Events Date 1944 March | History by KabAstro

Mar 1 Massive strikes in northern Italian towns
Mar 1 U-358 sinks in Atlantic

Casablanca's Academy Award Win

Mar 2 16th Academy Awards: "Casablanca", Jennifer Jones & Paul Lukas win

Mar 2 Fumes from locomotive stalled in a tunnel suffocate 521 in Italy

Barber's 2nd Symphony

Mar 3 Premiere performance of US Army Corporal Samuel Barber's 2nd Symphony by the Boston Symphony, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky in Boston, Massachusetts

Mar 4 1st US bombing of Berlin
Mar 4 Anti-Germany strikes in North Italy

Piston's 2nd Symphony

Mar 5 1st performance of Walter Piston's 2nd Symphony by the National Symphony, in Washington, D.C.

Mar 6 USAAF begins daylight bombing of Berlin
Mar 6 WWII: British and Canadian sailors boards abandoned German U-boat U-774 seeking Enigma code machine, but are forced to scuttle the sub when efforts to tow it fail
Mar 7 Japan begins offensive in Burma
Mar 8 US resumes bombing Berlin
Mar 10 U-575 sinks British corvette HMS Asphodel in the Atlantic Ocean killing 92 of the 97 men aboard
Mar 11 Dutch resistance fighter Joop Westerweel arrested

USSR Recognizes Government

Mar 13 USSR recognizes Italian government of Pietro Badoglio

41st Prime Minister of Italy Pietro Badoglio

Mar 15 Italian town of Cassino destroyed by Allied bombing
Mar 16 French Vichy Internal minister Pierre Pucheu sentenced to death for treason
Mar 17 Mount Vesuvius in Italy erupts after months of volcanic unrest, destroying several towns near the volcano
Mar 18 Nazi Germany occupies Hungary
Mar 19 British composer Michael Tippett's oratorio "A Child of Our Time" premieres at the Adelphi Theatre in London, England
Mar 20 2,500 women trample guards and floorwalkers to purchase 1,500 alarm clocks announced for sale in a Chicago Illinois department store
Mar 20 Bus falls off bridge into Passaic River NJ, killing 16

South of France Invasion Postponed

Mar 21 US General Eisenhower postpones invasion of the south of France until after Normandy

34th US President and WWII General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Mar 22 600+ 8th Air Force bombers attack Berlin

James Stewart's Combat Mission

Mar 22 American movie star James Stewart flies his 12th combat mission, leading the 2nd Bomb Wing in an attack on Berlin

Mar 23 Italian resistance group bombs occupying German police at Via Rasella, Rome; killing 33 and wounding 110 of the 156 man force; retaliation kills 335 civilians
Mar 24 76 Allied officers escape Stalag Luft 3 (Great Escape)
Mar 24 811 British bombers attack Berlin

Ardeatine Massacre

Mar 24 Ardeatine massacre: Nazis led by SS officers Herbert Kappler, Erich Priebke and Karl Hass execute 335 civilians and political prisoners in occupied Rome in retaliation for the previous day's Via Rassela bombing that killed 33 Germans [1]

SS Commander and War Criminal Erich Priebke

Mar 24 RAF rear gunner Nicholas Alkemade survives a jump from his Lancaster bomber 18,000 feet over Germany without a parachute; his fall broken by pine trees and soft snow, suffers only a sprained leg
Mar 25 Germany troop executes 335 residents of Rome
Mar 26 705 British bombers attack Essen, Germany
Mar 27 2,000 Jews are murdered in Kaunas Lithuania
Mar 27 40 Jewish policemen in Riga, Latvia, ghetto are shot by the Gestapo
Mar 27 Children's Aktion-Nazis collect all the Jewish children of Lovno

Transport No. 70 to Auschwitz

Mar 27 Transport No. 70 departs Drancy (France) internment camp, taking 1,000 French Jews to Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi German occupied Poland; 480 killed upon arrival, approximately 152 survive the war