MARCH 8 - DAILY CHRONICLES OF HISTORY

MARCH 8

1917

The February Revolution:  The main events of the revolution took place in Petrograd, (now St. Petersburg) where longstanding discontent with the Russian monarchy erupted into mass protests against food rationing on March 8 (NS). Revolutionary activity lasted about eight days in armed clashes with police and gendarmes. On February 27 O.S. (12 March N.S.) members of the Russian Army mutinied and sided with the revolutionaries.Three days later it resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, marking the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire. The Russian Council of Ministers was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov.

1924

Georges Charpak  (dob) was a Polish-born French physicist from a Jewish family. His family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old, and in 1941 he began his study of mathematics at the Lycee St Louis.  During World War II Charpak served in the French resistance and was imprisoned by Vichy regime in 1943.  A year later he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, where he remained until the camp was liberated in 1945. In 1992 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

1940

Bloody Thursday - Lodz Ghetto:  The German Orpo Police launched an assault known as "Bloody Thursday" against the Jews of the ghetto and murdered about 350 Jews while they were inside their homes, or outside on the street. The Nazi German action continued until March 7, 1940.  Over the next two months the Nazis erected wooden and wire fences around the perimeter of the Ghetto, sealing it off from the rest of the city. By the 1st of may, the Jews were completely sealed within the ghetto walls.

Nazi Decrees Against Polish civilians. The Nazi German regime issued a decree on March 8, 1940 requiring all Zivilarbeiter (Polish workers in Germany) to wear a mandatory badge identifying them a slave workers of the Reich.  The badge was a diamond shape with a border about half a centimetre wide,  the letter "P" in the color violet, over a yellow background.  Polish workers were required to wear it on the right breast of every garment. They were also required to carry a work permit with a photo. Those who disobeyed were fined up to 150 Reichsmarks and arrested with a possible penalty of six weeks' detention. The badge was meant to humiliate the Polish people, and just like the similar Jewish symbol, was regarded as a badge of shame. Moreover, the Decree segregated the Polish population from mainstream German society. Polish people were forbidden to go to restaurants, or cultural centers, and were forbidden to use public transit.  They were segregated and kept in barracks behind barbed wire. Acts of disobedience were punishable by deportation to concentration camp, or execution, in the event of sexual relations between a Pole and a German.

1945

Operation Sunrise was a series of secret negotiations which began in March 1945 in Switzerland between representatives of Nazi Germany and Western Allies to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy.  The negotiations took place in Lucerne between Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff and Allen Dulles and organized by Max Waibel. Wolff offered the following plan: Army Group C goes into Germany, while Allied Forces Commander Harold Alexander advances in the direction of the Southern Alps. Subsequently, on March 15 an 19, Wolff conducted further secret negotiations on the surrender with American General Lyman Lemnitzer and British General Terence Airey. On March 22, Molotov, in his letter to the American ambassador, wrote that "for two weeks, in Bern, behind the back of the Soviet Union, negotiations between representatives of the German Military Command on one side and representatives of American and British Command on the other side are conducted. The Soviet government considers this absolutely inadmissible." This led to Roosevelt's letter to Stalin on March 25, and Stalin's reply on March 29. The actual surrender in Italy was signed on April 29, 1945 agreeing to a cessation of hostilities on May 2. Victory in Europe Day occurred five days later.


114 Allied aircraft bombed the Emil coking plant, and 109 bombed the marshalling yards in Essen, Germany.