World War II ended in 1945, after Germany surrendered in May and Japan capitulated in August, days after powerful new atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two months later, 29 nations ratified a charter to form the United Nations. Writer George Orwell coined the term “cold war,” predicting icy relations between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., while popular songs like “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" and “Sentimental Journey” reflected the stateside mood as some 4 million G.I.s returned home.
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On January 20, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only president to be elected to three terms in office, is inaugurated to his fourth—and final—term.
George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
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On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops enter Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the network of concentration camps—and finally revealing to the world the depth of the horrors perpetrated there.
Soviet Red Army soldiers stand with liberated prisoners of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in this 1945 photo.
Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
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On February 11, 1945, a week of intensive bargaining by the leaders of the three major Allied powers ends in Yalta, a Soviet resort town on the Black Sea. It was the second conference of the “Big Three” Allied leaders—U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin—and the war had progressed mightily since their last meeting, which had taken place in Tehran in late 1943.
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Operation Detachment, the U.S. Marines’ invasion of Iwo Jima, is launched. Iwo Jima was a barren Pacific island guarded by Japanese artillery, but to American military minds, it was prime real estate on which to build airfields to launch bombing raids against Japan, only 660 miles away.
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February 23, 1945: During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi—the island’s highest peak and most strategic position—and raise the U.S. flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery, who was with them, recorded the event. Americans fighting for control of Suribachi’s slopes cheered the raising of the flag.
This Pulitzer Prize winning photo has become synonymous with American victory. Taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, it is one of the most reproduced, and copied, photographs in history.
Joe Rosenthal/AP Photo
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On the night of March 9, 1945, U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of the next 48 hours. Almost 16 square miles in and around the Japanese capital were incinerated, and between 80,000 and 130,000 Japanese civilians were killed in the worst single firestorm in recorded history.
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Representatives from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen meet in Cairo to establish the Arab League, a regional organization of Arab states. Formed to foster economic growth in the region, resolve disputes between its members, and coordinate political aims, members of the Arab League formed a council, with each state receiving one vote. Fifteen more Arab nations eventually joined the organization, which established a common market in 1965.
Saudi Arabian delegates, acting Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Youssek Yassin (center), and El Zerekly (right) sign the League of Arab States charter, in Cairo, Egypt, in 1945. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
Corbis via Getty Images
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Apr
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On April 1, 1945, after suffering the loss of 116 planes and damage to three aircraft carriers, 50,000 U.S. combat troops, under the command of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner Jr., land on the southwest coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa, 350 miles south of Kyushu, the southern main island of Japan. Determined to seize Okinawa as a base of operations for the army ground and air forces for a later assault on mainland Japan, more than 1,300 ships converged on the island, finally putting ashore 50,000 combat troops.
1945: American amphibious tanks and landing craft approach the beach at Aguni Jima, 30 miles west of Okinawa. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Apr
05
On April 5, 1945, in preparation for planned assaults in the Pacific theater of World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur is placed in command of all U.S. ground forces and Adm. Chester Nimitz is placed in command of all U.S. naval forces. This effectively ended the concept of unified commands, in which one man oversaw more than one service from more than one country in a distinct region.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Apr
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On April 9, 1945, Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the American liberation of the POW camp. The last words of the brilliant and courageous 39-year-old opponent of Nazism were “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.”
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On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away partway through his fourth term in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power.
FDR signs the Hatch Act in 1939
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
Apr
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On April 13, 1945, as the Allies cross the Rhine river and push into German territory, a contingent of German soldiers, Hitler Youth and local police transport 4,000 prisoners from the Dora-Mittelblau concentration camp and its satellites to the Gardelegen area. More than 1,000 of these were forced into a large barn, which was set on fire. Their pursuers hoped to conceal the evidence of their monstrous war crimes as the end of the Reich quickly became a reality.
Apr
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On April 16, 1945, Adolf Hitler proclaims from his underground bunker that deliverance was at hand from encroaching Russian troops—and that his beloved capital city of Berlin would remain German. A “mighty artillery is meeting the enemy,” proclaims Der Fuhrer. "This time the Bolsheviks will experience Asia's old fate. That is, he must and will bleed to death in front of the capital of the German Reich."
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Less than two weeks after taking over as president after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman gives a tongue-lashing to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. The incident indicated that Truman was determined to take a “tougher” stance with the Soviets than his predecessor had.
Apr
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On April 25, 1945, President Harry S. Truman learns the full details of the Manhattan Project, in which scientists are attempting to create the first atomic bomb. The information thrust upon Truman a momentous decision: whether or not to use the world’s first weapon of mass destruction.
Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device, conducted by the U.S. Army on July 16, 1945, in the Jornada New Mexico desert. Trinity used an implosion-design plutonium device, informally nicknamed ‘The Gadget.’
Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Apr
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On April 25, 1945, eight Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory.
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On April 28, 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland.
Benito Mussolini dies, World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali dodges the draft, Russian space program launches the first rocket, and the mutiny on the Bounty captained by Captain Bligh occurs in This Day in History video. The date is April 28th. The former Cassius Clay refuses to fight in the Vietnam War.
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During the night of April 28-29, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun marry, only hours before they both died by suicide. Braun met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler’s official photographer. Raised in a middle-class Catholic background, Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler’s political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in.
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On April 30, 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich.
GERMANY - APRIL 30: April 30, 1945. Soviet soldiers showing the gas cans in the ruins of HITLER's bunker which were used to burn the bodies of Adolf HITLER and Eva BRAUN. As Berlin was being invaded by the Russian army, the German chancellor Adolf HITLER and his wife Eva BRAUN committed suicide in their room and then, according to instructions from the Führer, the two bodies were burned. HITLER did not want the Soviets to be able to take his body and exhibit it. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
May
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On May 2, 1945, approximately 1 million German soldiers lay down their arms as the terms of the German unconditional surrender, signed at Caserta on April 29, comes into effect. Early this same day, Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov accepts the surrender of the German capital. The Red Army takes 134,000 German soldiers prisoner.
May
05
In Gearhart Mountain, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out of the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II. The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford and Richard and Ethel Patzke, the five slain children.
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On May 8, 1945, Great Britain, the United States and other Allied countries celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in the U.S., U.K., and Western Europe, along with in the Soviet Union, Canada and Australia put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine during World War II.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
May
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On May 8, 1945, Herman Goering, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia and Hitler’s designated successor is taken prisoner by the U.S. Seventh Army in Bavaria.
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During World War II, the U.S. 10th Army overcomes the last major pockets of Japanese resistance on Okinawa Island, ending one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. The same day, Japanese Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima, the commander of Okinawa’s defense, committed suicide with a number of Japanese officers and troops rather than surrender.
Jun
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In the Herbst Theater auditorium in San Francisco, delegates from 50 nations sign the United Nations Charter, establishing the world body as a means of saving “succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The Charter was ratified on October 24, and the first U.N. General Assembly met in London on January 10, 1946.
Jul
11
Fulfilling agreements reached at various wartime conferences, the Soviet Union promises to hand power over to British and U.S. forces in sectors of Allied-controlled Berlin. Although the division of Berlin (and of Germany as a whole) into zones of occupation was seen as a temporary postwar expedient, the dividing lines quickly became permanent. The divided city of Berlin became a symbol for Cold War tensions.
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The final “Big Three” meeting between the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain takes place towards the end of World War II, to discuss how geopolitics would shake out after the war. The decisions reached at the Potsdam Conference ostensibly settled many of the pressing issues between the three wartime allies, but the meeting was also marked by growing suspicion and tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.
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On July 24, 1945, through an interpreter, President Harry S. Truman hints to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that the United States has successfully developed a new weapon. In his diary, Truman privately referred to the new weapon, the atomic bomb, as the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.
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In the 11th hour of World War II, Winston Churchill is forced to resign as British prime minister following his party’s electoral defeat by the Labour Party. It was the first general election held in Britain in more than a decade. The same day, Clement Attlee, the Labour leader, was sworn in as the new British leader.
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On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sinks within minutes in shark-infested waters. Only 316 of the 1,196 men on board survived. However, the Indianapolis had already completed its major mission: the delivery of key components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped a week later at Hiroshima to Tinian Island in the South Pacific.
Aug
02
The last wartime conference of the “Big Three”—the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain—concludes after two weeks of intense and sometimes acrimonious debate. The conference failed to settle most of the important issues at hand and thus helped set the stage for the Cold War that would begin shortly after World War II came to an end.
Aug
06
On August 6, 1945, the United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
An aerial photograph of Hiroshima, Japan, shortly after the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb was dropped, 1945. (Credit: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)
Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images
Aug
08
President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter, and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization. Although hopes were high at the time that the United Nations would serve as an arbiter of international disputes, the organization also served as the scene for some memorable Cold War clashes.
Aug
08
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declares war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers the following day into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.
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In what later became known as Victory Day, an official announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies is made public to the world on August 14, 1945. (Because of time-zone differences, it was August 15 in Japan.) Japan formally surrendered in writing two weeks later, on September 2, 1945.
Aug
20
On August 20, 1945, 11 days after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, Brooklyn Dodgers utility player Tommy Brown homers to drive in his team's only run in an 11-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. It seems insignificant, aside from the fact that, at 17 years old, Brown remains the youngest player to homer in a Major League Baseball game, a feat unlikely to be duplicated.
Aug
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Though he had landed on the beaches of Normandy and been wounded in battle fighting with the U.S. Army, Staff Sergeant Marcario García was not yet a U.S. citizen when President Harry S. Truman awarded him the Medal of Honor on August 23, 1945. García became the first Mexican national to receive the American military's highest honor.
Bettmann / Getty Images
Aug
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Aug
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On August 25, 1945, John Birch, an American missionary to China before the war and a captain in the Army during the war, is killed by Chinese communists days after the surrender of Japan, for no apparent reason. His death would inspire a small but vocal group of conservative anticommunists.
Sep
02
Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II.
Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Sep
02
Hours after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!” and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square. It would be 30 years, however, before Ho’s dream of a united, communist Vietnam became reality.
Sep
08
U.S. troops land in Korea to begin their postwar occupation of the southern part of that nation, almost exactly one month after Soviet troops had entered northern Korea to begin their own occupation. Although the U.S. and Soviet occupations were supposed to be temporary, the division of Korea quickly became permanent.
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Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, a U.S. Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Vietnam, is shot and killed in Saigon. Dewey was the head of a seven-man team sent to Vietnam to search for missing American pilots and to gather information on the situation in the country after the surrender of the Japanese.
Oct
08
On Oct. 8, 1945, Raytheon Manufacturing Company filed a patent for what's now a staple kitchen appliance in homes around the world: the microwave oven. The appliance, invented by Raytheon employee Percy Spencer, now sits in more than 90 percent of American homes.
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Nov
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The first issue of Ebony magazine—featuring profiles of writer Richard Wright and jazz singer Hazel Scott, and stories about African Americans in publishing, the color line in Brazil and a sale of African art in Philadelphia—is published on November 1, 1945. The monthly magazine chronicles Black life in America, including the fight for civil rights and provides a forum for African Americans to reflect on and celebrate their own communities.
Nov
20
Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis go on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II beginning on November 20, 1945.
The defendants at the Nuremberg Nazi trials. Pictured in the front row are: Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. In the back row are: Karl Doenitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, and Fritz Sauckel.
Bettmann Archive
Dec
01
By the time she appeared as the final guest of Johnny Carson’s 30-year career on The Tonight Show and brought tears to the unflappable host’s eyes with an emotional performance of “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road),” she was an established star of stage and screen—a Tony winner, an Oscar nominee, a Grammy winner and a multimillion-selling recording artist. It would be difficult, however, to imagine a more unorthodox path to mainstream stardom than the one followed by Bette Midler—”The Divine Miss M”—who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 1, 1945.
Dec
05
At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. After having completed their objective, Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for an additional 67 miles, then turn north for 73 miles, and back to the air station after that, totaling a distance of 120 miles. They never returned.
(Original Caption) Map of the Atlantic Ocean, showing the southeast United States, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, with the Bermuda Triangle highlighted.
Bettmann Archive
Dec
15
General Douglas MacArthur, in his capacity as Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in the Pacific, brings an end to Shintoism as Japan’s established religion. The Shinto system included the belief that the emperor, in this case Hirohito, was divine.
Dec
21
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