This Day in WWII 6 March 1940 - 1945

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Studebaker Ad - March 1944

1940: Hitler changes his plans for the invasion of the west. At a military conference in Berlin, he decides to adopt the plan put forward by Gerd von Rundstedt and his former chief of staff, Erich von Manstein, for the Ardennes option. Code-named ‘Fall Sichelschnitt’, it called for the attack against the Low Countries to go ahead, but with slightly fewer forces, in order to draw the allies forward, while the decisive thrust would be mounted through the Ardennes. Holding attacks would be made against the Maginot line.

1940: A Finnish delegation arrives in Moscow.

1941: German aircraft mine the Suez canal, blocking it for 3 weeks.

*Ilona Massey

1942: Having received permission from Hitler, the Battleship Tirpitz and 3 destroyers set sail from Trondheim to intercept convoy PQ-12, but is spotted by a British submarine which relays the information onto the British Admiralty. However, bad weather means that the Tirpitz is unable to locate PQ-12 and so heads back to base. Enroute to Trondheim the Tirpitz is spotted and attacked by aircraft from HMS Victorious, but is not damaged.

1942: Japanese cut all roads north of Rangoon, trapping the British at Pegu.

1942: Japanese occupy Batavia in Java.

Ilona Massey

1943: British RAF fliers bomb Essen and the Krupp arms works in the Ruhr, Germany.

1944: Bomber Command begins a large-scale offensive over northern France in preparation for D-Day.

Ilona Massey

1944: The USAAF send 730 bombers and 796 fighters to Berlin, during which 69 bombers and 11 escorts are shot down.

1944: Another 'Chindit' stronghold is established South of the Irrawaddy.

Ilona Massey

1944: U.S. Marines land at Talasea in New Britain.

1945: The US 8th Air Force launches a heavy attack against Chemnitz in Saxony.

1945: The Second Panzer and Sixth SS Panzer Armies launch a major counter-attack from Lake Balaton towards Budapest.

Ilona Massey

1945: The U.S. Third Army reaches the Rhine Northwest of Koblenz, as Cologne falls to General Courtney Hodges' First Army.

1945: The new Chinese First Army takes Lashio in north-eastern Burma.

Ilona Massey

*Ilona Massey (born Ilona Hajmássy) was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Budapest, Hungary) on June 16th, 1940. Billed as "the new Dietrich", she starred in three films with Nelson Eddy, and with Lon Chaney, Jr. in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) as Baroness Frankenstein.

Becoming an American citizen in 1946, she remained strongly anti-communist for what she saw as the destruction of her native country, at one point picketing the United Nations during the 1956 visit of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

In 1949, she starred in Love Happy with the Marx Brothers. She played Madame Egelichi, a femme fatale spy, and her performance inspired Milton Caniff in the creation of his femme fatale spy, Madame Lynx, in the comic strip "Steve Canyon". Caniff hired Massey to pose for him.

From 1 November 1954, she hosted DuMont's The Ilona Massey Show, a weekly musical variety show in which she sang songs with guests in a nightclub stage set, with music provided by the Irving Fields Trio. The series lasted through 1955.

Ilona Massey died of cancer in Bethesda, Maryland and was buried in Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery near her last husband, Donald Dawson, who had served in the United States Air Force Reserve as a Major General.