Hoxha, initially to gather intelligence in the partisan fight against the Italian occupation forces. After Albania was freed from the Axis powers, Hoxha would use the Sigurimi force to prevent any organized dissent against his regime; the secret police force would be disbanded in 1991.[93]
  • The German submarine U-5 sank west of Pillau in a diving accident. Sixteen of her 37 crew were lost.
  • The German submarine U-384 was sunk with the loss of all 47 crew west of Malin Head by a B-17 of No. 206 Squadron RAF.[94] Two days earlier, U-384 had torpedoed and sunk the British refrigerated cargo ship Coracero in the attack on Convoy HX 229.
  • Born:
  • Died: Frank Nitti, 57, Italian-American gangster and enforcer for Al Capone, committed suicide the day before he was scheduled to appear before a grand jury in Chicago.[97]

March 20, 1943 (Saturday)

  • The Japanese Navy ordered its submarine forces to leave no survivors on the sinking of any merchant vessels, with the text "Do not stop at the sinking of enemy ships and cargoes. At the same time, carry out the complete destruction of the crews of the enemy's ships."[98]
  • The first of 19 transports of 46,000 Greek Jews to Nazi death camps began, as a train left Salonika for the Auschwitz extermination camp. By August 18, the removal of the Jews would be complete.[84]
  • Born: Gerard Malanga, American poet and photographer; in the Bronx[99]
  • Died: R. Dudley Pope, American inventor who had perfected the parachute for the U.S. armed forces. Pope had been testing his design for a parachute that would open automatically at 2,000 feet, and had leaped from an altitude of 12,000 feet (3,700 m) near Seattle. Pope's invention, and a backup parachute, both failed to open.[100]

March 21, 1943 (Sunday)

  • The second attempt on Hitler's life in the space of eight days was made, this time by Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, who had been given the opportunity to escort Hitler through an exhibition of captured Soviet war equipment at the Zeughaus in Berlin. Gersdorff, who had expected Hitler to spend at least thirty minutes by his side at the Zeughaus, set a ten-minute fuse on a time bomb and made plans to kill himself and Hitler in a suicide bombing. Instead, Hitler rushed through the viewing and left after two minutes; Gersdorff bid his goodbyes, then went into a restroom and defused the explosive.[101]
  • The Soviet submarine K-3, which had sunk three German Navy subchasers was depth charged and sunk off Båtsfjord, Norway by three other German submarine chasers, with the loss of all 66 crew.[102]
  • Born:

March 22, 1943 (Monday)

  • Deportation began of 4,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied France. The prisoners were sent by train from the Drancy internment camp, near Paris, to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, and 1,000 were sent two days later. All but 15 were sent to gas chambers upon their arrival, and only five of the 4,000 survived World War II.[77]
  • On the same day, deportation began of the Jews of the Yugoslavian (now Macedonian) city of Skopje, as 2,338 people were loaded onto freight cars for the one-week-long train trip to the Treblinka death camp. Two more transports left on March 29 and April 5, carrying 2,402 and 2,404 Jews respectively.[105]
  • The first executions of Gypsies by the Nazi SS were carried out at the Auschwitz concentration camp, with 1,700 being sent to gas chambers after being diagnosed with typhus.[84]
  • The Khatyn massacre took place in the Soviet Byelorussian village of Khatyn was attacked by Ukrainian Policemen from the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118, assisted by German SS troops from 1st Company of the SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger, commanded by SS-Sturmbannführer Praefke. The killings came retaliation for the killing of four German officers from the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118, including the 32-year old Ordnungspolizei commander Hans Woellke, an Olympic gold medalist who won the shot put competition in the 1936 Games in Berlin. The two units burned down the village and killed 149 of its 156 residents. Only five children and one man survived.[106] A memorial was later placed on the site while the Byelorussian SSR was a republic of the Soviet Union.
  • The German submarines U-524 (with 52 crew)[107] and U-665, with more than 44 crew Helgason, Guðmundur. "The Type VIIC boat U-665". German U-boats of WWII uboat.net. were both sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by Allied aircraft, with no survivors.
  • Born:
  • Died: Colonel Edward Orlando Kellett, 40, British MP, big game hunter and Royal Armoured Corps officer, was killed in battle in Tunisia.[111]

March 23, 1943 (Tuesday)

Approved for use
RMS Windsor Castle

March 24, 1943 (Wednesday)

March 25, 1943 (Thursday)

March 26, 1943 (Friday)

  • The Battle of the Komandorski Islands began in the Aleutian Islands, when United States Navy forces intercepted a convoy of Japanese transports and ships attempting to bring troops to Kiska. The American force of two cruisers and four destroyers was commanded by Rear Admiral Charles H. McMorris, while the Japanese convoy of five destroyers and four cruisers was led by Admiral Boshiro Hosogaya. The two sides fired shells at each other across a distance of no more than eight miles, without the use of submarines or airplanes, in what historian Samuel Eliot Morison described as "a naval battle that has no parallel in the Pacific War".[122] Although no ships were sunk in the four-hour battle, Admiral Hosogaya ordered his fleet to turn back and "no further Japanese convoys were to reach the Aleutians".[123]
  • A committee, chaired by U.S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, submitted a proposed charter for a "world security association" to be set up by the world's nations after the end of World War II. The proposal resembled the United Nations Organization that would be created in 1945, with a "General Conference" of all nations, an Executive Committee consisting of the U.S., the U.K., the U.S.S.R. and China, and a middle tier of the four Committee powers and seven other nations representing different regions of the world. The UNO would combine the two committees into one Security Council, with five permanent members given a veto power, and ten non-voting members drawn on a rotating basis from the other members.[124]
  • Born: Bob Woodward, American investigative reporter for the Washington Post known, with Carl Bernstein, for linking government officials to the Watergate scandal, and later as the author of 14 bestselling non-fiction books, starting with The Final Days in 1976; in Geneva, Illinois[125]

March 27, 1943 (Saturday)

  • The British escort carrier Dasher was destroyed by an accidental explosion in the Firth of Clyde, killing 379 of the crew of 528.[126] An investigation concluded that the cause had been "a carelessly dropped cigarette" that had ignited fuel from a leaking valve on the ship's tanks.[127]
  • The U.S. Department of War released the news of a successful new weapon for the U.S. Army, the bazooka. In a statement, the War Department said that "It is revolutionary in design. It can be carted about in a jeep or a peep, or carried by two men at a dog trot. It hurls a high explosive projectile... It will shatter cast steel and such material as bridge girders and railroad rails and perform other seeming miracles. Before long, the 'bazooka' will be heard from on all fronts." The weapon had secretly been demonstrated to news reporters in December, on condition that it could not be written about at the time.[128]
  • In the heaviest air raid on the German capital up to that time, 1,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Berlin by Britain's Royal Air Force in three waves of 100 bombers each.[129]
  • The German submarine U-169 was depth charged and sunk with all 48 crew in the North Atlantic by a B-17 of No. 206 Squadron RAF.[130]

March 28, 1943 (Sunday)

  • At Naples, the munitions ship Caterina Costa exploded in the harbor of the Italian city. Initial reports were that 72 people were killed and 1,179 injured,[131] while later sources set the death toll at 600 or more.[132] The fire on the ship had burned for hours, but no action was taken on fighting the blaze or towing the ship away from the harbor, because government approval could not be obtained to take action.[133]
  • Died:

March 29, 1943 (Monday)

  • Food rationing began in the United States following the March 12 announcement of limits on beef, pork, lamb and mutton, as well as butter, cheese and canned fish. Poultry was not affected by the order.[136]
  • The New Zealand 2nd Infantry Division entered the Tunisian city of Gabès.[137]
  • Given a choice between placing Germany's new V-2 missiles on mobile rocket launchers or in bunkers near Peenemünde, Adolf Hitler rejected German Army recommendations and opted for the fixed locations for the weapon.[138]
  • After being heavily damaged the day before by two British Lockheed Hudson aircraft, the German U-Boat U-77, which had sunk 14 freighters and the Royal Navy warship HMS Grove (at the loss of 110 British crew), was scuttled by its crew after being evacuated by order of its commander, Otto Hartmann. Of its 47 crew, nine were rescued by Spanish fishermen off the coast of Calpe, while the other 38 died from hypothermia.[139]
  • Born:
  • Died: Ben Davies, 85, Welsh opera tenor.[143]

March 30, 1943 (Tuesday)

March 31, 1943 (Wednesday)

References

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