1940 Chronology: 19 March

The first strong condemnation of Nazism from an official represntative of the US government. The US ambassasdor in Canada, James Cromwell, declares that Hitler's GErmany is openly trying to destroy the social economic order on which the government of the USA is based.

As a reprisal for the GErman attack on Scapa Flow on 14 October 1939, 50 RAF bombers raid the GErman seaplane base at Hornum on the island of Sylt.

James Cromwell
from Wikipedia

James Henry Roberts Cromwell (June 4, 1896 – March 19, 1990) was an American diplomat, candidate for the United States Senate, author, and one-time husband of Doris Duke, "the richest girl in the world".[1]

Biography
He was born in Manhattan on June 4, 1896 to Eva Roberts and Oliver Eaton Cromwell. Cromwell’s sister Louise Cromwell Brooks was the first wife of Douglas MacArthur and the third wife of Lionel Atwill. After the death of her husband, Eva Cromwell married Edward T. Stotesbury in 1912 and moved to Philadelphia where Cromwell grew up.

Cromwell's first wife was automotive company heiress Delphine Dodge, the only daughter of Horace Dodge of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, one of the two co-founders of the Dodge Motor Company. Cromwell and Delphine were the parents of one daughter, Christine Cromwell, born in 1922. They were divorced in 1928.

In 1935, Cromwell married the 22 year-old Doris Duke. It was a "marriage from hell". olitically, both Cromwell and Duke were supporters of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. He published books to present his economic ideas and advocated a tighter control of the Federal Reserve. In 1940, for 142 days, he was the United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Canada. He resigned to run for Senator of New Jersey in the 1940 elections, where he was defeated. After bitter and protracted legal proceedings Cromwell and Duke were divorced in 1948.

Cromwell was married to his third wife, Maxine MacFetridge, from April 24, 1948, until her death in 1968. Their daughter, Maxine Hope Cromwell (later Hopkins), was born in New York on November 17, 1948. Germaine Benjamin was Cromwell's fourth and last wife, from 1971 until her death in 1987.

Cromwell died in the Marin Terrace retirement home in Mill Valley, California, at the age of 93.

Bibliography
World War II Magazine's WWII Day-By-Day Desk Diary