Yalta Conference
Mar 1 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces success of Yalta Conference
Meeting of Interest
Mar 3 Winston Churchill visits Field Marshal Montgomery's headquarters
Historic Event
Mar 4 United Kingdom's Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), joins the British Auxiliary Transport Service as a driver
- Mar 5 Allies bombs The Hague, Netherlands
Meeting of Interest
Mar 5 Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Alexander Patch meet in Lunéville, France
- Mar 5 US 7th Army Corps captures Cologne
- Mar 5 US Ladies Figure Skating championship won by Gretchen Merrill
- Mar 5 World War II: The Battle of the Ruhr begins.
- Mar 6 Chinese 38th division occupies Lashio
- Mar 6 Erich Honnecker & Erich Hanke flee Nazis
- Mar 6 Federico Garcia Lorca's "La Casa" premieres in Buenos Aires
Historic Invention
Mar 6 George Nissen of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, receives a patent for the first modern trampoline
- Mar 6 Dutch resistance fighters kill two, and injure one Nazi officer in an attempt to hijack food supplies at de Woeste Hoeve, Netherlands
- Mar 7 Attack on car of Netherlands SS Police Chief Hans Rauter by Dutch resistance, Rauter injured
- Mar 7 Cologne taken by allied armies
- Mar 7 US 9th Armoured Division attacks Remagen Germany, crosses Rhine
- Mar 8 Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (SD) intelligence agency executes 116 prisoners, and one reluctant police official, at de Woeste Hoeve, Netherlands in response to raid by resistance forces two days earlier
- Mar 8 "Kiss Me Kate" opens in Britain
- Mar 8 53 Amsterdammers executed by nazi occupiers
- Mar 8 International Women's Day is 1st observed
- Mar 8 Phyllis M Daley is 1st black nurse sworn in as US Navy ensign
Firebombing of Tokyo
Mar 9 334 US B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo with 120,000 fire bombs
- Mar 9 Japanese proclaim "independence" of Indo-China
Historic Event
Mar 10 Fieldmarshal Albert Kesselring succeeds Gerd von Rundstedt as commander of German Army Command in the West
- Mar 10 Tokyo in fire after night time B-29 bombings, more than 100,000 people die, mostly civilians
- Mar 10 US troops land in western Mindanao, Philippines in Operation VICTOR IV
- Mar 11 1,000 allied bombers harass Essen, 4,662 ton bombs
- Mar 11 Flemish nazi collaborator Maria Huygens sentenced to death
- Mar 12 30 Amsterdammers executed by nazi occupiers
- Mar 12 Italy's Communist Party (CPI) calls for armed uprising in Italy
- Mar 12 NY is 1st to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment
- Mar 12 USSR returns Transylvania to Romania
Historic Event
Mar 13 Queen Wilhelmina returns to Netherlands
Academy Awards
Mar 15 17th Academy Awards: "Going My Way", Bing Crosby & Ingrid Bergman win
- Mar 15 As a symbol of wartime baseball, Bert Shepard (one-legged WWII veteran) begins a successful tryout as a pitcher for the Washington Senators
- Mar 15 Billboard publishes its 1st album chart (King Cole Trio is #1)
- Mar 15 Catholic University of Nijmegen reopens
- Mar 16 Würzburg, Germany is 90% destroyed, with 5,000 dead, in only 20 minutes by British bombers
- Mar 17 Allied ships bomb North-Sumatra
- Mar 18 US Army Air Force completes largest bombing raid on Berlin Germany: Over 1200 bombers drop 3,000 tons of explosives [1]
Sports History
Mar 18 Montreal Canadien Maurice "Rocket" Richard becomes the 1st NHLer to score 50 goals
Historic Event
Mar 19 Adolf Hitler issues "Nero Decree" to destroy all German factories
- Mar 19 British 36th division conquers Mogok (ruby mine)
- Mar 19 US Task Force 58 attacks ships near Kobe/Kure
- Mar 20 US 70th Infantry Division captures Saarbrucken, immediately prior the invasion of Germany by the western Allies
- Mar 21 1st Japanese kamikaze "flying bombs" (MXY-7 Ohka) attack Okinawa
- Mar 21 During WW II Allied bombers begin 4-day raid over Germany
- Mar 21 Dutch Resistance fighter Hannie Schaft arrested by Nazi police
- Mar 22 Arab League forms with adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt
- Mar 22 US 3rd Army crosses Rhine at Nierstein
- Mar 23 British 7th Black Watch crosses the Rhine into Germany
Battle of Okinawa
Mar 23 Battle of Okinawa: US Navy ships bomb the Japanese island of Okinawa in preparation for the Allied invasion; it would become the largest battle of the Pacific War in World War II
- Mar 23 British Prime Minister Churchill visits Montgomery's headquarter in Straelen
Historic Event
Mar 23 The Swallow Sidecar Company headed by William Lyons agrees to change its name to Jaguar
Historic Event
Mar 23 Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey becomes the first British commander to cross the Rhine during the Allied invasion of Germany
Historic Event
Mar 24 Allied generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Montgomery and Omar Bradley discuss advance in Germany
- Mar 24 Operation Varsity: In the largest one-day airborne operation of all time, British, US & Canadian paratroopers land east of the Rhine in Northern Germany
- Mar 24 US minesweepers reach Kerama Retto, South coast of Okinawa
- Mar 25 US 1st army breaks out bridgehead near Remagen, Germany after crossing the Rhine
- Mar 25 US 4th Armored div arrives at Hanau & Aschaffenburg
- Mar 25 US Northern Tractor Flotilla departs Ulithi to Okinawa
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Mar 26 Allies led by US Marine Corps secure island of Iwo Jima from Imperial Japanese Army, after 18,000 Japanese & 6,000 Americans killed
- Mar 26 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill looks over at the Rhine (near Ginsberg)
Sports History
Mar 26 De Paul wins NIT basketball championship, George Mikan scores 34
- Mar 26 Allied generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George S. Patton launch attack at Remagen on the Rhine
- Mar 26 Kamikaze attack on US battle fleet near Kerama Retto
- Mar 26 US 7th Army crosses Rhine at Worms
- Mar 26 Venray soccer team forms
- Mar 27 7th NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: Oklahoma State beats NYU, 49-44; Cowboys' center Bob Kurland is named tournament Most Outstanding Player
- Mar 27 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sails to eastern banks of Rhine
- Mar 27 DePaul beats Bowling Green for NIT title
Music Recording
Mar 27 Ella Fitzgerald and Delta Rhythm Boys record the Harold Arlen-Yip Harburg-Billy Rose song "It's Only a Paper Moon"
- Mar 27 General Eisenhower declares German defenses on Western Front broken
- Mar 27 US 20th Army corps captures Wiesbaden
- Mar 27 World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins.
- Mar 28 Last German V-1 (buzz bomb) attack on London
- Mar 29 World War II: Last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England
Film & TV History
Mar 29 Movie star Jimmy Stewart is promoted to full colonel, one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years
- Mar 30 289 anti-fascists murdered by Nazis in Rombergpark Dortmund
- Mar 30 USSR invades Austria
- Mar 30 World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to Americans
- Mar 31 3rd Algerian division crosses the Rhine
- Mar 31 Sicherheitsdienst murders 10 political prisoners in Zutphen
Historic Event
Mar 31 Tennessee Williams' "Glass Menagerie" premieres in NYC
- Mar 31 US artillery lands on Keise Shima/begins firing on Okinawa