Bulgarian Leader Bogdan Filov. Although his country joined the Axis powers, he did not participate extensively in World War II.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
February 28, 1941, sees the British Royal Air Force, which has established air superiority over the combat zone, bomb Asmara, the capital city of Italian Eritrea.
On March 1, Prime Minister Bogdan Filov brings Bulgaria into the Tripartite Pact, joining the Axis forces of Germany, Italy and Japan. On the same day, in Nashville, Tennessee, W47NV comes on the airwaves, becoming the first FM radio station in the U.S. In the Red Sea, the British aircraft carrier HMS Formidable — still blocked from transiting the Suez Canal by German mines (that are being cleared as quickly as possible) — unleashes another sortie of its planes, with Massawa, Eritrea, as the target. In North Africa, Kufra, in southeastern Libya, is captured from the Italians by a Free French force from Chad, commanded by Col. Philippe de Hauteclocque (known by his nom-de-guerre, “Leclerc”). In Washington, D.C., the U.S. Navy forms a Support Force for the Atlantic Fleet: three destroyer squadrons comprising 27 vessels. In German-annexed Poland, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, inspects the Auschwitz concentration camp and orders it expanded to hold 30,000 prisoners.
Per a treaty agreement finalized the previous day, German troops — part of Field Marshal Wilhelm List’s Twelfth Army — begin moving into Bulgaria in force on March 2. Some reach the border with Greece.
The next day, March 3, the Soviet Union condemns Bulgaria’s signing of a pact with the Axis. President Roosevelt signs an order freezing Bulgarian assets in the U.S. In the Balkans, Italian Air Force planes bomb Larissa, Greece, where a powerful earthquake two days earlier had left some 19,000 of 24,000 residents homeless. Returning from the raid, five of the Italian bombers are shot down by RAF Hurricanes over the island of Corfu.
In Germany on February 4, at Berchtesgaden, Hitler meets secretly with Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, attempting to convince him to join the Axis. Paul makes no commitment, but returns home realizing he must soon make a decision between aligning with either Germany or Great Britain. Additional talks in the next few days, however, convince Paul that the United Kingdom has few resources it can offer to help Yugoslavia. In Occupied Norway, the British launch “Operation Claymore,” a raid by some 500 British commandos and 52 Royal Norwegian Navy sailors on the Lofoten islands, a center for the production of fish oil and glycerin, used by German war industries. The raid is successful — 10 German ships are sunk and 228 prisoners are taken — but German reprisals against the local populace are fierce once the raiding party leaves.
On March 5, the British government severs relations with Bulgaria. In the eastern Mediterranean, “Operation Lustre” begins: the movement of British troops from Alexandria, Egypt, to Greece. By April 2, some 58,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers will be deployed in Greece. In Vienna, German Reich Marshal Hermann Göring meets with Romanian Prime Minister Ion Antonescu to seek that country’s assistance in the invasion of the Soviet Union.
In Occupied Netherlands on March 6, in retaliation for “the February Strike” that protested the arrest of Jews in Amsterdam and attempts to send workers to jobs in Germany, the Germans condemn 18 suspected members of the Dutch underground resistance to death.
