The US Office of Price Administration implemented the rationing of canned goods. Under the new rules, American consumers would be allowed 48 ration points worth, per person, per month of canned and bottled fruits, vegetables, soups, baby food and dehydrated fruit, while canned meats and fish remained unavailable. On average, the affected canned goods would count for 12 points each.

The Koriukivka massacre takes the palace. German & Hungarian forces murdered 6,700 residents of Koriukivka in occupied Ukraine in retaliation for Soviet partisan activity.

The Pacific War: The Battle of the Bismarck Sea begins.

1,500 Jewish men, women and children were deported from Berlin after the citywide roundup three days earlier, and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp; 1,350 of them were executed upon their arrival at Auschwitz.

The Battle of the Bismarck Sea

Bethnal Green tube station disaster. 172 were killed when a crush caused by a stampede during an air raid warning.

As part of The Holocaust in Bulgarian-occupied Greece, almost all Jews in the region were rounded up to be taken to the Treblinka extermination camp.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 440+ aircraft attack on Essen, Germany. Successful marking by Mosquito aircraft using Oboe radar tracking & radio transponders. Widespread destruction of the target, including the Krupps works.

The Pacific War: The Battle of Blackett Strait was fought in the Pacific

Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin promoted himself to the rank of Marshall of the Soviet Union, while the Communist Party proclaimed him to be "the greatest strategist of all times and all peoples".

North African Campaign: The Battle of Medenine was fought in Tunisia, resulting in a costly failure for the Axis. It was the last battle commanded by Erwin Rommel in North Africa.

The Polish government-in-exile reported for the first time about the executions of prisoners in a Nazi German "murder camp" at Oswiecim, known in Germany as Auschwitz

The Eastern Front: The start of the Battle of Sokolovo, Ukraine

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 330+ aircraft attack on Nuremberg, Germany. Pathfinders using H2S airborne, ground scanning radar system. Mixed results from bombing. MAN & Siemens factories damaged.

North African Campaign: German field marshal Erwin Rommel was summoned back to Berlin and placed on medical leave, on orders of Adolf Hitler, following the failure of the German counterattack at Medenine.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 260+ aircraft attack on Berlin, Germany. The successful raid damaged the BMW factory & many back-street workshops in the area.

Germany announced new rationing of non-essential goods, prohibiting the manufacture of suits, costumes, bath salts, and firecrackers, and restricting telephone use and photography.

World Bantamweight Boxing Title Manuel Ortiz (USA) beat Lou Salica (USA) Ko 11, Oakland Civic Auditorium, Oakland.

The Lend-lease program was extended by the United States for another year after President Roosevelt signed legislation into law. Earlier in the day, the U.S. Senate voted 82–0 in favour of the resolution, and the day before, the House had approved it 407–6.

The entire Jewish population of the Yugoslavian cities of Skopje, Štip and Bitola was deported to German's Treblinka II death camp by the German SS with the assistance of Bulgarian soldiers, with 7,240 being shipped out. The day before, the Jewish community in Bitola had been warned by the local Communist Party about the impending raid, though only a few were able to escape.

The Eastern Front: The Soviet forces capture the town of Vyazma, Russia.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 310+ aircraft attack on Stuttgart, Germany. Largely unsuccessful raid.

The Canadian Pacific Ocean liner RMS Empress of Canada, converted to war use, was torpedoed and sunk by the Italian submarine Leonardo da Vinci, 400 miles off of the coast of Africa. The ship had been carrying 1,800 people, including Italian servicemen who had been captured as prisoners of war. While 1,400 people survived, 392 were killed, half of them Italian POWs. The largest merchant ship sunk during the war

In a plot called Operation Spark, German officer Henning von Tresckow attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by arranging for an unwitting officer to hand Hitler a parcel thinking it contained a gift of liquor when it contained a bomb. All went according to plan and Hitler's plane took off from Smolensk to Rastenburg with the parcel aboard, but it failed to explode due to a faulty detonator.

Finland signed a trade agreement with Germany and its Nazi government at Helsinki, with the Nazis providing food to the Finns in what was described by the Axis press as the "traditional Finnish-German spirit of friendship and comradeship in arms".

The Pacific War: Japanese forces on the island of Bougainville Island, assault American forces at Hill 700.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 450+ aircraft attack on Essen, Germany. Successful raid using Oboe radar tracking & radio transponders. Widespread destruction of the target.

The final liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto was completed as German forces removed the last of the 10,000 Jews remaining in the Polish city.

The Eastern Front: The Third Battle of Kharkiv ended in German victory.

Joseph Stalin sent a letter to President Roosevelt urging that a second front be opened in Europe. Stalin wrote, "The Soviet troops have fought strenuously all winter and are continuing to do so, while Hitler is taking important measures to rehabilitate and reinforce his Army for the spring and summer operations against the USSR; it is therefore particularly essential for us that the blow from the West no longer be delayed, that it be delivered this spring or early summer.

Bulgaria refuses to comply with a German demand that Bulgarian Jews be deported to Nazi concentration camps. The Parliament voted unanimously to revoke plans that had been made by government minister Alexander Belev to arrest Bulgaria's Jewish citizens (although deportations had taken place in the conquered territories of Macedonia and Thrace). "As a result of these protests," it was observed, "no Bulgarian Jews were deported to the gas chambers from Bulgaria itself."

Fritz Kuhn, the German-born leader of the American Nazi movement, has his US citizenship revoked. He had been the leader of the German American Bund and had been incarcerated at the Clinton Prison at Dannemora, New York, after having been convicted of embezzling the Bund's treasury.

The first of 19 train transports of 46,000 Greek Jews to Nazi death camps began, as a train left Salonika for the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Attempt on Hitler's life by Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, who had been allowed to escort Hitler through an exhibition of captured Soviet war equipment at the Zeughaus in Berlin. Gersdorff, who had expected Hitler to spend at least thirty minutes by his side at the Zeughaus, set a ten-minute fuse on a time bomb and made plans to kill himself and Hitler in a suicide bombing. Instead, Hitler rushed through the viewing and left after two minutes; Gersdorff bid his goodbyes, then went into a rest room and defused the explosive.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 350+ aircraft attack on St-Nazaire, France. Successful attacks are led by accurate marking.

The deportation began of 4,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied France. The prisoners were sent by train from the Drancy internment camp, near Paris, to the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, and 1,000 were sent two days later. All but 15 were sent to gas chambers upon their arrival, and only five of the 4,000 survived the war.

The deportation began of the Jews from the Yugoslavian city of Skopje, as 2,338 people were loaded onto freight cars for the one-week-long train trip to the Treblinka death camp. Two more train transports left on March 29 and April 5, carrying 2,402 and 2,404 Jews respectively.

The first executions of Gypsies by the Nazi SS were carried out at the Auschwitz concentration camp, with 1,700 being sent to gas chambers after being diagnosed with typhus.

The Khatyn massacre. The entire population of the Belarusan village of Khatyn was attacked by German soldiers of the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, commanded by Oskar Dirlewanger, in retaliation for the killing of four Nazi officers. The Dirlewanger Brigade burned down the village and killed 156 of its 160 residents. Only three children and one man survived.

Parliamentary elections were allowed in Denmark by Werner Best and the Nazi occupation authorities. The Social Democratic Party won 66 of the 148 seats available, and the Danish Nazi party candidates received only 3.3% of the vote.

The American Army administration overseeing the Japanese American internment eased restrictions on movement but issued regulations putting an 8:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew on all people of Japanese ancestry. The curfew would be upheld by the United States Supreme Court in Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943).

The go-ahead for the construction of the Blockhaus d'Éperlecques was approved by Adolf Hitler. Located in France near Watten and the English Channel, the "blockhaus" was a hardened bunker with walls 12 feet thick, the first of three constructed to house Germany's V-2 missiles.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 450+ aircraft attack on Duisburg, Germany. Failure of Oboe, radar tracking system, leading to poor results.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 390+ aircraft attack on Berlin, Germany. The raid was a failure, with poor marking to blame.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 350+ aircraft attack on St-Nazaire, France. Successful attacks are led by accurate marking. Port area damaged.

Football International: Argentina 3-3 Uruguay, Estadio Monumental, Buenos Aires

At Naples, the munitions ship Caterina Costa exploded in the harbour of the Italian city. Initial reports were that 72 people were killed and 1,179 injured, while later sources set the death toll at 600 or more. The fire on the ship had burned for hours, but no action was taken on fighting the blaze or towing the ship away from the harbour because government approval could not be obtained to take action.

Food rationing began in the United States following the March 12 announcement of limits on beef, pork, lamb and mutton, as well as butter, cheese and canned fish. Poultry was not affected by the order.

Allied Bomber Offensive: Heavy night-time British air raid, 330+ aircraft attack on Berlin, Germany. The failed raid, freezing conditions & inaccurate weather forecasts.

The Pacific War: The Battle of the Komandorski Islands began in the Aleutian Islands.

Oklahoma!, the musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, opened on Broadway. Ten years later, Oklahoma! would be described as "a new musical that broke all the rules: it had no big-name stars, no bare-legged chorus and, worst of all, it contained a 'high-brow' ballet.". The show went on to become Broadway's longest-running musical up to that time, closing in 1948.