American critic and commentator Alexander Woollcott suffers an eventually fatal heart attack during a regular broadcast of the CBS Radio round-table program People's Platform.
February 5 – Lt. General Frank M. Andrews is selected to command the U.S. armies in Europe, while General Dwight D. Eisenhower is assigned command in North Africa. Andrews will serve only three months before dying in an airplane crash.
February 19–24 – WWII: Battle of Kasserine Pass: German General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps and other Axis forces launch an offensive against Allied defenses in Tunisia; it is the United States' first major battle defeat of the war. On February 22 an Anglo-American force halts the German advance near Thala, forcing the Germans to retreat, US bombers harass the retreating Panzers.
March 12 – WWII: Italian occupation of Greece: The Italian occupying forces abandon the town of Karditsa to the partisans. On the same day, an Italian motorized column razes the village of Tsaritsani, burning 360 of its 600 houses and shooting 40 civilians.
March 28 – In Italy a ship full of weapons and ammunition explodes in the port of Naples, killing 600.
March 31 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! opens on Broadway, heralds a new era in "integrated" stage musicals, becomes an instantaneous stage classic, and goes on to be Broadway's longest-running musical up to that time (1948).
Albert Hofmann self-administers the psychedelic drug LSD (which he first synthesized in 1938) for the first time in history, and records the details of his experience.[10]
The Memphis Belle's crew becomes the first aircrew in the 8th Air Force to complete its 25-mission tour of duty. The aircraft and crew are the first to return to the U.S. intact for a War Bond drive.
June 20 – 23 – The Detroit race riot of 1943 in the United States kills 34 people – 25 African Americans, nine whites – wounds hundreds more and damages and destroys property worth millions.[13]
June 21 – WWII: British saboteurs blow up the strategically significant railway viaduct at Asopos in Greece.
July 19 – WWII: Rome is bombed by the Allies for the first time in the war.
July 24 – WWII: Operation Gomorrha begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night; the American planes bomb the city by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 42,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.
August 14 – WWII: Rome is declared an open city by the Italian government, with Italy offering to demilitarize the capital in return for an Allied agreement not to bomb the city further.[16]
August 28 – WWII: King Boris III of Bulgaria dies under suspicious circumstances; his 6-year-old son, Simeon II (who would be elected in 2001 as Prime Minister under the name Simeon Sakskoburggotski), ascends to the throne.
August 29 – WWII: Occupation of Denmark – Germany dissolves the Danish government after it refuses to deal with a wave of strikes and disturbances to the satisfaction of the German authorities.
WWII: Signing of Moscow Declarations: the Declaration of the Four Nations on general security, by the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and Republic of China; and the Declarations on Italy, Austria and Atrocities by the first three governments.
The first Lebanese flag hand drawn and signed by the deputies of the Lebanese parliament, November 11, 1943. The French Mandate ends and Lebanon gains independence in November 1943.
November 3 – Holocaust: As part of Operation Harvest Festival, the largest single day massacre of Jews in the entire war took place when over 43,000 Jews were shot-gunned to death by the SS.
November 18 – WWII: Battle of Berlin – The British Royal Air Force opens its bombing campaign against Berlin with 440 planes causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses 9 aircraft and 53 aviators.
Publication of Martin Noth's groundbreaking work of Old Testament scholarship Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien: Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament.[24]
