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 GhettoMarch 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 SeaMarch 27, 1943: U.S. War Department announces the existence of the first rocket-launcher weapon, the bazooka
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.
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 (370km), releasing 21 divisions.[5]
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.[6] 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.[7]
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.[8]
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.[9] The woman who tripped was rescued, but the baby she had been carrying suffocated.[10] 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.[11]
The German minelayerDoggerbank was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarineU-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.[12]
Mohandas K. Gandhi ended his fast after 21 days, drinking a glass of orange juice brought to him in prison by his wife, Kasturba.[13]
The 15th Academy Awards ceremony was held in Los Angeles. Mrs. Miniver won Best Picture. Greer Garson won Best Actress and gave what is probably the longest acceptance speech in Academy Awards history at almost six minutes.
The three-day Battle of Fardykambos between Greek partisans and the Italian Army began.
The German submarine U-333 shot down a Wellington bomber with anti-aircraft fire directed at the plane's Leigh light,[16] and the U-87 was sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by Canadian warships.
The Allied strategic bombing campaign known as the Battle of the Ruhr began with an opening raid by 412 RAF aircraft on the Krupp munitions factory at Essen.[16]
In Athens and other Greek cities, a general strike and protest march is held against rumours of forced mobilization of Greek workers for work in Germany, resulting in clashes with the Axis occupation forces and collaborationist police. The decree is withdrawn on the next day.[17][18]
Major General George S. Patton Jr. took command of the U.S. Army II Corps, replacing Major General Lloyd Fredendall in the North African campaign and reorganizing the Corps.[19] Patton, "recognized as the Army's foremost expert on tank fighting"[20] was soon promoted to lieutenant general.
Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin promoted himself to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union, while the Communist Party proclaimed him to be "the greatest strategist of all times and all peoples".[21]
The Battle of Medenine was fought in Tunisia, resulting in a costly failure for the Axis. It was the last battle commanded by Erwin Rommel in North Africa.
Died:Jimmy Collins, 73, American baseball player elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945
The Polish government-in-exile reported for the first time about the executions of prisoners in a Nazi German "murder camp" at Oswiecim, known in Germany as Auschwitz.[22]
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was re-elected as President of the Muslim League in British India.[23]
German field marshal Erwin Rommel was summoned back to Berlin and placed on medical leave, on orders of Adolf Hitler, following the failure of the German counterattack at Medenine.[26]
Şükrü Saracoğlu formed the new government of Turkey, becoming Prime Minister again.
The Battle of Sokolovo ended in a political and moral victory for Czechoslovak forces.
Died: Harold James Suggars, 65, "the last of the X-ray martyrs". Suggars had suffered for 41 years from "x-ray dermatitis", a slow and painful deterioration of his skin from his exposure to x-rays while developing radiological devices.[27]
The Soviet Union established "Laboratory No. 2", the secret atomic energy research facility, with Igor Kurchatov as the lab's "chief".[28]
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.[29]
The German submarine U-633 was rammed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by the British freighter Scorton.
Died:Tully Marshall (William Phillips), 78, American character actor of stage and film
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.[30]
Inventor John C. Donnelly received acknowledgment for his development of dehydrated foods.[31]
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.[32]
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.[33]
Italian occupying forces abandoned the Greek town of Karditsa to the partisans of ELAS.
The village of Tsaritsani, in Greece, was razed by an Italian motorized column. The soldiers burned 360 of the village's 600 houses and shot and killed 40 civilians.
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.[35]
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.[36]
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".[37]
On Bougainville Island, Japanese troops ended their assault on American forces at Hill 700.
The German submarine U-163 was depth charged and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by the Canadian corvette Prescott.
The final liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto was completed as German forces removed the last of the 10,000 Jews remaining in the Polish city.
The British submarine HMS Thunderbolt was sunk off Sicily by the Italian corvetteCicogna, killing all on board. 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.[38][39]
Joseph Stalin sent a letter to 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."[40]
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 were sunk. One German U-boat was lost in the battle.
After the Japanese destroyer Akikaze Maru took 39 Catholic missionaries from Kairiru Island off New Guinea, the order was given for their execution. Over a three-hour period, the missionaries, most of whom were German, were shot to death and their bodies dumped into the ocean.[41]
Bulgaria, an Axis power allied with Germany, refused to comply with a German demand that Bulgarian Jews be deported to Nazi concentration camps. The Parliament voted unanimously to revoke plans that had been made by government minister Alexander Belev to arrest Bulgaria's Jewish citizens (although deportations had taken place in the conquered territories of Macedonia and Thrace). "As a result of these protests," it was observed, "no Bulgarian Jews were deported to the gas chambers from Bulgaria itself."[42]
German forces recaptured Kharkov, the Ukrainian SSR territory that had been briefly taken by the Soviet Red Army.[45]
The pro-Vichy administration in French Guiana was overthrown by a pro-Allied committee.[46]
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.[47]
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.[48]
German police arrested the alleged serial killer Bruno Lüdke.
Born:Kevin Dobson, American TV actor; in Queens, New York City (d. 2020)
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.[49]
The German submarine U-5 sank west of Pillau in a diving accident. Sixteen of her 37 crew were lost.
Died:Frank Nitti, 57, Italian-American gangster and enforcer for Al Capone, died by suicide.[50]
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."[51]
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.[47]
Born:Gerard Malanga, American poet and photographer; in the Bronx
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 (3,700m) near Seattle. Pope's invention, and a backup parachute, both failed to open.[52]
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.[53]
The Soviet submarine K-3 was depth charged and sunk off Båtsfjord, Norway by German submarine chasers.
Born:
Vivian Stanshall, English comedian, writer, artist, broadcaster, and musician; as Victor Stanshall in Oxford (d. 1995)
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.[42]
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.[54]
In the Khatyn massacre, the entire population of the Belarusan village of Khatyn was attacked by German soldiers of the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, commanded by Oskar Dirlewanger, in retaliation for the killing of four Nazi officers. The Dirlewanger Brigade burned down the village and killed 156 of its 160 residents. Only three children and one man survived.[55] A memorial was later placed on the site while the Byelorussian SSR was a republic of the Soviet Union.
The German submarines U-524 and U-665 were both sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by Allied aircraft.
A combination of hydrocodone and acetaminophen, known by various trade names including Vicodin and Lortab, was first approved for use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration.[56]
The Xerces Blue butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces) was seen for the last time, and is presumed to have become extinct, its habitat in the sand dunes near San Francisco Bay having been destroyed by the growth of the California city.[58]
British Commandos carried out Operation Roundabout, a raid on a bridge over a Norwegian fjord, but the mission was unsuccessful when one of the accompanying Norwegian soldiers dropped the magazine for his machine gun and alerted the German guards.
Lt. General John L. DeWitt, the U.S. Army administrator overseeing the Japanese American internment, eased restrictions of movement, but issued regulations putting an 8:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew on all people of Japanese ancestry. The curfew would be upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943).[60]
Died: U.S. Army Colonel H. Weir Cook, 50, American fighter ace, died when his P-39 plane crashed during a mission in New Caledonia. The airport in Indianapolis was later renamed in his honor.
German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop warned Henrik Ramsay, the visiting Foreign Minister of Finland, that the Nazi regime would not tolerate Finland's withdrawal from the Axis powers, nor any attempt by Finland to negotiate peace terms with the Allied powers.[61]
The go-ahead for construction of the Blockhaus d'Éperlecques was approved by Adolf Hitler. Located in France near Watten and the English Channel, the "blockhaus" was a hardened bunker with walls 12 feet thick, the first of three constructed to house Germany's V-2 missiles.[62]
The German submarine U-469 was depth charged and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by a B-17 of No. 206 Squadron RAF.
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".[63] 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".[64]
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.[65]
The British escort carrierDasher was destroyed by an accidental explosion in the Firth of Clyde, killing 379 of the crew of 528.[66] 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.[67]
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.[68]
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.[69]
The German submarine U-169 was depth charged and sunk in the North Atlantic by a B-17 of No. 206 Squadron RAF.
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,[70] while later sources set the death toll at 600 or more.[71] 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.[72]
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.[73]
The New Zealand 2nd Infantry Division entered the Tunisian city of Gabès.[74]
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.[75]
Vangelis (stage name for Evangelos Papathanassiou), Greek musician and film score composer known for the theme to Chariots of Fire; in Volos (d. 2022)
Near Camden, South Carolina, the men of the 505th Parachute Infantry regiment bailed out in "the first mass parachute jump" in American history, with 2,000 soldiers in the sky at once.[76]
The German submarine U-416 struck a mine and sank in the Baltic Sea. The sub would be raised, repaired and returned to service.
Died: Sister Maria Restituta, 48, Austrian Roman Catholic nun, was beheaded on orders of Martin Bormann, becoming the only nun in Nazi Germany to receive the death sentence. She would be beatified in 1998.[78]
Oklahoma!, the musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opened on Broadway. Ten years later, Oklahoma! would be described as "a new musical that broke all the rules: it had no big-name stars, no bare-legged chorus and, worst of all, it contained a 'high-brow' ballet.".[79] The show went on to become Broadway's longest-running musical up to that time, closing in 1948.[80]
"Monster RAF Attack on Berlin Hailed as 'Prologue to Invasion'", Milwaukee Journal, March 2, 1943, p1; "Berlin Ups Toll to 486", Milwaukee Journal, March 7, 1943, p1
David Schranck (2014). Thunder at Prokhorovka: A Combat History of Operation Citadel, Kursk, July 1943, p. 17. Helion and Company. ISBN978-1-909384-54-5.
Fleischer, Hagen (2020). Krieg und Nachkrieg: Das schwierige deutsch-griechische Jahrhundert[War and Post-War: The Difficult German–Greek Century] (in German). Cologne: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp.61–62. ISBN978-341251790-8.
Mazower, Mark (1993). Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. pp.118–119. ISBN0-300-06552-3.
"Ovadya, Haim Estreya", in Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminism in Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe: 19th and 20th Centuries by Francisca De Haan, et al., (Central European University Press, 2006) p382
Peter Hoffmann, German Resistance to Hitler (Harvard University Press, 1988) p111; Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (W. W. Norton & Company, 2000) pp662-663
"Danes Favor Free Parties", Milwaukee Journal, March 24, 1943, p1; Emmy E Werner, A Conspiracy Of Decency: The Rescue Of The Danish Jews During World War II (Westview Press, 2002) p22
"Racial Discrimination and the Military Judgment: The Supreme Court's Korematsu and Endo Decisions", in Asian Americans and the Law, Charles McClain, ed. (Taylor & Francis, 1994) p182
