1945 In Case Law

1945 marked the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which nuclear weapons have been used in combat.

Events

Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.

January

* January 1 – WWII:
** Germany begins Operation Bodenplatte, an attempt by the ''Luftwaffe'' to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries.
** Chenogne massacre: German prisoners are allegedly killed by American forces near the village of Chenogne, Belgium.
* January 6 – WWII: A German offensive recaptures Esztergom, Hungary from the Russians.
* January 12 – WWII: The Soviet Union begins the Vistula–Oder Offensive in Eastern Europe, against the German Army.
* January 13 – WWII: The Soviet Union begins the East Prussian Offensive, to eliminate German forces in East Prussia.
* January 16 – WWII: Adolf Hitler takes residence in the ''Führerbunker'' in Berlin.
* January 17
** WWII: The Soviet Union occupies Warsaw, Poland.
** The Holocaust: Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who has saved thousands of Jews, is taken into custody by a Soviet patrol during the Siege of Budapest and is never again seen publicly.
* January 18 – The Holocaust: The SS begins the evacuation of Auschwitz concentration camp. Nearly 60,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to other locations in Germany; as many as 15,000 die. The 7,000 too sick to move are left without supplies being distributed.
* January 19 – The Holocaust: Soviet forces liberate the Łódź Ghetto; only 877 Jews of the initial population of 164,000 remain at this time.
* January 20
** Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn in for a fourth term as President of the United States, the only President ever to exceed two terms.
** Germany begins the Evacuation of East Prussia.
* January 21– 22 (night) – At the Grünhagen railroad station, located in East Prussia at this date, two trains, heading for Elbing, collide. At dawn the station is reached by Soviet Army infantry and tanks which destroy the station, killing between 140 and 150 people.
* January 23 – WWII:
** Hungary agrees to an armistice with the Allies.
** German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the start of Operation Hannibal, the mass evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from the Courland Pocket, East Prussia and the Polish Corridor, evacuating an estimated 800,000-900,000 German civilians and 350,000 soldiers from advancing Soviet forces.
** Evacuation of Germans from Grünhagen.
* January 24 – WWII: AP war correspondent Joseph Morton, nine OSS men, and four SOE agents are executed by the Germans at Mauthausen concentration camp under Hitler's Commando Order of 1942, which stipulates the immediate execution of all captured Allied commandos or saboteurs without trial, even those in proper uniforms. Morton is the only Allied correspondent to be executed by the Axis during the war.
* January 26 – WWII: 19-year-old U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Audie Murphy sees action at Holtzwihr, France, for which is awarded the Medal of Honor.
* January 27 – The Holocaust: The Soviet Red Army liberates the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.
* January 30 – WWII:
** , with over 10,000 mainly civilian Germans from Gotenhafen ( Gdynia) is sunk in Gdańsk Bay by three torpedoes from Soviet submarine ''S-13'' in the Baltic Sea; up to 9,400, 5,000 of whom are children, are thought to have died – the greatest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.
** Raid at Cabanatuan: 121 American soldiers and 800 Filipino guerrillas free 813 American prisoners of war from the Japanese-held camp in the city of Cabanatuan, in the Philippines.
** Adolf Hitler makes his last public speech, on broadcast radio, expressing the belief that Germany will triumph.
* January 31 – WWII: The Battle of Hill 170 in the Burma Campaign ends with the British 3rd Commando Brigade defeating the Imperial Japanese Army 54th Division, causing the Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army to withdraw from the Arakan Peninsula.

February

* February – Raymond L. Libby of American Cyanamid's research laboratories, at Stamford, Connecticut, announces a method of orally administering the antibiotic penicillin.
* February 3 – WWII:
** Battle of Manila: United States forces enter the outskirts of Manila to capture it from the Japanese Imperial Army, starting the battle. On February 4, U.S. Army forces liberate Santo Tomas Internment Camp in the city.
** The Soviet Union agrees to enter the Pacific War against Japan, once hostilities against Germany are concluded.
* February 4– 11 – WWII: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin hold the Yalta Conference.
* February 7 – WWII: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
* February 8 – The Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, championed by charismatic native leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, is passed by the territorial Senate, after the legislature defeated a previous bill in 1943.
* February 9
** Walter Ulbricht becomes leader of the German Communists in Moscow.
** WWII: " Black Friday": A force of Allied Bristol Beaufighter aircraft suffers heavy casualties in an unsuccessful attack on German destroyer ''Z33'' and escorting vessels sheltering in Førde Fjord, Norway.
* February 10 – WWII: German troopship is sunk by the Soviet submarine ''S-13''; 3,608 drown.
* February 10– 20 – WWII: Operation Kita: The Imperial Japanese Navy returns "Completion Force", containing both its ''Ise''-class battleships, safely from Singapore to Kure in Japan despite Allied attacks.
* February 13 – WWII:
** The Budapest Offensive and the Siege of Budapest end with Nazi troops surrendering Budapest (Hungary) to Soviet-Romanian forces.
** Bombing of Dresden (Germany) by the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces; 25,000-35,000 are estimated to have died.
* February 16 – WWII:
** The Bombing of Wesel begins, destroying 97% of the town over three days.
** American and Filipino ground forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines.
** Combined American and Filipino forces recapture the Bataan Peninsula.
** Venezuela declares war on Germany.
* February 19– 20 – 980 (Actual figure is disputed) Japanese soldiers die as a result of being attacked by long saltwater crocodiles in Ramree, Burma.
* February 19 – WWII: Battle of Iwo Jima – About 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima.
* February 21 – The last V-2 rocket is launched from Peenemünde.
* February 22 – WWII:
** Italian Front: The Battle of Monte Castello ends, after nearly three months of fighting, Brazilian troops expel German forces from a pivot point in the (Tuscan) North Apennines, where their artillery was impeding the advance of Eighth British Army toward Bologna.
** Uruguay declares war on Germany and Japan.
* February 23 – WWII:
** Battle of Iwo Jima: A group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island, and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo, '' Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima'' (taken by Joe Rosenthal), later wins a Pulitzer Prize.
** The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, free the captives of the Los Baños internment camp.
** The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by combined American and Filipino ground troops. American and Filipino troops enter Intramuros.
** The German garrison in Poznań capitulates to Red Army and Polish troops.
** Bombing of Pforzheim: The heaviest of a series of bombing raids on Pforzheim, Germany by Allied aircraft is carried out by the British Royal Air Force. As many as 17,600 people, or 31.4% of the town's population, are killed in the raid and about 83% of the town's buildings destroyed, two-thirds of its complete area and between 80 and 100% of the inner city.
** Turkey joins the war on the side of the Allies.
* February 24 – Egyptian Premier Ahmad Mahir Pasha is assassinated in Parliament after declaring war on Germany and Japan.
* February 27 – The Bombing of Mainz results in 1,209 confirmed dead; 80% of the city is destroyed.
* February 28 – In Bucharest, a violent demonstration takes place, during which the ''Bolşevic'' group opens fire on the army and protesters. In response, Andrei Y. Vishinsky, USSR vice commissioner of foreign affairs and president of the Allied Control Commission for Romania, travels to Bucharest to compel Nicolae Rădescu to resign as premier.

March

* March 1 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt gives what will be his last address to a joint session of the United States Congress, reporting on the Yalta Conference.
* March 2
** Former U.S. Vice-president Henry A. Wallace starts his term of office as United States Secretary of Commerce, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
** The rocket-propelled Bachem Ba 349 ''Natter'' is first test launched at Stetten am kalten Markt. The launch fails and the pilot, Lothar Sieber, dies.
* March 3 – WWII:
** Finland declares war on the Axis powers.
** United States and Filipino troops take Manila, Philippines.
** Pawłokoma massacre: A Polish Home Army unit massacres between 150 and 500 Ukrainian civilians in the Polish village of Pawłokoma.
** Bombing of the Bezuidenhout: The British Royal Air Force accidentally bombs the Bezuidenhout neighbourhood in The Hague, Netherlands, killing 511 people.
* March 4 – In the United Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), joins the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) as a truck driver/mechanic in London.
* March 5 – WWII: Brazilian troops take Castelnuovo ( Vergato), in the last operations of the Allied Spring 1945 offensive in Italy.
* March 6
** A Communist-led government is formed in Romania under Petru Groza, following Soviet intervention.
** Resistance fighters accidentally ambush and attempt to execute SS general Hanns Albin Rauter, the arch-persecutor of the Dutch.
* March 7 – WWII: At the end of Operation Lumberjack, American troops seize the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen, Germany and begin to cross; in the next 10 days, 25,000 troops with equipment are able to cross.
* March 8
** Josip Broz Tito forms a Provisional Government of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
** Nazi authorities kill 117 Dutch men, in reprisal for the attempted murder of Hanns Albin Rauter.
** Operation Sunrise: Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff meets with Allen Welsh Dulles of the United States Office of Strategic Services at Lucerne, Switzerland, to negotiate the surrender of the Axis forces in Italy to the Allies.
* March 9– 10 – WWII: Bombing of Tokyo: USAAF B-29 bombers attack Tokyo, Japan, with incendiary bombs, killing 100,000 citizens in the firebombing. It is the single most destructive conventional air attack of the war.
* March 11
** The Empire of Japan establishes the Empire of Vietnam, a puppet state which will last only until August 23, with Bảo Đại as its ruler.
** The Sammarinese general election gives San Marino the world's first democratically elected communist government, which will hold power until 1957.
* March 12 – WWII: Swinemünde is destroyed by the USAAF, killing an estimated 8,000 to 23,000 civilians, mostly refugees saved by Operation Hannibal.
* March 15– 31 – WWII: The Soviet Red Army carries out the Upper Silesian Offensive.
* March 15 – The 17th Academy Awards ceremony is held, broadcast via radio in the United States for the first time. Best Picture goes to ''Going My Way''.
* March 16 – WWII:
** The Battle of Iwo Jima unofficially ends.
** The Bombing of Würzburg, as part of the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany, destroys 89% of the city and causes 4,000 deaths.
* March 17 – WWII: Kobe, Japan is fire-bombed by 331 B-29 bombers, killing over 8,000 people.
* March 18 – WWII: 1,250 American bombers attack Berlin.
* March 19 – WWII:
** Adolf Hitler orders that all industries, military installations, machine shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany be destroyed.
** Off the coast of Japan, bombers hit the aircraft carrier USS ''Franklin'', killing about 800 of her crewmen and crippling the ship.
* March 21 – WWII:
** British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma.
** Bulgarian and Soviet troops successfully defend the north bank of the Drava River, as the Battle of the Transdanubian Hills concludes.
* March 22
** The Arab League is formed, with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.
** The Cathedral and the historic city-centre of Hildesheim in Germany are destroyed in an air raid.
* March 24
** WWII: Operation Varsity – Two airborne divisions capture bridges across the Rhine River to aid the Allied advance.
** The cartoon character Sylvester the cat debuts in ''Life with Feathers''.
* March 26 – WWII: The Battle of Iwo Jima officially ends, with the destruction of the remaining areas of Japanese resistance, although there are Japanese holdouts here until 1949.
* March 27 – WWII:
** The United States Army Air Forces begins Operation Starvation, laying naval mines in many of Japan's seaways.
** Argentina declares war on Germany and Japan.
* March 29
** WWII: The Red Army almost destroys the German 4th Army, in the Heiligenbeil Pocket in East Prussia.
** The "Clash of Titans": George Mikan and Bob Kurland duel at Madison Square Garden in New York, as Oklahoma State University defeats DePaul 52–44 in basketball.
* March 30 – WWII:
** The Red Army pushes most of the Axis forces out of Hungary into Austria.
** American official Alger Hiss is congratulated in Moscow for his part in bringing the positions of the Western powers and the Soviet Union closer to each other, at the Yalta Conference.

April

* April 1 – WWII: Battle of Okinawa: The Tenth United States Army lands on Okinawa.
* April 4 – WWII:
** American troops liberate their first Nazi concentration camp, Ohrdruf extermination camp in Germany.
** The Red Army enters Bratislava and pushes to the outskirts of Vienna, taking it on April 13, after several days of intense fighting.
* April 6 – WWII:
** Sarajevo is liberated from Nazi Germany and the Independent State of Croatia (a fascist puppet state), by Yugoslav Partisans.
** The Battle of Slater's Knoll on Bougainville Island concludes, with a decisive victory for the Australian Army's 7th Brigade.
** Allied forces reach Merkers Salt Mines in Thuringia, where gold reserves of the Nazi German Reichsbank are stored.
* April 7 – WWII:
** The only flight of the German ramming unit known as Sonderkommando Elbe takes place, resulting in the loss of some 24 B-17s and B-24s of the United States Eighth Air Force.
** and nine other warships take part in Operation Ten-Go, a suicide attack on Allied forces engaged in the Battle of Okinawa. ''Yamato'' is sunk by U.S. Navy aircraft in the East China Sea north of Okinawa with the loss of 2,055 of 2,332 crew, together with five other Japanese warships.
** Kantarō Suzuki becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
* April 8 – The SS begins to evacuate the Buchenwald concentration camp; inmates in the Buchenwald Resistance call for American aid, and overpower and kill the remaining guards.
* April 9
** WWII: The Battle of Königsberg, in East Prussia, ends with Soviet forces capturing the city.
** Abwehr conspirators Wilhelm Canaris, Hans Oster and Hans von Dohnányi are hanged at Flossenberg concentration camp, along with pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
** Johann Georg Elser, would-be assassin of Adolf Hitler, is executed at Dachau concentration camp.
* April 10 – WWII: Visoko is liberated by the 7th, 9th and 17th Krajina Brigades from the Tenth Division of Yugoslav Partisan forces.
* April 11 – Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated by the United States Army.
* April 12
**Vice President Harry S. Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President of the United States, and that evening in the White House, following the sudden death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt earlier in the day.
** WWII: The U.S. Ninth Army under General William H. Simpson crosses the Elbe River astride Magdeburg, and reaches Tangermünde — only 50 miles from Berlin.
* April 14 – WWII:
** The First Canadian Army assumes military control of the Netherlands, where German forces are trapped in the Atlantic Wall fortifications along the coastline.
** Razing of Friesoythe: The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division deliberately destroys the German town of Friesoythe, on the orders of Major General Christopher Vokes.
* April 15 – WWII:
** The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated by British and Canadian forces.
** The Canadian First Army reaches the coast in the northern Netherlands, and captures Arnhem.
* April 16 – WWII:
** The Battle of Berlin begins, opening with the Battle of the Oder–Neisse and the Battle of the Seelow Heights.
** Canadian forces take Harlingen and occupy Leeuwarden and Groningen in the Netherlands.
** is sunk by Soviet submarine ''L-3'' in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German troops and civilians as part of Operation Hannibal; 7,000–8,000 drown.
** Death marches from Flossenbürg concentration camp begin.
* April 17 – WWII:
** Brazilian forces liberate the town of Montese, Italy, from German forces.
** Inundation of the Wieringermeer in the Netherlands by occupying German forces.
* April 18 – American war correspondent Ernie Pyle is killed by Japanese machine gun fire on the island of Ie Shima off Okinawa.
* April 19 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's ''Carousel'', a musical play based on Ferenc Molnár's ''Liliom'', opens on Broadway, and becomes their second long-running stage classic.
* April 20 – WWII: On his 56th birthday, Adolf Hitler leaves his ''Führerbunker'', to decorate a group of Hitler Youth soldiers in Berlin. It will be his last trip to the surface from his underground bunker.
* April 22 – WWII:
** Heinrich Himmler, through Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, puts forth an offer of German surrender to the Western Allies, but not the Soviet Union.
** Adolf Hitler finally concedes defeat in the ''Führerbunker'' after learning that SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner cannot mobilize enough men to launch a counterattack on the Soviet forces which have completely surrounded Berlin.
* April 23 – WWII:
** Hermann Göring sends the Göring Telegram to Hitler, seeking confirmation that he should take over leadership of Germany, in accordance with the decree of June 29, 1941. Hitler regards this as treason.
** The main Flossenbürg concentration camp is liberated by the United States Army.
* April 24 – Retreating German troops destroy all the bridges over the Adige in Verona, including the historic Ponte di Castelvecchio and Ponte Pietra.
* April 25
** Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco.
** WWII – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops link up at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two.
* April 25– 26 – WWII: The last major strategic bombing raid by RAF Bomber Command, the destruction of the oil refinery at Tønsberg in southern Norway, is carried out by 107 Avro Lancasters.
* April 26 – WWII:
** Battle of Bautzen: The last "successful" German panzer-offensive in Bautzen ends with the city recaptured.
** The British 3rd Infantry Division, under General Whistler, captures Bremen.
** Nazi surrenders mean the British and Canadians now control the German border with Switzerland, from Basle to Lake Constance.
* April 27
** The last German formations withdraw from Finland to Norway. The Lapland War and thus, World War II in Finland, comes to an end and the ''Raising the Flag on the Three-Country Cairn'' photograph is taken.
** U.S. Ordnance troops find the coffins of Frederick William I of Prussia, Frederick the Great, Paul von Hindenburg, and his wife, in a salt mine in Germany.
* April 28
** The bodies of Benito Mussolini, his mistress, Clara Petacci, and other followers are hung by their heels at a gas station in the public square of Milan, Piazzale Loreto, following their execution by Italian partisans after an attempt to flee the country.
** The Canadian First Army captures Emden and Wilhelmshaven.
* April 29
** At the royal palace in Caserta, Lieutenant-Colonel Viktor von Schweinitz (representing General Heinrich von Vietinghoff) and SS-''Obersturmbannführer'' Eugen Wenner (representing Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff) sign an unconditional instrument of surrender for all Axis powers forces in Italy, taking effect on May 2. Italian General Rodolfo Graziani orders the '' Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano'' forces under his command to lay down their arms.
** Dachau concentration camp is surrendered to U.S. forces, who kill SS guards at the camp and the nearby hamlet of Webling.
** Brazilian forces liberate the commune of Fornovo di Taro, Italy, from German forces.
** Operation Manna: British Avro Lancaster bombers drop food into the Netherlands to prevent the starvation of the civilian population.
** Soviet soldiers hoist the Red flag over the ''Reich Chancellery'' in Berlin.
** Adolf Hitler marries his longtime mistress Eva Braun, in a closed civil ceremony in the Berlin ''Führerbunker'', and signs his last will and testament.
* April 30 – Death of Adolf Hitler: Adolf Hitler and his wife of one day, Eva Braun, commit suicide as the Red Army approaches the ''Führerbunker'' in Berlin. ''Großadmiral'' Karl Dönitz succeeds Hitler as President of Germany (''Reichspräsident'') and Joseph Goebbels succeeds as Chancellor of Germany (''Reichskanzler''), in accordance with Hitler's political testament of the previous day.

May

* May 1 – WWII:
** Reichssender Hamburg's Flensburg radio station announces that Hitler has died in battle, "fighting up to his last breath against Bolshevism."
** Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda commit suicide, after killing their six children. Karl Dönitz appoints Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk as the new Chancellor of Germany, in the Flensburg Government.
** Troops of the Yugoslav 4th Army, together with the Slovene 9th Corpus NOV, enter Trieste.
** Mass suicide in Demmin: An estimated 700–2,500 suicides take place, after 80% of the town has been destroyed by the Soviets during the past three days.
* May 2 – WWII:
** The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin.
** Lübeck is liberated by the British Army.
** The surrender of Axis troops in Italy comes into effect.
** A Holocaust death march from Dachau to the Austrian border is halted under two kilometers west of Waakirchen by the segregated, all- Nisei 522nd Field Artillery Battalion of the U.S. Army in southern Bavaria, saving several hundred prisoners.
** Troops of the New Zealand Army 2nd Division enter Trieste a day after the Yugoslavs; the German Army in Trieste surrenders to the New Zealand Army.
** Following the death or resignation of the Hitler Cabinet in Germany, the Schwerin von Krosigk cabinet first meets.
** Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg is evacuated at about this date.
** Expatriate American poet Ezra Pound is arrested by the Italian resistance movement but soon released by them as of no interest; on May 5 he turns himself in to the United States Army and is imprisoned as a traitor.
* May 3 – WWII:
** The prison ships ''Cap Arcona'' (5,000 dead), ''Thielbek