1933: Nazis order a ban on all Jews in businesses, professions and schools.
1939: The Spanish Civil War ends as Madrid falls to Francisco Franco.
1940: Dutch fighter shoots down British bomber near Rotterdam by mistake; one flier killed.
1940: The British War Cabinet decides to lay mines in neutral Norwegian waters and to establish military bases on the coast of Norway.
1941: The Royal Navy attacks Italian naval forces in what became known as the Battle of Cape Matapan. The Italians lost the cruisers Fiume, Pola and Zara and 1 destroyer. British loses amounted to just 2 aircraft.
One British captain leads a boarding party armed with cutlasses in the capture of an Italian ship.
1941: Anti-Axis demonstrations in Yugoslavia.
1942: British attack (raid) on the strategically important port of St.Nazaire. Through the pressure of Stalin to start a second front against Germany from Britain in the west, Churchill ordered an attempt to land at St. Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire with the aim of putting the German U-boat base out of action. In addition to high casualties of the British, a destroyer, 9 motor-boats and 4 torpedo boats were destroyed. The U-boat base suffered no damage.
1942: A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, explodes, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.
1942: Under the new tactical doctrine of area saturation bombing, introduced by Air Vice Marshal Harris, the RAF launches a heavy incendiary attack (234 bombers) against Lübeck on the Baltic that devastates 265 acres of the city. The RAF lost 13 aircraft and from one of these the Germans were able to obtain their first specimen of the GEE equipment. In retaliation for the raid on Lübeck, Hitler orders the Luftwaffe to bomb historic British towns and cities.
1943: The British First Army goes onto the offensive in northern Tunisia.
1944: Merrill’s ‘Marauders’ begin a 10-day defensive action against 1,300 Japanese at Nhpum Ga Ridge.
1944: The Russians recapture Nikolaev on the Black Sea and enter Rumanian territory.
1945: Argentina declares war against Germany.
1945: Germany launches the last of the V-2 rockets against England.
1945: The British Second Army begin its drive towards the Elbe as the U.S. First Army captures Marburg, 60 miles Northeast of Koblenz.
1945: The Russians capture Gdynia, along with 9,000 prisoners, after a long struggle. The 1st Belorussian Front captures Gotenhafen north of Danzig. Hitler replaces General Guderian with General Krebs as chief of OKH.
This Day in WWI
1917: The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is founded, Great Britain's first official service women.
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"Its a dog eat dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear!"
posted 03-28-2002 03:32 AM
posted 03-28-2002 09:30 AM
