Corvette HMS Auricula commissioned.

GERMANY: Berchtesgaden: Hitler issues a directive calling for closer links with Japan, but insisting that Operation Barbarossa be kept a secret.

U-451 launched.

AUSTRIA: Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring meets with Romanian dictator, Prime Minister General Ion Antonescu, in Vienna to secure the participation of Romanian Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. 

HUNGARY: Budapest: The British Exchange News Agency reported:

A telephone report from a British correspondent in Belgrade said:

It Appears increasingly probable that Germany will issue an ultimatum to Greece demanding that the situation be decided immediately. Presumably this step will take place around March 15, when German forces in Bulgaria will have reached their full strength.

BULGARIA: Sofia: Britain has broken off diplomatic relations with Bulgaria. George Rendel, the British minister, today handed the Bulgarian government a strongly-worded note protesting against Bulgaria's active co-operation with Germany which, it declared, constituted a grave threat to Britain's ally, Greece, and was "incompatible with the maintenance of British diplomatic representation in Bulgaria.

Mr Rendel added a verbal note in even more scathing terms. Alluding to the disappearance of one Mr Grenovich, a Bulgarian official at the British legation, he said: "It has poisoned affairs and put Bulgaria's civilisation back 100 years. I tried for years to deal with the Bulgarians as a civilised western people. Now that appears to be impossible."

The USSR has also condemned the entry of German troops into Bulgaria. "It cannot be regarded", said the Kremlin, "as furthering peace possibilities in the Balkans."

ALBANIA: Italian prisoners, captured by Greek forces in Albania, report that 1500 Alpini troops were drowned in the sinking of the transport ship Liguria and that Allied bombing raids have caused heavy casualties and significant confusion behind Italian lines. 

GREECE: Eden sends the British ambassador at Belgrade back with a confidential note for the Regent explaining British plans for Greece and saying that both Greece and Turkey planned to fight if attacked. If Yugoslavia joined the Allies she would have a British army to fight by her side.

Eden also reports on the darkening mood of the Greeks who are reluctant to evacuate their forces from Albania if Yugoslavia does not attack from the north, and who are only offering the British 23 battalions of troops to delay any German advance into Salonika until British reinforcements arrive.

EGYPT: Operation Lustre, the transporting of British and Commonwealth troops from Alexandria, Egypt, to Greece, begins. An advance party of I Australia Corps and the Australian 6th Division embarks for Greece in the light cruisers HMS Gloucester, Bonaventure and York. 

CANARY ISLANDS: U-106 refuelled from the German supply ship Charlotte Schliemann at Las Palmas.

CANADA: Corvettes HMS Bittersweet and Fennel departed Halifax with 27 ship Convoy HX-113 for Liverpool. HX-113 arrived safely in Liverpool on 21 Mar 41 with all of its merchant ships intact, subsequently for completion Bittersweet to the Tyne, and Fennel to Greenock. Under normal circumstances, an early version of the Flower-class corvette did not have the endurance for an operational transit across the Atlantic, particularly in the stormy weather typically experienced during late winter. This indicates that Bittersweet and Fennel were attached for transit but likely did not actively engage in anti-submarine screening, especially in view of their uncompleted condition.

U.S.A.: A Gallup poll asked the question:

If American merchant ships with American crews are used to carry war materials to Britain, and some of them are sunk by German submarines on the way over, would you be in favour of going to war against Germany?

Would favour war 27 %

Would not favour war 61%