Nazi slave-labor camp, Ohrdruf Nord, near Gotha, in east central Germany. Appalled by what he sees, General Dwight Eisenhower sends communications to Washington and London strongly urging that reporters, photographers and government members be sent to visit the camps and make a record “in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.” Click on photo to enlarge. Wikimedia Commons
By Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
The Red Army’s “Vienna Offensive” ends in a Soviet victory on April 13; Vienna is taken by Soviet and Bulgarian troops. U.S. Marines occupy the island of Minna Shima (Minnajima) off Okinawa. Gen. Eisenhower makes his first visit to a liberated Nazi slave-labor camp, Ohrdruf Nord, near Gotha, in east central Germany. Appalled by what he sees, he sends communications to Washington and London strongly urging that reporters, photographers and government members be sent to visit the camps and make a record “in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.” In Washington, D.C., President Truman learns of the Manhattan Project from Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who tells him only that the Allies have a new, highly destructive weapon.
U.S. bombers conduct a large-scale fire-bombing of Tokyo on April 14, in which the Imperial Palace sustains significant damage. In Europe, the Canadian First Army assumes military control of the Netherlands, where German forces are now trapped in the Atlantic Wall fortifications along the coastline. In Germany, the U.S. Seventh Army captures Nuremberg and Stuttgart. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler orders that no prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp — about 10 miles northwest of Munich — “shall be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy alive.”
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Bergen, in northern Germany, is liberated by British troops on April 15. They find 60,000 sick and emaciated prisoners in the camp, and 13,000 corpses scattered about the grounds. The body of Franklin D. Roosevelt is interred in the rose garden of his estate, Springwood, in Hyde Park, New York.
On April 16, Hitler issues his Order of the Day to German troops on the Eastern Front: “He who gives orders to retreat . . . is to be shot on the spot.” The Red Army starts its final offensive against Berlin from a line along the Oder and Neisse Rivers. Attacking: over 2,000,000 Soviets with 6,000 tanks and self-propelled guns, some 6,000 aircraft and around 64,000 artillery pieces. Defending: 1,000,000 Germans in strong, well-prepared positions, but lacking in armor, aircraft and artillery. Off Poland’s Hel Peninsula in the Baltic, the German freighter-turned-troopship MV GOYA is torpedoed by Soviet submarine L-3; only 183 survive of the between 6,500 and 7,000 civilian refugees and wounded soldiers aboard. (Exact numbers are unknown because of the chaotic boarding conditions when the ship was taking on passengers.)
The British on April 17 take Taungup, in southwest Burma, depriving the Japanese of their last coastal supply base. In Italy, Brazilian troops liberate the town of Montese, near Bologna, after three days of fighting. In Germany, Wehrmacht units in the Ruhr are surrendering in large numbers. In the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, Winston Churchill pays tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt: “ . . . the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.”
Ernie Pyle, beloved American war correspondent, is killed by machine-gun fire from a Japanese sniper on the island of Ie Shima, near Okinawa, on April 18. Pyle had covered the war in North Africa, Europe and the Pacific for the Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate. Says President Truman: “No man in this war has so well told the story of the American fighting man as American fighting men wanted it told.” In Germany, Allied troops take the cities of Magdeburg and Leipzig. The last German forces in the Ruhr surrender, with 325,000 German Army Group B prisoners taken.
The Red Army reaches the suburbs of Berlin on April 19. Nazi Reich Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels takes to the radio and exhorts the nation and predicts that, in spite of all misfortunes, Germany will yet prevail, that the “perverse coalition between Bolshevism and Plutocracy” is about to break up, and that it is Adolf Hitler (“our Hitler!”) who will “still turn back the tide and save Europe, as he has thus far, from falling into the clutches of the Kremlin.”
Red Army artillery shells begin to fall in Berlin at 11 a.m. on April 20, 1945. Adolf Hitler celebrates his 56th birthday in his Führerbunker in Berlin. Reports say he is in an unhealthy state, nervous and depressed. The U.S. Seventh Army captures Nuremberg, once the locale of Hitler’s massive pre-war Nazi rallies. The British Home Secretary says that 60,585 British civilians have died and 86,175 have been seriously injured in air attacks during the war.
The Battle of Berlin opens on April 21 as Soviet forces launch offensives in and around the city. The Red Army overruns the headquarters of the German High Command, at Zossen, about 22 miles south of Berlin. Hitler orders an all-out counterattack by German troops in Berlin, to be led by Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner, a commander in the Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the SS. Der Führer expects every remaining soldier, tank and aircraft to be used in this action. In the Ruhr, German Field Marshal Walter Model, commanding Army Group B and generally acknowledged as one of the Werhmacht’s best defensive tacticians, commits suicide after surrendering his troops to the Allies.
The Polish II Corps takes Bologna, Italy, on April 22. French troops capture Stuttgart and drive to the Swiss border. In the Führerbunker in Berlin, when Hitler finds out that Steiner of the Waffen-SS did not initiate the counter-attack he had ordered the previous day, der Führer launches into a bitter tirade against the treachery and incompetence of his military commanders in front of several high-ranking members of the German High Command. (Steiner had reported to his superiors that the order could not be obeyed because of a lack of resources and personnel.) Despite the pleas of his entourage for Hitler to head for the safety of the Bavarian mountains, der Führer vows to remain in Berlin to the end and to himself head up the defense of the city. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler leave the Führerbunker for the last time.
Dessau, in northeastern Germany, is reported to be cleared of German troops on April 23. The British Second Army reaches Harburg, Germany, across the River Elbe from Hamburg. German radio reports that Hitler is in the “main fighting line” in Berlin, and “will remain there despite all rumors.” Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe — now in Berchtesgaden, Germany, escorting Nazi treasures being removed from Berlin — sends a telegram to Hitler. In it, Göring says that if he does not hear back by 10 p.m., he will take command of the Third Reich as Hitler’s Deputy, on the assumption that Hitler has been incapacitated. Irate at Göring’s audacity and interpreting it as treason, der Führer responds that, in return for his life, Göring must immediately resign all his posts. Later that day, Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary and Nazi Party Chancellery Head, orders Göring’s arrest. In the meantime, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler — without authorization — approaches Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, and asks him to transmit an offer to begin negotiations for a separate peace with the Western Allies. Himmler stipulates that the neither the Red Army nor the Soviet Union is to be involved.
In San Francisco, California, delegates from 50 countries meet on April 24 to discuss formation of an international organization to be called the United Nations.
April 25 is Elbe Day: The first contact between American troops (First Army’s 69th Infantry Division) coming from the west and Soviet troops (58th Guards Rifle Division of the 5th Guards Army) coming from the east occurs at about 4 p.m. at the Elbe River, near Torgau, Germany, about 81 miles southwest of Berlin. The RAF attacks “The Eagle’s Nest,” Hitler’s chalet, and the SS barracks in Berchtesgaden, Germany, in the Bavarian Alps. The last German troops withdraw from Finland into Norway. Berlin is surrounded by eight Soviet armies. In the southwest Pacific, the Allies conduct an air raid on Surabaya, Java. The New Zealand 2nd Infantry Division crosses the Po River during the Allies’ “Operation Grapeshot,” an offensive into the Lombardy Plain in northeastern Italy. In Washington, D.C., President Truman is brought up to date on the full details of the Manhattan Project.
German troops at Bremen, Germany, surrender to British and Canadian forces on April 26. Allied troops now line the Swiss border from Basle to Lake Constance. The U.S. Third Army takes Regensburg on the Danube. Hermann Göring’s fall from grace is announced publicly in Germany; Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim replaces Göring as commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe. The Battle of Bautzen, East Saxony, in far eastern Germany, concludes, with remnants of the German 4th Panzer and 17th Armies retaking the city from the 2nd Polish and Soviet 52nd Armies after days of pitched street fighting. The Germans’ attack is their last successful one of the war. Italian partisans take Genoa and stage a revolt in Milan.
The Red Army completes its encirclement of German troops in Berlin on April 27. Soviet troops reach the Alexanderplatz, a large square and transportation hub in the center of the city; Spandau, the westernmost of Berlin’s 12 boroughs, is also taken. Tempelhof Airport, in the south-central portion of the German capital, is under Red Army control. German Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s offer of surrender to the Western Allies is rejected as an attempt to split their alliance with the Soviet Union. (The Allies had early on agreed on no individual peace negotiations.) When Hitler gets word of what Himmler has attempted, he strips Himmler of all offices and authority, expels him from the Nazi Party and orders his arrest. In France, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, leader of the collaborationist Vichy government, is arrested when he crosses into France from Switzerland. The government announces that total casualties in Britain from German V-2 missile attacks are 2,754 killed and 6,523 seriously injured.
On April 28, Soviet troops in Berlin are fighting in the Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin’s government center, and reach the Anhalter Bahnhof, one of Berlin’s most important train stations, just a half mile from the Führerbunker. The U.S. Fifth Army takes Brescia, Italy, 30 miles east of Milan. The British Eighth Army reaches Venice. New Zealand troops capture Padua. Italian partisans capture Italian Social Republic Head of State Benito Mussolini (heavily disguised as an Italian soldier), his mistress Clara Petacci, and 12 of his cabinet members in a German convoy trying to reach Switzerland. All are shot dead in a nearby village.
The bodies of Benito Mussolini, Clara Petacci and the other fascists executed the previous day are brought to Milan on April 29 and hung upside down from lampposts in the square where 15 partisans had been executed a year earlier. The bodies are shot at and spat upon. Dachau concentration camp is liberated by troops of the U.S. Seventh Army, freeing 31,600 inmates. Some soldiers and inmates summarily kill between 30 and 50 German POWs in what becomes known as the “Dachau liberation reprisals.” No soldiers ever face charges. In Berlin, Adolf Hitler marries his longtime mistress, Eva Braun, in the Führerbunker. Hitler also dictates his “Political Testament,” in which he justifies the political and military actions of his 12-year-rule, blaming the war on international Jewry and exhorting the German people even after defeat to adhere to the principles of National Socialism, especially its racial laws. Allied Convoy RA-66 sailing from the Kola Peninsula of northern Russia to Loch Ewe in Scotland is attacked by at least two U-boats north of Kola. The British frigate HMS GOODALL, escorting the convoy, is torpedoed and sunk, killing 95 of her complement of 156. This is the last Allied convoy to come under attack in the war. At Caserta, Italy, SS Lt.-Gen. Karl Wolff, representing Col.-Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff, supreme commander of German forces in Italy, signs an agreement ending the fighting in Italy. Hostilities will cease at noon on May 2.
With the Red Army only a few hundred yards away, Adolf Hitler and his wife of one day commit suicide in the Führerbunker at 3:30 p.m. on April 30. Their bodies are immediately taken outside and incinerated with gasoline by their SS bodyguards. In his political testament dictated the previous day, Hitler has appointed Joseph Goebbels as Reich Chancellor and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz (in Flensburg, Germany, near the Danish border) as Reich President. Dönitz accepts the office, but Goebbels declines. The Red Army continues its advance into the German capital. Fires burn, buildings are shattered by bombs and artillery, and the city is largely in ruins. The “thousand-year Reich” that Hitler proclaimed a dozen years earlier is at an end, and the promise that Hitler made in 1933 — “Give me ten years’ time and you will not recognize Germany anymore” — has come true with a bitter and ironic twist. The U.S. Fifth Army, in northwest Italy, links up with French troops on the French-Italian border.
Radio Hamburg on May 1, 1945, announces that Adolf Hitler has died in battle, “fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism.” Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, now Reich President, orders the utmost German resistance in the east, where tens of thousands of German civilians are still trying to escape from the Red Army. In Berlin, Joseph Goebbels performs his only act as Reich Chancellor (a position he has refused to accept): He sends a letter under a flag of truce to the commander of Soviet forces in central Berlin, informing him of Hitler’s death and requesting a cease fire. The request is rejected. Later that evening, Goebbels and his wife murder their six children, aged 4 through 12, then commit suicide. Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito and his forces capture Trieste, in northeastern Italy, assisted by New Zealand troops. The Allies announce the cessation of hostilities and the surrender of all German forces in Italy. This is as a result of unauthorized and secret negotiations with the Allies by the German commander-in-chief in Italy, Col.-Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff, and SS-Lt.-Gen. Karl Wolff. In Burma, Indian paratroopers land to the south of Rangoon. The Australian I Corps, led by Lt. Gen. Leslie Morshead, begins a series of amphibious landings on Borneo, in the East Indies, in order to liberate and secure British Borneo and Dutch Borneo for their critical natural resources: crude oil and rubber.
The Battle of Berlin ends on May 2 when General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling, district commandant for the defense of Berlin, unconditionally surrenders the city to the Red Army. Soviet soldiers hoist the Red flag over the Reich Chancellery. During the two-week battle for the German capital, the Soviets suffer more than 360,000 casualties. It is estimated that German casualties number over 340,000, with 480,000 German prisoners taken. The New Zealand 2nd Infantry Division enters the seaport of Trieste, in northeastern Italy, as the German Army in Italy surrenders to the Allies, with hostilities ceasing at 12 noon GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). RAF Bomber Command launches a major sortie against Kiel, Germany.
Rangoon, Burma, is liberated on May 3. In Europe, German envoys sent by Reich President Dönitz meet with British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at his headquarters on Lüneburg Heath, south of Hamburg, to discuss peace. The envoys return to Dönitz and recommend the unconditional surrender of all forces facing the Allied 21st Army Group, commanded by Montgomery. The German defenses in northeastern Germany are now in chaos as troops and civilian refugees pour westward to escape the Red Army’s advance. Luftwaffe Maj. Gen. Alwin Wolz declares Hamburg an open city and surrenders it to the British Second Army. The U.S. Ninth Army makes contact with Soviet troops in the Wismar area on the Baltic coast in northern Germany. The U.S. Third Army crosses the River Inn, while the U.S. Seventh Army captures Innsbruck, Austria, and reaches the Brenner Pass, which connects Austria with Italy. German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and 120 of his team surrender to U.S. forces.
