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WWII On This Day: March 21

What happened on March 21 during World War II? This date brings together 2 events from 1942 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
Civilians in Artemivsk, occupied Ukraine, wait to be examined before deportation to Germany for forced labour, May 1942.
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B19880 / Knödler · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE
Nazi Forced Labour

Sauckel becomes Plenipotentiary General for Labour

On 21 March 1942 Hitler appointed Fritz Sauckel Plenipotentiary General for the Utilisation of Labour, with authority over the recruitment of labour in the occupied territories. Speer, who had become Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions on 15 February, passed him an estimate of the number of workers needed, and Sauckel supplied them. Sauckel's regulation of April 1942 required all workers to be fed, sheltered and treated so as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable expenditure. The Nuremberg tribunal later held him responsible for…

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1945
Buffaloes of 4th Royal Tank Regiment moving forward for the Rhine crossing, 21 March 1945.
Buffaloes of 4th Royal Tank Regiment moving forward for the Rhine crossing, 21 March 1945. Sgt Smith, No. 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit · IWM BU 1968 · Public domain Source
The Rhine Crossings

The preparation for Plunder

A vast build-up supported Plunder: about 60,000 tons of British ammunition, 30,000 tons of British engineer stores, another 138,000 tons of Ninth Army supplies, and some 37,000 British and 22,000 American engineers. Smoke generators screened a roughly twenty-mile assault front for about ten days while equipment moved forward. The preparation was intended to carry two armies across the river and keep them supplied after the first assault waves. Bridging, ferries, amphibious carriers and road control were therefore as important to the plan as the opening barrage.

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