March 1940

March 1, 1940 (Friday)

March 2, 1940 (Saturday)

March 3, 1940 (Sunday)

  • A bomb exploded in the Stockholm offices of the communist newspaper Norrskensflamman, killing five.[6]
  • Sumner Welles met Hermann Göring at Carinhall. Like Hitler, Göring blamed the war on Britain and France. Welles found Göring to be as cold and ruthless as the other Nazi leaders but thought he was at least capable of taking a broader view of international relations.[7]
  • Italy sent a note to Britain protesting the British blockade of German coal shipments to Italy.[8]
  • Born: Germán Castro Caycedo, journalist and writer, in Zipaquirá, Colombia; Owen Spencer-Thomas, television and radio journalist, in Braughing, Hertfordshire, England

March 4, 1940 (Monday)

  • The Home Office announced that women would not be asked to work more than 60 hours a week in British factories, and youth under 16 would not be required to work more than 48. In World War I, women were frequently working as many as 70 hours a week.[9]
  • Died: Hamlin Garland, 79, American writer

March 5, 1940 (Tuesday)

March 6, 1940 (Wednesday)

March 7, 1940 (Thursday)

March 8, 1940 (Friday)

March 9, 1940 (Saturday)

  • The Finns evacuated their last toeholds in the Gulf of Viipuri.[10]
  • Britain released the captured Italian coal ships and announced that Italy would be allowed to continue to import German coal, but only via overland routes.[2][5]
  • Born: Raúl Juliá, actor, in San Juan, Puerto Rico (d. 1994)

March 10, 1940 (Sunday)

  • Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived in Rome for a two-day meeting with Benito Mussolini. It was agreed that Mussolini would have a face-to-face meeting with Hitler soon to discuss Italy entering the war.[15][19]
  • Sumner Welles flew to London and met with Lord Halifax.[20]
  • Hitler gave a speech at the Berlin Zeughaus on Heroes' Memorial Day.[21]
  • Born: Chuck Norris, martial artist and actor, in Ryan, Oklahoma; Dean Torrence, one-half of the rock and roll duo Jan and Dean, in Los Angeles

March 11, 1940 (Monday)

  • The French battleship Bretagne and cruiser Algérie departed Toulon with 147 tons worth of gold, bound for Canada where the French gold reserves would be kept for safekeeping.[2]
  • German submarine U-31 was sunk in the Jade Bight by British aircraft, the first time a U-boat was sunk from the air.[22] U-31 was later raised by the Germans, repaired and returned to service.
  • Sumner Welles had tea with King George VI, who made clear his hope that no peace negotiations would take place until the Nazi regime was destroyed.[23] Welles then spoke with Neville Chamberlain, who reiterated the points from his Birmingham speech of February 24.[24]
  • German submarine U-101 was commissioned.
  • Died: John Monk Saunders, 42, American novelist, screenwriter and film director (suicide)

March 12, 1940 (Tuesday)

  • The Moscow Peace Treaty ending the Winter War was signed. Russia received 16,000 square miles (41,000 km2) of Finnish territory.[10]
  • Sumner Welles met Winston Churchill. In Welles' account of the meeting he wrote that "Mr. Churchill was sitting in front of the fire, smoking a 24-inch cigar, and drinking a whiskey and soda. It was quite obvious that he had consumed a good many whiskeys before I arrived." For almost two hours Welles listened to Churchill deliver "a cascade of oratory, brilliant and always effective, interlarded with considerable wit."[25]
  • The Republican Party presidential primaries began in New Hampshire.
  • German submarine U-99, one of the most successful U-boats of the war, was commissioned.
  • Born: Al Jarreau, jazz singer, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (d. 2017)

March 13, 1940 (Wednesday)

  • Hostilities between the Soviet Union and Finland ceased at 11 a.m.[10] The three-month long Battle of Kollaa ended in Finnish victory, though the war was lost.
  • Field Marshal Mannerheim addressed the Finnish Army: "Peace has been concluded between our country and the Soviet Union, an exacting peace which has ceded to Russia nearly every battlefield on which you have shed your blood on behalf of every thing we hold dear and sacred. You did not want war. You loved peace, work and progress; but you were forced into a struggle in which you have done great deeds, deeds that will shine for centuries in the pages of history."[26]
  • Indian nationalist Udham Singh assassinated Sir Michael O'Dwyer (in revenge for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre) at Caxton Hall in London.
  • Born: Candi Staton, soul and gospel singer, in Hanceville, Alabama
  • Died: Ira Flagstead, 46, American baseball player

March 14, 1940 (Thursday)

March 15, 1940 (Friday)

March 16, 1940 (Saturday)

  • The Battle of Wuyuan began.
  • A British civilian was killed in a German air raid for the first time in the war when fourteen Junkers Ju 88 bombers attacked the British fleet at Scapa Flow.[28]
  • The foreign ministers of the Baltic states held a conference in Riga. They agreed to share information in order to prevent the Soviet Union from playing them off against each other.[15][29]
  • Sumner Welles, now back in Rome, met with King Victor Emmanuel III in the morning and then Mussolini again that evening.[30] Welles thought that Mussolini seemed to be in better spirits than he was at their first meeting.[31]
  • Born: Bernardo Bertolucci, film director and screenwriter, in Parma, Italy (d. 2018); Jan Pronk, politician and diplomat, in Scheveningen, Netherlands; James Wong, Cantopop lyricist, in Panyu, Guangzhou, China (d. 2004)

March 17, 1940 (Sunday)

March 18, 1940 (Monday)

  • Hitler met with Mussolini at the Brenner Pass in the Alps. Hitler made it clear that German troops were poised to launch an offensive in the west and that Mussolini would have to decide whether Italy would join in the attack or not. Since Italy was still not ready for war, Mussolini suggested that the offensive could be delayed a few more months, to which Hitler replied that Germany was not altering its plans to suit Italy. The two agreed that Italy would come into the war in due course.[19]
  • Sumner Welles and Myron Charles Taylor met Pope Pius XII.[15] Taylor asked the pope if there would be revolution in Italy should Mussolini bring the country into the war. The pope seemed surprised at the question and after careful consideration replied that Italian public opinion was overwhelmingly against joining the war, but that there would not be any rebellion for at least some time if Italy did enter.[31]

March 19, 1940 (Tuesday)

  • In retaliation for the air raid on Scapa Flow, the RAF attacked the German seaplane bases of Sylt and Hornum.[2]
  • Harold Macmillan sparred with Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons over whether the government had done all it could to help Finland.[33]

March 20, 1940 (Wednesday)

  • The entire French cabinet resigned. Although Prime Minister Daladier won a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies 239-1, there were so many absentions among the 551 members that he recognized the vote as a defeat.[34]
  • Sumner Welles ended his diplomatic tour of Europe and boarded a ship heading back to the United States.[15]
  • Died: Alfred Ploetz, 79, German physician, biologist and eugenicist

March 21, 1940 (Thursday)

March 22, 1940 (Friday)

  • Soviet military personnel began to arrive in the Finnish port of Hanko, which had been leased to the Soviets for 30 years as part of the Moscow Peace Treaty.[2][6]
  • Born: Dave Keon, ice hockey player, in Noranda, Quebec, Canada; Haing S. Ngor, physician, actor and author, in Los Angeles (d. 1996)

March 23, 1940 (Saturday)

March 24, 1940 (Sunday)

  • The French destroyer La Railleuse was sunk off Casablanca by the accidental explosion of one of its own torpedoes. 28 crewmen were killed and 24 wounded.[40]

March 25, 1940 (Monday)

  • The British government ordered its troops not to participate in German radio broadcasts if they became prisoners of war. Britons had been tuning in to German radio to learn of the capture of family members by hearing their voices, long before information of their capture could reach the British government.[41]
  • The U.S. Supreme Court decided Helvering v. Bruun.
  • Born: Anita Bryant, singer and anti-gay rights activist, in Barnsdall, Oklahoma; Mina, singer, in Busto Arsizio, Italy

March 26, 1940 (Tuesday)

March 27, 1940 (Wednesday)

March 28, 1940 (Thursday)

  • The Anglo-French Supreme War Council met in London and agreed that neither Britain nor France would make a separate peace with Germany. The Council also agreed upon Operation Wilfred, a plan to lay mines in Norwegian coastal waters in the hopes of provoking a German response that would legitimize Allied "assistance" to Norway.[43]

March 29, 1940 (Friday)

March 30, 1940 (Saturday)

March 31, 1940 (Sunday)

  • Winston Churchill gave a speech over the radio titled "Dwelling in the Cage with the Tiger", a metaphor he used to describe the precarious geographical situation of the Dutch. As with his January 20 speech, Churchill primarily spoke about neutral countries and said, "It might have been a very short war, perhaps, indeed, there might have been no war, if all the neutral States, who share our conviction upon fundamental matters, and who openly or secretly sympathize with us, had stood together at one signal and in one line. We did not count on this, we did not expect it, and therefore we are not disappointed or dismayed ... But the fact is that many of the smaller States of Europe are terrorized by Nazi violence and brutality into supplying Germany with the material of modern war, and this fact may condemn the whole world to a prolonged ordeal with grievous, unmeasured consequences in many lands." In the wake of the Altmark Incident and with Operation Wilfred about to go into action, Churchill said of Germany's neutral neighbors that "we understand their dangers and their point of view, but it would not be right, or in the general interest, that their weakness should be the aggressor's strength, and fill to overflowing the cup of human woe. There could be no justice if in a moral struggle the aggressor tramples down every sentiment of humanity, and if those who resist him remain entangled in the tatters of violated legal conventions."[47]
  • The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was established.
  • Britain introduced paper rationing to publishing and printing industries.[2]
  • Born: Barney Frank, politician, in Bayonne, New Jersey

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  5. Mercer, Derrik, ed. (1989). Chronicle of the 20th Century. London: Chronicle Communications Ltd. p. 527. ISBN 978-0-582-03919-3.
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  9. Rue, Larry (March 5, 1940). "British Women Get 60 Hr. Week in War Industry". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. 5.
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