A British court awarded Irina Yusupova, niece of the late Nicholas II of Russia, £25,000 in damages in her lawsuit against the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company over the film Rasputin and the Empress. Yusupova claimed that the character Natasha in the film was a libel against her and her character, although the attorneys for MGM had maintained that the character was fictional.[7]
Joseph Goebbels issued an order to all state governments to forbid Jews from performing on any stages in Germany. "I draw attention to the fact that only members of a professional guild are entitled to appear on the German stage", the order read. "Jews are not permitted membership in these guilds. I therefore request the police authorities to be instructed to demand that actors exhibit their membership cards in the guild. If the actors cannot produce them they are to be prevented from appearing on the stage."[8]
In the Soviet Union, a Sovnarkom decree imposed a prison sentence of 3–5 years for those convicted of "homosexual relations". The sentence was increased to 5–8 years if force was used or if the guilty party took advantage of the partner's position of dependence.[11]
Three big Berlin department stores once part of the Tietz chain reopened under the new name of Union Ltd., with only Christian staff. The Tietz brothers, descended from the German Jewish merchant Hermann Tietz, had been forced out of the directorship of the chain since the Nazis came to power.[15]
President Roosevelt ordered the cessation of air mail delivery by army pilots "except on such routes, under which weather conditions and under such equipment and personnel conditions as will insure, as far as the utmost care can provide, against constant recurrence of fatal accidents." The president's order came after a three-week span in which ten pilots delivering air mail had been killed.[16]
Vienna's famous Socialist newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung, banned during February's civil war, reappeared in a form that shared nothing in common with its previous incarnation other than its name and publishing company.[17]
Switzerland held a referendum on whether voters approved of a federal law on maintaining public order. The proposal was rejected by 53.8% of voters.
Estonian leader Konstantin Päts staged a "self-coup" by declaring martial law and installing Johan Laidoner as Commander in Chief of the army. Päts used his emergency powers to disband the Vaps Movement and arrest 400 of its leading members, removing a threat to his rule. The Era of Silence in Estonian history began.[18]
General Werner von Blomberg announced that Jews were banned from enlisting in the German military. The ambiguous wording of the announcement made it unclear whether Jews already serving in the military were affected or not.[19]
Approximately 150 people were killed in a dynamite explosion in the port of La Libertad, El Salvador. The explosion started a fire that burned down four blocks of buildings.[21]
The Rome Protocols were signed between Austria, Hungary and Italy. The agreements strengthened economic ties among the signatories and formed a new power bloc to counterbalance the Little Entente and French influence.[26]
New York City taxicab drivers went back out on strike again, this time over union recognition.[27]
Benito Mussolini made a speech in Rome outlining a 60-year plan that would give Italy the "primacy of the world" in the 21st century and would make that century a "blackshirt era". Mussolini proclaimed that Italy's future lay to the "east and south in Asia and Africa. The vast resources of Africa must be valourized and Africa brought within the civilized circle. I do not refer to conquest of territory but to natural expansion. We demand that nations which have already arrived in Africa do not block at every step Italian expansion."[28]
Samuel Insull was allowed to leave Greece by ship again, on the conditions that he enter no Greek ports and that he radio a message ahead of time saying where he would land once he chose to do so.[29]
Over 100,000 American auto workers were about to go on strike, but it was headed off when President Roosevelt sent a telegram urging that the strike be postponed.[31]
The Great Hakodate Fire in Japan destroyed one-third of the city and killed over 2,000 people.[32]
Nazi Germany launched a public works plan aimed at putting 5 million of the country's 6 million unemployed back to work. The program included highway construction, land reclamation and the building of ships and housing.[33]
President Roosevelt signed the Philippine Independence Act, or the Tydings–McDuffie Act, providing for a ten-year transition phase leading to self-government for the Philippines.[32]
An editorial in Mussolini's newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia wrote that "The dimunition of births in the United States is assuming alarming proportions". The editorial concluded, "When we reflect there are in the United States 11,500,000 Negroes, people of extraordinary fecundity, it is necessary to conclude with a real cry of alarm. The Yellow Peril is nothing. We will encounter an Africanized America in which the white race, by the inexorable law of numbers, will end by being suffocated by the fertile grandsons of Uncle Tom. Are we to see within a century a Negro in the White House?"[38]
The threatened American auto workers' strike was averted when the Roosevelt Administration created a National Automotive Labor Board to help resolve disputes.[31]
Italian general elections were held in the form of a referendum on a single list of Fascist Party candidates. They were the last elections held in Fascist Italy as the only real purpose of this Chamber of Deputies was to approve Mussolini's plan for a new corporative state and then commit "suicide" by voting its own dissolution.[39] The Fascists won 99.84% approval in a foregone conclusion.
The Strength Through Joy organization in Nazi Germany announced that every week during the summer 3,500 workers would be taken on a free vacation cruise aboard a German ocean liner.[40]
President Franklin D. Roosevelt suffered his first defeat in congress. Roosevelt vetoed a bill increasing compensation to war veterans, but the House promptly overrode the veto by repassing the bill 310-72.[41][42]
The U.S. Senate joined the House in overriding President Roosevelt's veto of a war veterans' compensation bill, by a vote of 63-27. The bill added $228 million to payments for disabled war veterans and federal employees.[43]
Austria banned 100 foreign publications, including the magazines The Saturday Evening Post and Daily Sketch, but gave no reason why. The Dollfuss government also ordered the removal of nude statues from public display.[44]
The respected German newspaper Vossische Zeitung published its final edition after 230 years of existence. An editorial stated that "in a certain sense it is the victim of the crisis that affects the entire German press."[49]
^Davies, R. W.; Khlevnyuk, Oleg; Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2014). The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 6: The Years of Progress: The Soviet Economy, 1934–1936. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 30. ISBN978-1-137-36257-5.
^"3 Big Berlin Stores Reopen with Aryan Clerks; Jews are Out". Chicago Daily Tribune. March 10, 1934. p. 11.
^Boettiger, John (March 11, 1934). "Roosevelt Cuts Mail Flying". Chicago Daily Tribune. p. 1.
^"Vienna's Famous Socialist Paper Turns Fascist". Chicago Daily Tribune. March 12, 1934. p. 6.
^Midlarksy, Manus I. ""Realism and the Democratic Peace: The Primacy of State Security in New Democracies." Realism and Institutionalism in International Studies. Ed. Michael Brecher & Frank P. Harvey. University of Michigan, 2002. 105. ISBN978-0-472-02393-6.
