March 20
43BC Birth: Ovid, Roman poet. "...Ovid was either the last of the Golden Age poets, such as Vergil and Horace, or first of the Silver Age poets, such as Lucan and Statius [see Karl Galinsky (1989). "Was Ovid a Silver Latin Poet?" Illinois Classical Studies 14(1-2): 69-88]. Unlike Vergil and Horace who lived through the civil wars that marked the violent end of the Roman Republic, Ovid was the first major Roman Poet to come of age wholly in the Augustan Age--the beginning of the Roman Empire. Coming from Sulmo (modern Sulmona), Ovid was not Roman but Paelignian. The Paeligni had a long association with Rome and the Ovidii were..."
1413 Death: Henry IV, at 46, following a stroke at Westminster Abbey.
1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is published. The novel will sell 300,000 copies within three months and is so widely read that when President Abraham Lincoln meets Stowe in 1862, he declares, "So this is the little lady who made this big war." Stowe was born in 1811, the seventh child of the famous Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher. She studied at private schools in Connecticut, then taught in Hartford from 1827 until her father moved to Cincinnati in 1832. She accompanied him and continued to teach while writing stories and essays. In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, with whom she had seven children. She published her first book, Mayflower, in 1843. While living in Cincinnati, Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad. Later, she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in reaction to recently tightened fugitive slave laws. The book had a major influence on the way the American public viewed slavery. The book established Stowe's reputation as a woman of letters. She traveled to England in 1853, where she was welcomed as a literary hero. Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, she became one of the original contributors to The Atlantic, which launched in November 1857. In 1863, when Lincoln announced the end of slavery, she danced in the streets. Stowe continued to write throughout her life and died in 1896. (Bradley)
1917 Birth: Dame Vera Lynn, British singer, the 'forces sweetheart' of WW2 with We'll meet again and White Cliffs of Dover, and in 1952 Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart. She will be made a Dame of the British Empire in 1975.
1919 Birth: Erich Gerhard Barkhorn (above, right), Luftwaffe fighter pilot and "Ace," officially credited with 301 kills on the Russian front. Barkhorn survived the war and is said to have shot down more enemy planes than any other pilot in the war except his own countryman, Erich Hartmann. Note: 301 kills is hardly possible, as Allied aviators were well aware. Some fudging of the numbers was inevitable.
1920 Volkishness: The "Munchener Beobachter" shareholders are listed as follows: Kathe Bierbaumer 46,000, Dora Kunze 10,000, Baron Franz von Freilitzsch 20,000, Theodor Heuss 10,000, Gottfried Feder 10,000, Franz Xavier Eder 10,000, Wilhelm Gutberlet 10,000, Karl Alfred Braun 3,500. Note: Freilitzsch and Heuss are members of the Thule Society and Feder is one of Hitler's associates.
1933 Negotiations begin between Hitler and Frick on one side and the Catholic Center Party leaders, Kaas, Stegerwald and Hackelsburger, on the other. The question is: under what conditions would the Center Party vote for an Enabling Act desired by Hitler? Note: The consent of the Catholic party is necessary if this act is to receive the required two-thirds majority vote. (Lewy)
1933 Holocaust: The first of many Nazi concentration camps opens. "...the Dachau concentration camp was the first regular concentration camp established by the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler, in his capacity as police president of Munich, officially described the camp as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners." It was located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the northeastern part of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich in southern Germany. During the first year, the camp held about 4,800 prisoners and by 1937 the number had risen to 13,260. Initially the internees consisted primarily of German Communists, Social Democrats, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. Over time, other groups were also interned at Dachau such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, as well as "asocials" and repeat criminals. During the early years relatively few Jews were interned in Dachau and then usually because they belonged to one of the above groups or had completed prison sentences after being convicted for violating the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. In early 1937, the SS, using prisoner labor, initiated construction of a large complex of buildings on the grounds of the original camp. Prisoners were forced to do this work, starting with the destruction of the old munitions factory, under terrible conditions. The construction was officially completed in mid-August 1938 and the camp remained essentially unchanged until 1945. Dachau thus remained in operation for the entire period of the Third Reich.."
1933 Goering issues orders to the police authorizing the use of force against hostile demonstrators.
1933 The Jews of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) declare an anti-Nazi boycott. (Edelheit)
1933 The American Jewish Committee and B'nai B'rith jointly condemn Germany for denying German Jews their basic rights.
1934 Germany lifts the ban on Jewish organizations as long as they remain uninvolved in politics.
1934 Britain's 'war-winning invention', radar, is first demonstrated by Rudolf Kuhnold, Chief of the German Navy Signals Research Department.
1936 Hitler speaks in Hamburg: "...I need the German people in the struggle that I carry on for its own sake, in the struggle for German equality, in the struggle against the insolence of others who still regard Germany as an inferior or as enjoying inferior rights, or who try to act as if such were the case. I need the German people to demonstrate therewith to the whole world that whatever happens we will not retreat one inch..."
1938 The Polish Association of High School Teachers in Cracow proposes a ban on all Jewish teachers.
1939 The US ambassador to Germany is recalled to protest the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
1939 Holocaust: Reichprotector von Neurath bans all "unofficial Aryanization" of Jewish property in former Czechoslovakian territories. All Jews are dismissed from their jobs as municipal employees.
1940 WW2: Edouard Daladier is forced to resign as Premier of France; primarily for failing to aid Finland.
1941 Holocaust: The German deadline for all Jews to be inside the Polish ghettos expires.
1943 WW2: Hitler leaves Wolf's Lair on doctor's orders and recuperates at Obersalzberg.
1943 WW2: Montgomery attacks the defensive Mareth Line.
1944 Holocaust: Professor von Verschuer sends a progress report to the DFG. He writes: "My assistant, Dr. Mengele, has joined this part of the research as a collaborator. He is employed as an SS-Captain and camp doctor in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. With the approval of the Reichsfuehrer-SS (Himmler), anthropological studies have been carried out on the very diverse racial groups in this camp, and blood samples have been sent to my laboratory for processing." (Science)
1944 Holocaust: The death camp at Majdanek is evacuated. The sick are sent to Auschwitz for immediate gassing. Able-bodied men are sent to Gross Rosen, and women are sent to Ravensbrück and Natzweiler. (Atlas)
1945 WW2: Hitler makes his last appearance in public to award combat decorations to a group of children who had shown special bravery under Russian fire.
1993 Yeltsin introduces "special presidential rule."
1995 Ten people die and 5,500 are affected by a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo underground system; eventually blamed on the Aun Shinri Kyo religious sect.
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