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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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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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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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
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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
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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
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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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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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