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WWII On This Day: March 30

What happened on March 30 during World War II? This date brings together 7 events from 1941, 1942, 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1941
A German infantryman beside a burning Soviet BT-7 tank and a dead Soviet soldier, June 1941.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-020-1268-36 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Operation Barbarossa

Hitler defines a war of annihilation

At a conference with about 250 senior commanders and staff officers on 30 March, Hitler described the coming invasion as an ideological struggle against Bolshevism and demanded exceptional violence against the Soviet political system. Halder's notes recorded Hitler's call for the destruction of Bolshevik commissars and communist intelligentsia and for a conflict conducted differently from the western campaigns. Senior military leaders left the conference knowing that the political leadership expected the army to participate in a war that breached established laws and customs of war. The following months translated that…

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1942
Searchlights and anti-aircraft tracer over Cologne during Operation Millennium, 30–31 May 1942.
Royal Air Force official photographer · Imperial War Museums C 2615 · Public domain
Area Bombing Begins

The dehousing memorandum argues for a much larger bomber force

Frederick Lindemann sent Churchill a memorandum estimating what a greatly expanded bombing offensive might achieve by destroying working-class housing in German cities and displacing industrial workers. The calculation drew on British experience of German bombing and converted assumptions about bomb tonnage, urban density and housing damage into projected numbers of people made homeless. The memorandum came after the Area Bombing Directive and therefore did not create the policy adopted on 14 February. Its importance was political and economic. It offered a measurable case for protecting the bomber programme in the…

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Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival and the British surrender party walking to the Ford Motor Factory in Singapore on 15 February 1942.
British official photographer / Imperial War Museums HU 2781 · UK Government public domain · Source
The Fall of the Southern Empires

Toungoo Is Abandoned

The Chinese 200th Division withdrew from Toungoo on 30 March after days of fighting and increasing pressure on its communications. The withdrawal preserved much of the formation from being trapped, but it opened the road farther north into central Burma. The Allied problem was now cumulative. Rangoon had already gone, the Sittang retreat had cost heavy equipment, and the line around Toungoo could not be sustained once the Japanese advance threatened the routes behind it. Every withdrawal saved troops for another position while shortening the distance to Mandalay, the oilfields…

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1944
A German Messerschmitt Bf 110 attacks B-17F Flying Fortresses of the 91st Bomb Group over Europe in January 1944.
U.S. Army Air Forces / National Archives, NAID 204888701 · Public domain in the United States · Source
The Combined Bomber Offensive

The Nuremberg disaster

Bomber Command dispatched 795 aircraft on a long route under bright moonlight after the expected protective cloud failed to develop. Diversionary operations were limited by weather over the North Sea. Ninety-four bombers failed to return in the official RAF account. The attack was scattered and did not produce the concentrated destruction intended.

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1945
Men of the 95th Division, US Ninth Army, patrolling Soest after its capture, 7 April 1945.
Men of the 95th Division patrolling Soest, 7 April 1945 · US Army Signal Corps SC 336817 · NARA · Public domain · Source
The Ruhr Pocket

The advance reaches the Sennelager armour

The leading American columns met an improvised defence formed from SS training and replacement personnel and approximately sixty Tiger and Panther tanks as counted in the US Army official history. Panzerfaust teams, tanks and self-propelled guns stopped the rapid advance and forced the 3rd Armored Division into its hardest fighting of the encirclement.

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The Ruhr Pocket

Maurice Rose is killed

Major General Maurice Rose went forward in a jeep to deal with a roadblock that had cut an American column. Four German tanks appeared behind his party and trapped the vehicles. Rose dismounted under a German tank's gun and was shot as he moved at his holster or pistol belt. The episode belongs in the timeline because it came directly from the resistance delaying closure of the pocket, not as a detached biography.

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The Ruhr Pocket

Attack permitted, withdrawal refused

Model reported that Army Group B could hold inside the Ruhr only until about mid-April without relief. He wanted to withdraw before the ring closed and proposed an attack from Winterberg to cover the movement. Kesselring authorised the attack but refused withdrawal. Hitler had again prohibited retreat on pain of death. The decision left Army Group B attempting to reopen a corridor while remaining tied to the Ruhr.

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