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WWII On This Day: March 30

What happened on March 30 during World War II? This date brings together 6 events from 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
Wang Jingwei announces the establishment of the Reorganized National Government at Nanking on 30 March 1940.
Wang Jingwei announces the establishment of the Reorganized National Government at Nanking on 30 March 1940. Second Historical Archives of China · public domain (China) Source
The Second Sino-Japanese War

Wang Jingwei's government is installed at Nanking

The Reorganized National Government under Wang Jingwei was formally established at Nanking on 30 March 1940, and Japan recognised it on 20 November 1940 in the Sino-Japanese Basic Treaty. Its army was estimated at 300,000 to 500,000 men on paper, though Wang could count on the loyalty of only about 10 to 15 per cent of them. Japan had agreed to withdraw its troops within two years and to support Wang in setting up a rival government to Chiang's. The relationship remained one of subordination, and Japanese correspondence treated the…

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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
Soldiers of the U.S. 95th Infantry Division patrol Soest after its capture during the reduction of the Ruhr Pocket, 7 April 1945.
Men of the 95th Infantry Division patrol Soest, 7 April 1945 · Photographer Pick · U.S. Army Signal Corps / NARA · Public domain
The Ruhr Pocket

Paderborn blocks the direct junction

The 3rd Armored Division met the strongest resistance of its northward drive on the approaches to Paderborn. The defence around the training grounds drew on SS Panzerbrigade Westfalen, schwere Panzer-Abteilung 507 and other improvised elements with heavy tanks, self-propelled guns and Panzerfausts. The fighting cut and slowed American columns south of the city, making Paderborn an unreliable point for the planned junction with Ninth Army. Major General Maurice Rose, commanding the 3rd Armored Division, was killed near Schloss Hamborn on the evening of 30 March while moving forward through the…

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