April 1945

Sunday 01:

United States troops land on Okinawa in the last campaign of the war.

Wednesday 04:

1945 - World War II: Soviet Army liberates Hungary.

Thursday 05:

Cold War: Yugoslav leader Josip "Tito" Broz signs an agreement with the USSR allowing "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory."

Saturday 07:

Kantaro Suzuki becomes the 42nd Prime Minister of Japan

Sunday 08:

At the POW camp at Flossenbürg, pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged.

Monday 09:

The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer is sunk.

Wednesday 11:

World War II: United States forces liberate Buchenwald concentration camp

Thursday 12:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies and Harry S. Truman is inaugurated as the 33rd President of the United States.

Friday 13:

German troops massacre more than 1000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen Germany. The atrocity is discovered two days later by American forces.

Sunday 15:

The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated.

Monday 16:

The United States Army liberates Nazi Sonderlager (high security) Prisoner of War camp Oflag IVc (Colditz Castle).

Tuesday 17:

In Strassfurt, Germany, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash seizes half a ton of uranium, in an attempt to foil Soviet Union plans to build an atomic bomb.

Wednesday 18:

World War II: Over 1,000 bombers attack the small island of Heligoland, Germany, leaving nothing standing.

Friday 20:

US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.

Saturday 21:

World War II: Soviet Union forces south of Berlin at Zossen attack the German High Command headquarters.

Sunday 22:

World War II: After learning that Soviet forces have taken Eberswalde without a fight, Adolf Hitler admits defeat in his underground bunker and states that suicide is his only recourse.

Wednesday 25:

Fifty nations gather in San Francisco, California to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organizations.

Friday 27:

The Völkischer Beobachter, the newspaper of the Nazi Party, ceases publication.

Saturday 28:

Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are executed by members of the Italian resistance movement.

Sunday 29:

Holocaust: The Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops.

Monday 30:

Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for one day.