Timeline April 1945

Events in April 1945 23

• 1874 – 1945 Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) Died 13 April 1945, aged 70 Cassirer was a German-Jewish philosopher known for his work on symbolic forms, epistemology, and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. He fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and taught in exile in Britain, Sweden, and the United States. He died of a heart attack in New York shortly before the war's end.
• 1882 – 1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd President — New Deal, WWII, four terms Franklin D. Roosevelt (Jan 30, 1882 – Apr 12, 1945) was the 32nd President 1933-1945, the only president elected four times. He led the US through the Great Depression (New Deal) and World War II, dying in office months before VE Day.
• 1883 – 1945 Benito Mussolini Il Duce The dictator who led Italy into WWII alongside Nazi Germany; he was executed by Italian partisans in 1945.
• 1887 – 1945 Wilhelm Canaris (1887-1945) Died 9 April 1945, aged 57 Canaris headed the Abwehr, Nazi Germany's military intelligence service, while secretly aiding resistance efforts against Hitler. He was implicated in the July 1944 assassination plot and executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp. His double role remains a subject of historical debate.
• 1889 – 1945 Adolf Hitler The Führer Leader of the Nazi Party who became dictator of Germany and initiated World War II and the Holocaust.
• 1889 – 1945 Hitler Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler led Nazi Germany, instigating World War II and the Holocaust, resulting in the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others.
• 1900 – 1945 Ernie Pyle (1900-1945) Died 18 April 1945, aged 44 Pyle was an American journalist whose columns brought the day-to-day experience of ordinary soldiers to millions of newspaper readers during World War II. He was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of Ie Shima during the Okinawa campaign. He had won the Pulitzer Prize for his wartime reporting in 1944.
• 1906 – 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) Died 9 April 1945, aged 38 Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran theologian and vocal opponent of Nazism who was implicated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was executed by hanging at Flossenbürg concentration camp weeks before the camp was liberated. His theological writings on faith and resistance remain widely influential.
• 1912 – 1945 Eva Braun (1912-1945) Died 30 April 1945, aged 32 Eva Braun was Adolf Hitler's longtime companion and, for less than 40 hours, his wife. She died alongside him by suicide in the Führerbunker as Soviet forces closed in on Berlin. Her relationship with Hitler was kept largely secret from the German public during the war.
• 1933 – 1945 Adolf Hitler Dictator of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler established a totalitarian dictatorship, initiated World War II, and orchestrated the Holocaust.
• 1933 – 1945 F.D. Roosevelt presidency 32nd President — 1933 to 1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt served as the 32nd President from March 4, 1933 until his death on April 12, 1945. He implemented the New Deal to combat the Great Depression and led the Allied powers through most of World War II.
• 1945 Wounded in battle; taken prisoner by American forces Grass is wounded in combat near the end of the war and is captured by American forces. He is held as a prisoner of war until 1946, spending his captivity in camps in Bavaria, where the scale of Nazi atrocities gradually becomes clear.
• 1945 Battle of Okinawa Bloodiest battle of the Pacific War The Battle of Okinawa, April 1 to June 22, 1945, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific. Over 12,000 Americans and 110,000 Japanese soldiers died, along with up to 150,000 Okinawan civilians.
• 1945 Battle of Okinawa The largest amphibious assault of the Pacific War American forces invaded Okinawa in a brutal campaign marked by heavy kamikaze attacks and high civilian casualties, with over 100,000 Japanese and Okinawan civilian deaths. It became a key argument for anticipating catastrophic losses in any invasion of the Japanese home islands. Allied casualties exceeded 65,000.
• 1945 Dwight D. Eisenhower visits Ohrdruf Seeing the first liberated camp, he orders journalists and politicians to witness and document the Nazi crimes.
• 1945 Roosevelt dies US President dies with victory in sight President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral haemorrhage on April 12, 1945, at Warm Springs, Georgia, just weeks before Germany's surrender. Harry Truman was sworn in as the 33rd President.
• 1945 – 1953 Truman presidency 33rd President — 1945 to 1953 Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency on April 12, 1945 after FDR's death. He authorised the atomic bombs on Japan, launched the Marshall Plan, established NATO, and recognised Israel in 1948.
• 1945 Liberation of Bergen-Belsen British troops uncover mass death at a Nazi camp British forces entering Bergen-Belsen found thousands of unburied corpses and tens of thousands of starving, typhus-stricken prisoners. Footage and photographs from the liberation became some of the first widely seen evidence of Nazi atrocities. Thousands more prisoners died even after liberation despite relief efforts.
• 1945 Battle of Berlin Soviet forces storm the German capital Soviet forces launched the final assault on Berlin on April 16, 1945. Over 1.5 million Soviet troops fought through the city in brutal street-by-street combat until Germany's surrender on May 2.
• 1945 Battle of Berlin Soviet forces capture the German capital The Red Army encircled and stormed Berlin in the final major battle of the European war, fighting street by street against remaining German defenders. The battle ended with Germany's unconditional surrender days later. Soviet, German, and civilian casualties numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
• 1945 – 2005 August Wilson (1945-2005) Died 2 October 2005, aged 60 August Wilson, the American playwright behind the ten-play "Pittsburgh Cycle" chronicling Black life in the 20th century, died on 2 October 2005. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, for "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson". Wilson's plays are among the most performed works in American theatre.
• 1945 Mussolini executed Italian dictator killed by partisans Benito Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian partisans on April 28, 1945, while attempting to flee to Switzerland. His body was displayed publicly in Milan.
• 1945 Hitler commits suicide In his Berlin bunker as Soviets close in Adolf Hitler shot himself in his Führerbunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945, as Soviet forces fought less than 500 metres away. Eva Braun, whom he had married the previous day, took cyanide simultaneously.