Count to 10000

[[RUS] Vlad01]

1934
poles still doesnt know that they going to be raped by germans in 1939

[Kuma]

1935

[bloodfox]

1936 why do I even bother going on here?!

[Atreyu]

1937 #worldwarII

[Kuma]

1938

[SovietMarmalade]

1939

[[RUS] Vlad01]

wait a second
it's actually
1938

[VladVP]

1940
January
January 4 – WWII: Axis powers: Luftwaffe General Hermann Göring assumes control of most war industries in Germany.
January 6 – WWII: Winter War: General Semyon Timoshenko takes command of all Russian forces.
January 8
WWII: Winter War – Battle of Suomussalmi: The Russian 44th Assault Division is destroyed by Finnish forces.
WWII: Food rationing begins in Great Britain.
January 9 – WWII; British submarine HMS Starfish (19S) is sunk.
January 10 – WWII: Mechelen Incident: A German plane carrying secret plans for the invasion of western Europe makes a forced landing in Belgium, leading to mobilization of defense forces in the Low Countries.
January 26 – Brisbane, Australia swelters through its hottest day ever, 43.2 degrees Celsius (109.76 Fahrenheit).
January 27 – WWII: A peace resolution introduced in the Parliament of South Africa is defeated 81–59.
January 29 – Three gasoline-powered trains carrying factory workers crash and explode while approaching Ajikawaguchi Station, Yumesaki Line (Nishinari Line), Osaka, Japan, killing at least 181 people and injuring at least 92.
February
February 1 – WWII: Winter War – Russian forces launch a major assault on Finnish troops occupying the Karelian Isthmus.
February 2 – Vsevolod Meyerhold is executed in the Soviet Union on charges of treason and espionage. He is cleared of all charges 15 years later in the first waves of de-Stalinization
February 7 – RKO release Walt Disney's second full-length animated film, Pinocchio.
February 10 – Tom and Jerry make their debut in Puss Gets the Boot. However it is not until 1941 that their current names are adopted.
February 16 – WWII: Altmark Incident: The British destroyer HMS Cossack (F03) pursues the German tanker Altmark into the neutral waters of Jøssingfjord in southwestern Norway and frees the 290 British seamen held aboard.
February 22 – In Tibet, province of Ando, 4-year-old Tenzin Gyatso is proclaimed the tulku (rebirth) of the fourteenth Dalai Lama.
February 27 – Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben discover carbon-14.
February 29 – Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award.
March
March – Truth or Consequences debuts on NBC Radio.
March 2 – Cartoon character Elmer Fudd makes his debut in the animated short Elmer's Candid Camera.
March 3 – In Sweden, a time bomb destroys the office of Norrskenflamman (a Swedish communist newspaper), killing 5.
March 5 – Katyn massacre: Members of the Soviet Politburo (Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Voroshilov and Lavrenty Beria) sign an order, prepared by Beria, for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs.
March 11 – Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck and six others leave Monterey, California for The Sea of Cortez on a collecting expedition.
March 12 – The Soviet Union and Finland sign a peace treaty in Moscow ending the Winter War; Finns, along with the world at large, are shocked by the harsh terms.
March 18 – WWII: Axis powers: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.
March 21 – Édouard Daladier resigns as prime minister of France; Paul Reynaud succeeds him.
March 23 – Pakistan Movement: The Lahore Resolution, calling for greater autonomy for what will become Pakistan in British India, is drawn up by the All-India Muslim League during a three-day general session at Iqbal Park, Lahore.
March 31 – WWII: Commerce raiding German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis, leaves the Wadden Sea for what will become the longest warship cruise of the war. (622 days without in-port replenishment or repair)
April
April 3 – WWII: Operation Weserübung: German ships set out for the invasion of Norway.
April 5 – Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in what proves to be a tragic misjudgment, declares in a major public speech that Hitler has "missed the bus".
April 7 – Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.
April 8 – WWII: Operation Wilfred: The British fleet lays naval mines off the coast of neutral Norway.
April 9 – WWII: Germany invades the neutral countries of Denmark and Norway in Operation Weserübung, opening the Norwegian Campaign. The British Royal Navy attempts to attack elements of the German fleet off Norway. Vidkun Quisling proclaims a new collaborationist regime in Norway. The German invasion of Denmark lasts for about six hours before that country capitulates.
April 10 – WWII: First Naval Battle of Narvik: The British Royal Navy attacks the German fleet in the Ofotfjord.
April 12
The Faroe Islands are occupied by British troops, following the German invasion of Denmark. This action is taken to avert a possible German occupation of the islands with serious consequences for the course of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Opening day at Jamaica Race Course features the use of parimutuel betting equipment, a departure from bookmaking heretofore used exclusively throughout New York. Other tracks in the state follow suit later in 1940.
April 13
WWII: Second Naval Battle of Narvik: The British Royal Navy causes all eight defending German destroyers in the Ofotfjord to be sunk.
The New York Rangers win the 1940 Stanley Cup Finals in ice hockey. It will be another 54 years before their next win in 1994.
April 14 – Norwegian Campaign: First British ground forces land in Norway at Namsos and Harstad.
April 16 – The Cleveland Indians, behind Bob Feller's Opening Day no-hitter, defeat the Chicago White Sox, 1-0.
April 21 – Take It or Leave It makes its debut on CBS Radio, with Bob Hawk as host.
April 23 – The Rhythm Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198.
May
May 10 – WWII:
Battle of France begins
German forces invade Low Countries
Battle of the Netherlands begins
Battle of Belgium begins
Invasion of Luxembourg begins
British Invasion of Iceland.
With the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
May 13 – WWII:
Winston Churchill, in his first address as Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
German armies open a 60-mile (97 km) wide breach in the Maginot Line at Sedan, France.
May 13–May 14 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her government are evacuated to London using the British destroyer HMS Hereward.
May 14 – WWII:
Rotterdam is subjected to savage terror bombing by the Luftwaffe; 980 are killed, and 20,000 buildings destroyed. General Henri Winkelman announces surrender of the Dutch army (outside Zeeland) to German forces
Recruitment begins in Britain for a home defence force: the Local Defence Volunteers, later known as the Home Guard.
May 15
WWII: The Dutch army formally signs a surrender document.
The very first McDonald's restaurant opens in San Bernardino, California.
Women's stockings made of nylon are first placed on sale across the United States. Almost five million pairs are bought on this day.
May 16 – President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress, asks for an extraordinary credit of approximately $900 million to finance construction of at least 50,000 airplanes per year.
May 17 – WWII:
Brussels falls to German forces; the Belgian government flees to Ostend.
Zeeland is overrun by German forces, ending the Battle of the Netherlands and beginning full German occupation of the Netherlands (Noord-Beveland surrenders on May 18 and remaining Dutch troops are withdrawn from Zeelandic Flanders on May 19).
May 18 – Marshal Philippe Pétain is named vice-premier of France.
May 19 – General Maxime Weygand replaces Maurice Gamelin as commander-in-chief of all French forces.
May 20
WWII: German forces (2nd Panzer division), under General Rudolf Veiel, reach Noyelles on the English Channel.
Holocaust: The Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the German concentration camps, opens in occupied Poland near the town of Oświęcim. From now until January 1945, around 1.1 million people will be killed here.
May 22 – WWII: The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1940, giving the government full control over all persons and property.
May 24 – WWII: The Anglo-French Supreme War Council decides to withdraw all forces under its control from Norway.
May 26
WWII: The Dunkirk evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force starts.
First free flight of Igor Sikorsky's Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 helicopter.
May 28 WWII:
King Leopold III of Belgium orders the Belgian forces to cease fighting, ending the 18-day Battle of Belgium. Leaders of the Belgian government on French territory declare Leopold deposed.
In the land battle of Narvik, German forces retire giving the Allies their first victory on land in the war; however, the British have already decided to evacuate Narvik.
Winston Churchill warns the House of Commons of the United Kingdom to "prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings."
May 29 – The Vought XF4U-1, prototype of the F4U Corsair U.S. fighter later used in WWII, makes its first flight.
June
June 3
WWII: Paris is bombed by the Luftwaffe for the first time.
The Holocaust: Franz Rademacher proposes the Madagascar Plan.
Weather Bureau transferred to the United States Department of Commerce.
June 4 – WWII:
The Dunkirk evacuation ends – the British and French navies together with large numbers of civilian vessels from various nations complete evacuating 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France to England.
Winston Churchill tells the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, "We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight on the beaches... on the landing grounds... in the fields and the streets.... We shall never surrender."
June 7 – King Haakon VII of Norway and his government are evacuated from Tromsø to London on HMS Devonshire.
June 9 – WWII: The British Commandos are created.
June 10
WWII: Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
WWII: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions with his "Stab in the Back" speech during the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.
WWII: Canada declares war on Italy.
WWII: The Norwegian Army surrenders to German forces.
WWII: The French government flees to Tours.
Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey dies of a stroke in London.
June 12 – WWII: 13,000 British and French troops surrender to the then Major-General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division at Saint-Valery-en-Caux.
June 13 – WWII: Paris is declared an open city.
June 14
WWII: The Soviet Union annexes the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in what becomes regarded as an early example of Soviet imperialism.
WWII: The French government flees to Bordeaux and Paris falls under German occupation.
WWII: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Naval Expansion Act into law, which aims to increase the United States Navy's tonnage by 11%.
WWII: A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
June 15 – WWII: Verdun falls to German forces.
June 16
The Churchill war ministry in the United Kingdom offers a Franco-British Union to Paul Reynaud, Prime Minister of France, in the hope of preventing France from agreeing to an armistice with Germany, but Reynaud resigns when his own cabinet refuses to accept it.
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is held for the first time in Sturgis, South Dakota.
June 17
Philippe Pétain becomes Prime Minister of France and immediately asks Germany for peace terms.
The Soviet Army enters the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
WWII: Operation Ariel begins: Allied troops start to evacuate France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation.
WWII: RMS Lancastria, serving as a troopship, is bombed and sunk by Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 aircraft while evacuating British troops and nationals from Saint-Nazaire in France with the loss of at least 4,000 lives, the largest single UK loss in any World War II event, immediate news of which is suppressed in the British press. Destroyer HMS Beagle (H30) rescues around 600.
June 18
WWII: Winston Churchill tells the House of Commons of the United Kingdom: "The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin."
WWII: Appeal of 18 June: General Charles de Gaulle, de facto leader of the Free French Forces, makes his first broadcast appeal over Radio Londres from London rallying French Resistance, calling on all French people to continue the fight against Nazi Germany: "France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war".
June 22 – WWII: Second Armistice at Compiègne: The French Third Republic and Nazi Germany sign an armistice ending the Battle of France in the Forest of Compiègne, in the same Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits railroad car used by Marshal Ferdinand Foch to agree the Armistice with Germany in 1918. This divides France into a Zone occupée in the north and west under the Military Administration in France (Nazi Germany) and a southern Zone libre, Vichy France.
June 23 – WWII: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France.
June 24
United States politics: The Republican Party begins its national convention in Philadelphia and nominates Wendell Willkie as its candidate for president.
WWII: Vichy France signs armistice terms with Italy.
June 25 – WWII: After the defeat of France, Hitler plans for an invasion of Switzerland, known as Operation Tannenbaum
June 28 – General Charles de Gaulle is officially recognized by Britain as the "Leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be."
June 30
WWII: German forces land in Guernsey, marking the start of the 5-year Occupation of the Channel Islands.
Federal government of the United States reorganisation:
The Civil Aeronautics Administration is placed under the Department of Commerce.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is placed under the Federal Security Agency.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is placed under the Department of the Interior.
July
July 1 – The first Tacoma Narrows Bridge opens for business, built with an 8-foot (2.4 m) girder and 190 feet (58 m) above the water, as the third longest suspension bridge in the world.
July 2 – WWII: British-owned SS Arandora Star, carrying civilian internees and POWs of Italian and German origin from Liverpool to Canada, is torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-47 off northwest Ireland with the loss of around 865 lives.
July 3 – WWII: British naval units sink or seize ships of the French fleet anchored in the Algerian ports of Oran and Mers-el-Kebir. The following day, Vichy France breaks off diplomatic relations with Britain
July 6 – Opening of Story Bridge
July 6 – British submarine HMS Shark (54S) is sunk.
July 10 – WWII: The Battle of Britain begins
July 11
WWII: British destroyer HMS Escort (H66) is torpedoed and sunk by an Italian submarine.
WWII: Vichy France begins with a constitutional law which only 80 members of the parliament vote against. Philippe Pétain becomes Prime Minister of France.
July 14 – WWII: Winston Churchill, in a worldwide broadcast, proclaims the intention of Great Britain to fight alone against Germany whatever the outcome: "We shall seek no terms. We shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy. We shall ask none."
July 15 – U.S. politics: The Democratic Party begins its national convention in Chicago, and nominates Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term as president.
July 19
WWII: Allied victory at the Battle of Cape Spada HMAS Sydney (D48) and five destroyers sink the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni.
WWII: Adolf Hitler makes a peace appeal to Britain in an address to the Reichstag. Lord Halifax, the British foreign minister, flatly rejects peace terms in a broadcast reply on July 22.
July 21 – The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republics are proclaimed in Moscow.
July 23 – Welles Declaration: United States Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles announces that the U.S. will not accord diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union's occupation of the Baltic states.
July 25 – General Henri Guisan addresses the officer corps of the Swiss army at Rütli resolving to resist any invasion of the country.
July 27 – Bugs Bunny makes his debut in the Oscar-nominated cartoon short, A Wild Hare. However, it is not until 1941 that his name is adopted.
August
August 1 – WWII: British submarine HMS Spearfish (69S) is sunk.
August 3 – The Lithuanian SSR, Latvian SSR (August 5) and Estonian SSR (August 6) are incorporated into the Soviet Union six weeks after their annexation.
August 4 – Gen. John J. Pershing, in a nationwide radio broadcast, urges all-out aid to Britain in order to defend the Americas, while Charles Lindbergh speaks to an isolationist rally at Soldier Field in Chicago.
August 8 – WWII: Wilhelm Keitel signs the "Aufbau Ost" directive, which eventually leads to the invasion of the Soviet Union.
August 10 – WWII: British armed merchant cruiser HMS Transylvania (F56) is torpedoed off Malin Head, Ireland, by German submarine U-56.
August 13 – WW II: The "Eagle Day" strike on southern Great Britain occurs, starting the rapid escalation of the Battle of Britain air offensive of the Luftwaffe against RAF Fighter Command.
August 15 Italy,without having declared war on Greece,sinks the Greek boat Elli (Έλλη).
August 18 – HRH The Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, is installed as Governor of the Bahamas.
August 20
WWII: Winston Churchill pays tribute in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom to the Royal Air Force: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
Leon Trotsky is attacked with an ice axe in his Mexico home by NKVD agent Ramón Mercader.
August 21 – Leon Trotsky dies of injuries sustained.
August 24 – Howard Florey and a team including Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, publish their laboratory results showing the in vivo bactericidal action of penicillin. They have also purified the drug.
August 25 – WWII: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia incorporated into Soviet Union.
August 26 – WWII: Chad is the first French colony to proclaim its support for the Allies.
August 30 – Second Vienna Award: Germany and Italy compel Romania to cede half of Transylvania to Hungary.
September
September – The U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division (previously a National Guard Division in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma), is activated and ordered into federal service for 1 year, to engage in a training program in Ft. Sill and Louisiana, prior to serving in WWII.
September 2 – WWII: An agreement between America and Great Britain is announced to the effect that 50 U.S. destroyers needed for escort work will be transferred to Great Britain. In return, America gains 99-year leases on British bases in the North Atlantic, West Indies and Bermuda.
September 4 – WWII: In Berlin Adolf Hitler declares in a speech that Nazi Germany will avenge all night air raids carried out by England.
September 5 – WWII: Commerce raiding German auxiliary cruiser Komet enters the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait after crossing the Arctic Ocean from the North Sea with the help of Soviet icebreakers Lenin, Stalin, and Kaganovich.
September 7
Treaty of Craiova: Romania loses Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria.
WWII: The Blitz – Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London (the first of 57 consecutive nights of strategic bombing).
September 9 – Treznea Massacre: The Hungarian Army, supported by local Hungarians kill 93 Romanian civilians in Treznea, Sălaj, a village in Northern Transylvania, as part of attempts to ethnic cleansing.
September 12
In Lascaux, France, 17,000-year-old cave paintings are discovered by a group of young Frenchmen hiking through Southern France. The paintings depict animals and date to the Stone Age.
The Hercules Munitions Plant in Succasunna-Kenvil, New Jersey explodes, killing 55 people.
September 14 – Ip Massacre: The Hungarian Army, supported by local Hungarians, kill 158 Romanian civilians in Ip, Sălaj, a village in Northern Transylvania, as part of attempts to ethnic cleansing.
September 16 – WWII: The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 is signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt, creating the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.
September 17–18 – WWII: SS City of Benares is torpedoed by German submarine U-48 in the Atlantic with the loss of 248 of the 406 on board, including child evacuees bound for Canada. This results in cancellation of the British Children's Overseas Reception Board's plan to relocate children overseas.
September 22 – Japan enters French Indochina: an agreement is signed in which Japan promises to station no more than 6,000 troops there, and never have more than 25,000 transiting the colony. Rights were also given for three airfields.
September 25 – Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany: German Reichskommissar Josef Terboven appoints a provisional council of state from the pro-Nazi Nasjonal Samling party under Vidkun Quisling as a puppet government for Norway.
September 26 – A group of Japanese officers in violation of an agreement signed four days earlier with French Indochina, take Đồng Đăng and Lam Son with 40 Franco-Vietnamese troops killed and around 1,000 deserting. The same day the United States imposes a total embargo on all scrap metal shipments to Japan.
September 27 – WWII: Germany, Italy and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact.
October
October 14 – The Balham subway station disaster in London, England, occurs during the Nazi Luftwaffe air raids on Great Britain.
October 16 – The draft registration of approximately 16 million men begins in the United States.
October 18–19 – WWII: Thirty-two ships are sunk from Convoy SC 7 and Convoy HX 79 by the most effective "wolfpack" of the war including U-boat aces Kretschmer, Prien and Schepke.
October 26–28 – WWII: RMS Empress of Britain, serving as a troopship under the British flag, is bombed, torpedoed and sunk off the Donegal coast with the loss of 45 lives. At 42,348 GRT she is the war's largest merchant ship loss.
October 28 – WWII: Italian troops invade Greece, meeting strong resistance from Greek troops and civilians. This action signals the beginning of the Balkans Campaign.
October 29 – The Selective Service System lottery is held in Washington, D.C..
November
November – In Cambodia the Khmer Issarak is formed to overthrow the French Army within the nation.
November 2–8 – WWII (Greco-Italian War): In the Battle of Elaia–Kalamas in Epirus outnumbered Greek forces repel the Italian Army.
November 5 – United States presidential election, 1940: Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican challenger Wendell Willkie and becomes the United States' first and only third-term president.
November 6 – Agatha Christie's mystery novel And Then There Were None is published in book form in the United States.
November 7 – In Tacoma, Washington, the 600-foot (180 m)-long center span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (known as Galloping Gertie) collapses.
November 8 – WWII: MS City of Rayville is sunk by a naval mine, the first United States Merchant Marine loss of the war, off Cape Otway, Australia
November 9 – Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez premieres in Barcelona, Spain.
November 10 – An earthquake in Bucharest, Romania kills 1,000.
November 11
WWII: The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian battleship fleet anchored at Taranto naval base.
WWII: German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail intended for British Far East Command from the SS Automedon and sends it to Japan.
Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in the Midwestern United States.
November 13 – Walt Disney's Fantasia is released. It is the first box office failure for Disney, though it eventually recoups its cost years later, and becomes one of the most highly regarded of Disney's films.
November 14 – WWII: The city centre of Coventry, England is destroyed by 500 Luftwaffe bombers: 150,000 fire bombs, 503 tons of high explosives, and 130 parachute mines level 60,000 of the city's 75,000 buildings; 568 people are killed, during the Coventry Blitz.
November 16
WWII: In response to Germany levelling Coventry 2 days before, the Royal Air Force begins to bomb Hamburg (by war's end, 50,000 Hamburg residents will have died from Allied attacks).
An unexploded pipe bomb is found in the Consolidated Edison office building (only years later is the culprit, George Metesky, apprehended).
The Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers is founded.
November 18 – WWII: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
November 20 – WWII: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
November 25
Patria disaster: As British authorities attempt to deport Jewish refugees (originating from German-occupied Europe) from Mandatory Palestine to Mauritius aboard the requisitioned emigrant liner SS Patria (1913) at Haifa, the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah sinks the ship with a bomb, killing around 250 refugees and crew.
de Havilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder military aircraft both make their first flights.
Woody Woodpecker makes his debut in the animated short Knock Knock.
November 26–27 – Jilava Massacre: In Romania, coup leader General Ion Antonescu's Iron Guard arrests and executes over 60 of exiled king Carol II of Romania's aides, starting at a penitentiary near Bucharest. Among the dead is former minister and acclaimed historian Nicolae Iorga.
November 27 – WWII: The British Royal Navy and Italian Regia Marina fight the Battle of Cape Spartivento.
December
December – Timely Comics' Captain America Comics #1 (cover dated March 1941), first appearance of Captain America and Bucky, hits newsstands in the United States.
December 1 – Manuel Ávila Camacho takes office as President of Mexico.
December 6 – British submarine HMS Regulus (N88) is sunk near Taranto.
December 8 – The Chicago Bears, in what will become the most one-sided victory in National Football League history, defeat the Washington Redskins 73–0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game.
December 9 – WWII: Operation Compass – British forces in North Africa begin their first major offensive with an attack on Italian forces at Sidi Barrani, Egypt.
December 12 and December 15 – WWII: "Sheffield Blitz" – The Yorkshire city of Sheffield is badly damaged by German air-raids.
December 14
WWII British destroyers HMS Hereward (H93) and HMS Hyperion (H97) sink an Italian submarine off Bardia.
Royal Navy Fairey Swordfish based on Malta bomb Tripoli.
Plutonium is first synthesized in the laboratory by a team led by Glenn T. Seaborg and Edwin McMillan at the University of California, Berkeley.
December 16 – WWII: Operation Abigail Rachel – RAF bombing of Mannheim.
December 17 – President Roosevelt, at his regular press conference, first sets forth the outline of his plan to send aid to Great Britain that will become known as Lend-Lease.
December 23 – WWII: Winston Churchill, in a broadcast address to the people of Italy, blames Benito Mussolini for leading his nation to war against the British, contrary to Italy's historic friendship with them: "One man has arrayed the trustees and inheritors of ancient Rome upon the side of the ferocious pagan barbarians."
December 24 – Mahatma Gandhi, Indian spiritual non-violence leader writes his second letter to Adolf Hitler addressing him "My friend", requesting him to stop the war Germany had begun.
December 29
Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a fireside chat to the nation, declares that the United States must become "the great arsenal of democracy."
WWII: "Second Great Fire of London" – Luftwaffe carries out a massive incendiary bombing raid, starting 1,500 fires. Many famous buildings, including the Guildhall and Trinity House, are either damaged or destroyed.
December 30
California's first modern freeway, the future State Route 110, opens to traffic in Pasadena, California, as the Arroyo Seco Parkway (now the Pasadena Freeway).
In Sweden, Victor Hasselblad forms the Victor Hasselblad AB Camera Company.
Undated
In Korea, the Hunminjeongeum (1446) is discovered, explaining the basis of the Hangul alphabet.
US historian Arthur Marder publishes The Anatomy of British Sea Power: a history of British naval policy in the pre-Dreadnought era, 1880-1905.
Olympic Games, assigned to Tokyo, Japan, and later to Helsinki, Finland, are suspended due to WWII.
Walter Knott begins construction of Ghost town replica which would soon evolve into Knotts Berry Farm

[MR.BadAiming]

1941 - spray cans were invented

[VladVP]

1942 - John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry built the first electronic digital computer.

[SovietMarmalade]

1943

[Jigsaw]

1944

4: The 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army enters Poland.
9: British forces take Maungdaw, Burma, a critical port for Allied supplies.
12: Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister and Mussolini's son-in-law is executed by Mussolini's revived Fascist government sympathisers.
17: The first Battle of Monte Cassino begins when the British X Corps attacks along the Garigliano river at the western end of the German Gustav Line.[1][2][3]
19: Red Army troops push westward toward the Baltic countries.
: British Operation Outward accidentally claims lives in Sweden by causing a train crash by knocking out lighting
20: The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin.
: The U.S. Army 36th Infantry Division, in Italy, attempts to cross the Rapido River but suffers heavy losses.
22: Allies begin Operation Shingle, the landing at Anzio, Italy, commanded by American Major General John P. Lucas.[1][2][4] The Allies hope to break the stalemate in south Italy, but they are unable to break out of the beachhead and the line holds until late May.
23: The British destroyer HMS Janus is sank off Anzio.[1]
24: The Allied forces have a major setback on the Rapido River.
30: United States troops invade Majuro, Marshall Islands.
: Japanese kill 44 suspected spies in the Homfreyganj massacre
: The Brazzaville Conference begins in French Equatorial Africa. During the conference (which lasts until 8 February), the French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN) agrees to major reforms to the French colonial empire.
31: American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands.

February 1944
February 1944
1944-02-01JapWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg 1944-02-01GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg 1st
1944-02-15JapWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg 1944-02-15GerWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg 15th

1: U.S. Marines mop up on Roi and Namur in the north part of the Kwajalein atoll.
2: The Narva front near the east border of Estonia is formed between the Soviet and German forces.
: Germans defeat American troops in the Battle of Cisterna near Anzio.[1]
3: The Russian Army takes prisoner two German Army corps at the Korsun pocket, south of Kiev.
: American planes bomb Eniwetok in the Marshalls, later to be a major B-29 base.
4: Kwajalein, the world's largest atoll and a major Japanese naval base, is secured.
5: The American Navy bombards the Kuril Islands, northernmost in the Japanese homelands.
7: In a radio interview, the last Estonian Prime Minister Jüri Uluots, as acting Head of State, supports mobilisation.
8: The plan for the invasion of France, Operation Overlord, is confirmed.
10: Winston Churchill urges Harold Alexander to order the Anzio generals to show more aggression.[1]
11: German forces sent to relieve the Korsun pocket in Ukraine are now only 10 miles away.[1]
14: The Russian 374th Rifle Regiment forms a bridgehead on the western shore of Lake Peipus. The Mereküla Landing Operation of the special unit of the Soviet Baltic Sea Fleet in the rear of the Germans at the Narva front at Mereküla is resisted.
: The underground organisation, the National Committee of the Republic of Estonia, is formed in Tallinn.
: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters are established in Britain by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower
: An anti-Japanese revolt on Java occurs.
15: The second Battle of Monte Cassino begins with the destruction of the historic Benedictine monastery on Monte Cassino by Allied bombing. The Allies believed the grounds were used as an observation post by the Germans.[1][2][5]
: The Soviet bridgehead on the west coast of Lake Peipus is annihilated.
: Soviet Leningrad Front initiates the Narva Offensive, February 15–28.[6]
16: Germans launch a major counter-attack at Anzio, threatening the American beachhead.[1]
: Germans, with Panzer forces leading, fail to break out of the Korsun pocket.
: Diplomats from the USSR and Finland meet to sign an armistice.
17: American Marines land on Eniwetok.
18: The light cruiser HMS Penelope is torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Anzio with a loss of 415 crew.[2]
: American naval air raid takes place on the Truk islands, a major Japanese naval base, but they will be one of the bypassed fortresses of the Japanese outer defence ring.
19: Leipzig, Germany is bombed for two straight nights. This marks the beginning of a "Big Week" bombing campaign against German industrial cities by Allied bombers.
20: A colonial military garrison in Luluabourg in the Belgian Congo mutinies, killing three.
22: John Lucas is replaced with major general Lucian Truscott at Anzio.[1]
23: US Navy planes attack the Mariana Islands of Saipan, Guam and Tinian.
26: The "Big Week" bombing campaign comes to a successful conclusion; the American P-51 Mustang fighter with its long range proves invaluable in protecting American bombers over Germany.
: Red Air Force continues to bomb Helsinki, as Finland continues peace talks.
27: USS Cod sinks a Japanese merchant ship by torpedo.[1]
28: The Admiralty Islands are invaded by U.S. forces, marked by the Battle of Los Negros and Operation Brewer. The struggle for this important fleet anchorage will continue until May. Rabaul is now completely isolated.
: Belgian industrialist Alexandre Galopin is assassinated in occupied Belgium by Flemish paramilitaries.

March 1944
March 1944
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1: The keels of USS Tarawa and USS Kearsarge are laid down.
: Anti-fascist strikes occur in northern Italy.
: Leningrad Front initiate the Narva Offensive, March 1–4
3: German forces around Anzio, having failed to drive the Allies from the beachhead, go over to a defensive posture.[1][7]
6: Wingate's Chindits make several successful forays in Burma.
: The Soviet Air Force bombs Narva, the city is destroyed. The Leningrad Front initiates the Narva Offensive, March 6–24[6]
: The Australians receive faulty intelligence that the Japanese are about to mount an attack on Western Australia, causing them to greatly bolster defenses there. When no attack comes, they return to their regular stations on the 20th
7: Japanese begin an invasion attempt on India, starting a four-month battle around Imphal.
8: American forces are attacked by Japanese troops on Hill 700 in the Bougainville; the battle that will last five days.
: A Red Army offensive on a wide front west of the Dnieper in the Ukraine forces the Germans into a major retreat.
9: The Soviet Long Range Aviation carries out an air raid on Tallinn, Estonia. The military objects are almost untouched. Approx. 800 civilians die and 20,000 people are left without a shelter.[8]
12: The creation of the Political Committee of National Liberation in Greece.
13: On Bougainville, Japanese troops end their failed assault on American forces at Hill 700.
15: The third Battle of Monte Cassino begins. The small town of Cassino is destroyed by Allied bombers.[1][2][9]
: Americans take Manus Island in the Admiralty chain.
: The National Council of the French Resistance approves the Resistance programme.
16: United States XI Corps arrives in Pacific Theater.
17: Heavy bombing of Vienna, Austria.
18: The Red Army approach Romanian border.
19: German forces occupy Hungary in Operation Margarethe.[1][2]
: Yugoslav partisans attack Trieste, on the border of Italy and Croatia.
20: Red Army advances in the Ukraine continue with great success.
21: Finland rejects Soviet peace terms.
22: Japanese forces cross the Indian border all along the Imphal front.
: Frankfurt is bombed with heavy civilian losses.
24: The Fosse Ardeatine massacre in Rome, Italy. 335 Italians are killed, including 75 Jews and over 200 members various groups in the Italian Resistance; this is a German response to a bomb blast that killed German troops.
: Orde Wingate is killed in a plane crash.
: Heavy bombings of German cities at various strategic locations last for 24 hours.
25: Soviet air force bombs the city of Tartu, Estonia.[10]
26: On Narva front, Strachwitz Offensive destroys part of the Soviet bridgehead.[11]
28: Japanese troops are in retreat in Burma.
30: RAF suffers grievous losses in a huge air raid on Nuremberg.

April 1944
April 1944
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3: Allied bombers hit Budapest in Hungary, now occupied by the Germans, and Bucharest in Romania, ahead of the advancing Red Army.
4: General Charles de Gaulle takes command of all Free French forces.
5: US Air Force bombs Ploesti oil fields in Romania, with heavy losses.
6: The Japanese drive on the Plain of Imphal, supposedly halted, proves strong enough to surround British forces at Imphal and Kohima, in India.
8: The Red Army attacks in an attempt to retake all of the Crimea, the Germans retreat westward to Sevastopol.
10: Soviet forces enter Odessa, Ukraine.[1][2]
11: Soviet forces take Kerch, beginning the reconquest of Crimea.[1][2]
15: Heavy air raids on Ploesti oil fields (Romania) by both the RAF and the US Air Force.
16: Soviet forces take Yalta; most of Crimea is now liberated.[1][2]
17: Japanese launch Operation Ichi-Go with over 600,000 men in central China. The objective is to conquer areas where American bombers are located.[2] The first phase is the Battle of Central Henan.
21: The Badoglio government in Italy falls and he is quickly asked to form another.
: An Allied air raid on Paris kills a large number of civilians.
22: Operations Reckless and Persecution: US troops land at Hollandia and Aitape in northern New Guinea to cut off Japanese forces in Wewak.[1][2]
24: British troops force open the road from Imphal to Kohima in India.
27: The Slapton Sands tragedy: American soldiers are killed in a training exercise in preparation for D-Day at Slapton in Devon.
30: Vast preparations for D-Day are going on all over southern England.
: American navy air raids continue in the Carolina Islands, including Truk.

May 1944
May 1944
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6: Heavy Allied bombings of the Continent in preparation for D-Day.
8: D-Day for Operation Overlord set for June 5.
9: Sevastopol in the Crimea is retaken by Soviet forces.[1]
11: The fourth battle of Monte Cassino begins.[1][2][12]
12: Large numbers of Chinese troops invade northern Burma.
13: The entirety of Crimea is under Soviet control. Many thousands of German and Romanian soldiers have been captured, but many thousands have been evacuated[1][2][13]
: The bridgehead over the Rapido River is reinforced.
18: The Battle of Monte Cassino ends in Allied victory. Polish troops capture Monte Cassino. German troops in west Italy have withdrawn to the Hitler Line.[1][2]
: Allied troops take airfields at Myitkyina, Burma, an important air base; the struggle over the city itself will continue for nearly three months.
: The last Japanese resistance in the Admiralty Islands, off New Guinea comes to an end.
21: Increased Allied bombing of targets in France in preparation for D-Day.
23: Allies start a new breakout from Anzio.[1][2]
25: Allies at Anzio link up with Allies from south Italy. Though Harold Alexander wishes to trap the German Tenth Army, American Fifth Army commander Mark W. Clark orders Truscott to turn north toward Rome. The Germans in Italy form a new defensive position on the Caesar C line.

[1][2][14]

27: Operation Hurricane starts. Americans land on Biak, Dutch New Guinea, a key Japanese air base; stubborn Japanese resistance until August.
31: The Japanese retreat from Imphal (India) with heavy losses; their invasion of India is over.

June 1944
June 1944
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2: The provisional French government is established.
: The U.S. begins Operation Frantic with a bombing of Debrecen, Hungary.[1][2]
3: There are daily bombings of the Cherbourg peninsula and the Normandy area.
4: Allies enter Rome, one day after the Germans declared it an open city. German troops fall back to the Trasimene Line.[1][2]
: Operation Overlord is postponed 24 hours due to high seas.
5: Operation Overlord commences when more than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day. And the first Allied troops land in Normandy; paratroopers are scattered from Caen southward.
: In the Pacific, the U.S. fleet transporting the expeditionary forces for the invasion of Saipan in the Mariana Islands leaves Pearl Harbor.
6: D-Day begins with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France. The allied soldiers quickly break through the Atlantic Wall and push inland in the largest amphibious military operation in history.
7: Bayeux is liberated by British troops.
9: No agreement having been reached on their mutual borders, Joseph Stalin launches an offensive against Finland with the intent of defeating Finland before pushing for Berlin.

6th June 1944: A Navy LCVP disembarks troops at Omaha Beach.

10: At Oradour-sur-Glane (a town near Limoges), France, 642 men, women, and children are killed in a German response to local Resistance activities.
: In the Distomo massacre in Greece, 218 civilians are killed.
12: American aircraft carriers commence air strikes on the Marianas, including Saipan, preparing for invasion.
13: Germany launches a V1 Flying Bomb attack on England, in Hitler's view a kind of revenge for the invasion. He believes in Germany's victory with this "secret weapon." The V-1 attacks will continue through June.
: The U.S. Naval bombardment of Saipan begins. In response, Admiral Toyoda Soemu, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, orders his fleet to attack U.S. Navy forces around Saipan.
15: U.S. Marine and Army forces invade the island of Saipan. U.S. submarines sight the Japanese fleet en-route.
17: Free French troops land on Elba.
18: Elba is declared liberated.
: Allies capture Assisi, Italy.
19-20: The Battle of the Philippine Sea, nicknamed the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot by Americans, takes place. The United States Fifth Fleet wins a decisive naval battle over the Imperial Japanese Navy near the Mariana Islands. Over 200 Japanese planes are shot down while the Americans only lose 29 to enemy action.[1][2][15][16]
19: A severe Channel storm destroys one of the Allies' Mulberry harbours in Normandy.
: The Red Army prepares for "Operation Bagration," a huge offensive in Byelorussia (White Russia).
20: The British take Perugia, Italy.
: The Siege of Imphal is lifted after three months.
21: Allied offensive in Burma.
22: V-1's continue to hit England, especially London, sometimes with horrifying losses.
: Operation Bagration: General attack by Soviet forces to clear the German forces from Belarus This results in the destruction of the German Army Group Centre, possibly the greatest defeat of the Wehrmacht during World War II.
: In the Burma Campaign, the Battle of Kohima ends with a British victory.
23: The National Committee of the Republic of Estonia makes a declaration “to the Estonian People.” The declaration was made public to the world press in Stockholm in July 1944 and in Tallinn on 1 August 1944.
25: The Battle of Tali-Ihantala between Finnish and Soviet troops begins. Largest battle ever to be fought in the Nordic countries.
26: Cherbourg is liberated by American troops.

July 1944
July 1944
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1: The Leningrad diarist Tanya Savicheva dies of starvation at the age of 14. Her diary of her family's death during the siege becomes famous.
2: V-1's continue to have devastating effects in South-East England in terms of material destruction and losses of life.
3: Minsk in Belarus is liberated by Soviet forces.
3: The Allies find themselves in the "battle of the hedgerows", as they are stymied by the agricultural hedges in Western France which intelligence had not properly evaluated.
3: Siena, Italy falls to Algerian troops of the French forces.
6: Largest Banzai charge of the war: 4,300 Japanese troops are slaughtered on Saipan.
7: Soviet troops enter Vilnius, Lithuania.
9: After heavy resistance Caen, France is liberated by the British troops on the left flank of the Allied advance.
9: Saipan is declared secure, the Japanese having lost over 30,000 troops; in the last stages numerous civilians commit suicide with the encouragement of Japanese military.
10: Japanese are still resisting on New Guinea.
10: Tokyo is bombed for the first time since the Doolittle raid of April, 1942.
11: President Roosevelt announces that he will run for an unprecedented fourth term as U.S. President.
12: Hitler rejects General Field Marshal Walther Model’s proposal to withdraw the German forces from Estonia and Northern Latvia and retreat to the Daugava River.
13: The Soviets take Vilnius, Lithuania.
13: The Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive begins.
16: First troops of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB) arrive in Italy
17: Field Marshal Rommel is badly wounded when his car is strafed from the air in France.
18: St. Lo, France is taken, and the Allied breakout from hedgerow country in Normandy begins.
18: General Hideki Tojo resigns as chief minister of the Japanese government as the defeats of the Japanese military forces continue to mount. Emperor Hirohito asks General Kuniaki Koiso to form a new government.
19: American forces take Leghorn (Livorno), Italy far up the Italian boot.
20: The July 20 Plot is carried out by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg in a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. Hitler was visiting headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia. Reprisals follow against the plotters and their families, and even include Rommel.
21: US Marines land on Guam.
22: Hitler gives permission to retreat from the Narva River to the Tannenberg defence line in the Sinimäed hills 20 km West from Narva.
23: The Poles rise up against the Germans in the Lwow Uprising
24: At the start of the Soviet Narva Offensive, July 24–30, the Soviet 8th Army is beaten by the Estonian 45th Regiment and East Prussian 44th Regiment. The army detachment "Narwa" begins to retreat to the Tannenberg line.[10]
24: Majdanek Concentration Camp is liberated by Soviet forces, the first among many. The Soviet Union is now in control of several large cities in Poland, including Lublin.
24: US bombers mistakenly bomb American troops near St. Lo, France.
24: Marines land on Tinian Island, last of the Marianas (after Saipan and Guam); Tinian will eventually be a B-29 base, and the base from which the atomic bombers departed.
24: Operation Cobra is now in full swing: the breakout at St. Lo in Normandy with American troops taking Coutances.
26: The Leningrad Front's Narva Offensive captures the town.[10]
26: The first aerial victory for a jet fighter occurs, with an Me 262 of the Luftwaffe's Ekdo 262 damaging a de Havilland Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft of the Royal Air Force's No. 540 Squadron RAF.
27 July to 10 August: Battles on the Tannenberg Line. At the start of the battles there are 25 Estonian and 24 Dutch, Danish and Flemish infantry battalions on the German side at the Narva Front. The artillery forces, and the tank, engineer and other special units are composed mainly of Germans. The attack by the Soviet Armed Forces is stopped, tens of thousands of men are killed in both sides.
28: The Red Army take Brest-Litovsk, the site of the Russo-German peace treaty in World War I.
29: A decisive day in the Battle of Narva, allowing the German army detachment "Narwa", including Estonian conscript formations to delay the Soviet Baltic Offensive for another one and a half months.[10]

August 1944
August 1944
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1: The Second Warsaw Uprising, this time by the Polish Home Army commences; the Polish people rise up, expecting aid from the approaching Soviet Union armies. The tragic event will last 63 days.
1: The Red Army isolates the Baltic States from East Prussia by taking Kaunas.
1: The Americans complete the capture of the island of Tinian.
2: The battle for Guam, another island in the Marianas, however, continues.
3: Myitkyina in northern Burma, falls to the Allies (the Chinese and Americans under Stilwell), after a vigorous defence by the Japanese.
4: Florence is liberated by the Allies, particularly British and South African troops; before exiting, however, the Germans under General Kesselring destroy some historic bridges and historically valuable buildings.
4: The trials of the bomb conspirators against Hitler are underway in a court presided over by notorious Judge Roland Freisler.
4: Rennes is liberated by American forces.
5: Japanese POWs escape from an Australian prison near the town of Cowra. Two guards are killed and posthumously awarded the George Cross (See: Cowra breakout)
6: Germans round up young men in Krakow to stop the potential Krakow Uprising
6: Ukrainian insurgents kill 42 Polish civilians in the Baligrod massacre.
8: Plotters in the bomb plot against Hitler are hanged, their bodies hung on meat hooks; reprisals against their families continue.
9: President Roosevelt chooses general General Douglas MacArthur's plan to invade the Philippines and turns down Admiral Chester W. Nimitz's plan to invade Taiwan.[1]
10: Guam is liberated by American troops and all of the Marianas are now in American hands. They will be turned into a major air and naval centre against the Japanese homeland.
11: The Warsaw Rising continues; the Red Army remain on the west side of the Vistula, apparently unwilling to help their supposed allies against the occupying Germans.
14: The failure of the Allies to close the Falaise gap in France, proves advantageous to the Germans fleeing to the east who escape the pincer movement of the Allies.
14: A clash between Italian POWs and American servicemen ends in the Fort Lawton Riot
15: The Allies reach the "Gothic Line", the last German strategic position in North Italy.
15: Operation Dragoon begins, marked by amphibious Allied landings in southern France.
16: The Red Armies makes moves to close in on Warsaw.
18: The Red Army reaches the East Prussian border.
18: Following the assassination of a collaborationist politician in Belgium by the resistance, 20 civilians are massacred in Courcelles by paramilitaries in retaliation
19: French Resistance begins uprising in Paris, partly inspired by the Allied approach to the Seine River.
19: In a radio broadcast, Jüri Uluots, the acting Head of State of Estonia, calls the Estonian conscripts to hold the Soviet Armed Forces back until a peace treaty with Germany is signed.

Polish Boy Scouts played an important role in the Warsaw Uprising

20: The Red Army relaunches its offensive into Romania.
21: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference begins, setting up the basic structure of the United Nations.
22: The Japanese are now in total retreat from India.
23: Romania breaks with the Axis, surrenders to the Soviet Union, and joins the Allies.
24: 168 Allied airmen arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.
25: Paris is liberated; De Gaulle and Free French parade triumphantly down the Champs-Élysées. The German military disobeys Hitler's orders to burn the city. Meanwhile the southern Allied forces move up from the Riviera, take Grenoble and Avignon.
28: The Germans surrender at Toulon and Marseilles, in southern France.
28: Patton's tanks cross the Marne.
29: The anti-German Slovak National Uprising starts in Slovakia.
30: The Allies enter Rouen, in northwestern France.
31: The Soviet army enters Bucharest.
31: American forces turn over the government of France to Free French troops.

September 1944
September 1944
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1: Canadian troops capture Dieppe, France.
2: Allied troops enter Belgium.
3: Brussels liberated by British Second Army.
: Lyon is liberated by French and American troops.
4: A cease fire takes effect between Finland and the Soviet Union.[1][2][17]
: Operation Outward ends.
5: Antwerp is liberated by British 11th Armoured Division and local resistance.
: The uprising in Warsaw continues; Red Army forces are available for relief and reinforcement, but are apparently unable to move without Stalin's order.
: United States III Corps arrives in European Theater.
: Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourgish governments in exile sign the London Customs Convention, laying the foundations for the Benelux economic union.
6: The "blackout" is diminished to a "dim-out" as threat of invasion and further bombing seems an unlikely possibility.
: Ghent and Liège are liberated by British troops.
8: Ostend is liberated by Canadian troops.
: Soviet Union invades Bulgaria. Bulgaria declares war on Germany.
: The Belgian government in exile returns to the Belgium from London where it has spent the war.
9: The first V-2 rocket lands on London.
: De Gaulle forms a provisional government in France
: Bulgaria makes peace with the USSR then declares war on Germany.
10: Luxembourg is liberated by U.S. First Army.
: Two Allied forces meet at Dijon, cutting France in half.
: First Allied troops enter Germany, entering Aachen, a city on the border.
: Dutch railway workers go on strike. The German response results in the Dutch famine of 1944.
11: United States XXI Corps arrives in European Theater.
13: American troops reach the Siegfried line, the West wall of Germany's defence system.

Waves of paratroops land in the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden in September 1944.

14: Soviet Baltic Offensive commences.
15: American Marines land on Peleliu in the Palau Islands; a bloody battle of attrition continues for two and a half months.
16: The Red Army enters Sofia, Bulgaria.
17: Operation Market Garden, the attempted liberation of Arnhem and turning of the German flank begins.
17: Assorted British and commonwealth forces enter neutral San Marino and engage German forces in a small-scale conflict known as the Battle of San Marino
18: Brest, France, an important Channel port, falls to the Allies.
: Jüri Uluots proclaims the Government of Estonia headed by Deputy Prime Minister Otto Tief.[18]
19: The Moscow Armistice is signed between the Soviet Union and Finland, bringing the Continuation War to a close.[2]
: Nancy liberated by U.S. First Army
20: The Government of Estonia seizes the government buildings of Toompea from the German forces and appeals to the Soviet Union for the independence of Estonia.[18]
: United States XVI Corps arrives in European Theater.
20: The Battle of San Marino ends
21: British forces take Rimini, Italy.
: The Second Dumbarton Oaks Conference begins: it will set guidelines for the United Nations.
: In Belgium, Charles of Flanders is sworn in as Prince-Regent while a decision is delayed about whether King Leopold III can ever return to his functions after being accused of collaboration.[19]
: San Marino declares war on the Axis
: The Government of Estonia prints a few hundred copies of the Riigi Teataja (State Gazette) and is forced to flee under the Soviet pressure.[20]
22: The Red Army takes Tallinn, the first Baltic harbour outside the minefields of the Gulf of Finland.
: The Germans surrender at Boulogne.
23: Americans take Ulithi atoll in the Carolina Islands; it is a massive atoll that will later become an important naval base.
24: The Red Army is well into Poland at this time.
25: British troops pull out of Arnhem with failure of Operation Market Garden. Over 6,000 paratroopers are captured. Hopes of an early end to the war are abandoned.
: United States IX Corps arrives in Pacific Theater.
26: There are signs of civil war in Greece as the Communist-controlled National Liberation Front and the British-backed government seem irreconcilable.
30: German garrison in Calais surrenders to Canadian troops. At one time, Hitler thought it would be the focus of the cross-Channel invasion.

October 1944
October 1944
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1: A Hungarian delegation arrives in Moscow , Russia to negotiate an armistice with the USSR.[1][2]
: Soviet troops enter Yugoslavia.
2: Germans finally succeed in putting down Warsaw Uprising by Polish Home Army. The Soviet Union armies have never moved to assist the Polish Home Army.
: American troops are now in a full-scale attack on the German "West Wall".
: Allied forces land on Crete.
5: Canadian troops cross the border into the Netherlands.
: Red Army enters Hungary; meanwhile they launch an offensive to capture Riga, Latvia.
6: Soviet and Czechoslovak troops enter northeastern Slovakia.
: The Battle of Debrecen begins as German and Soviet forces advance against each other in eastern Hungary.
9: Allied Conference ("Tolstoy") in Moscow: Churchill and Stalin discuss spheres of influence in the postwar Balkans.
10: The Red Army reach the Niemen River in Prussia and continue the battle around Riga.
: The Allied combined forces take Corinth, in southern Greece.
12: Athens is liberated by EAM and evacuated by German troops.
: US Navy carriers attack Formosa (Taiwan).
: The Second Quebec Conference ("Octagon"). President Roosevelt and Churchill discuss military cooperation in the Pacific, and the division of Germany.
: United States XXIII Corps Arrives in European Theater.
14: British troops entering Athens.
: Field Marshal Rommel, under suspicion as one of the "bomb plotters" voluntarily commits suicide to save his family. He is later buried with full military honors.
15: Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy is overthrown by the Germans, who replace him with Ferenc Szálasi.[1][2]
: Allied bombardment of Aachen continues, the first major battle on German soil.
16: The Red Army and Yugoslav partisans under the command of Josip Broz Tito liberate Belgrade. The Red Army forces are also in East Prussia.
18: Hitler orders a call-up of all men from 16 to 60 for Home Guard duties.
20: Soviet forces in command of General Zhukov, with help of Yugoslavia Partizan and Chetnik forces liberated Belgrade.
: The Battle of Leyte: U.S. forces land on Leyte, Philippines. MacArthur lands and states: "I have returned".[1][2][21]
21: Aachen is occupied by U.S. First Army; it is the first major German city to be captured.
23-26: The Battle of Leyte Gulf: The United States Third Fleet and United States Seventh Fleet wins a decisive naval battle over the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Philippine Islands.[2]
23: The Allies recognise General de Gaulle as the head of a provisional government of France.
: B-29's are now using Tinian Island, in the Marianas, as a base for the systematic bombing of Japan. Soviet forces in cooperation with Tito's Partizan forces, liberated Novi Sad in Yugoslavia (Serbia today)
25: Romania is fully liberated by Red Army and Romanian troops.
27: The Battle of Hürtgen Forest is developing, and will continue through October and November and have its last spasms in December.

November 1944
November 1944
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1: British forces take Salonika in northern Greece. The situation for civilians in Athens is now desperate.
: "Operation Infatuate": An Allied attempt to free the approaches to Antwerp; notably there are amphibious landings on Walcheren Island.
2: Canadian troops take Zeebrugge in Belgium; Belgium is now entirely liberated.
4: Remaining Axis forces withdraw from the Greek mainland. German occupation forces will remain in several Greek islands until capitulation.
British Gen. John Dill dies in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Arlington Cemetery, the only foreigner to be so honored.
5: US planes bomb Singapore, under Japanese control since 1942.
: Zionist terrorists assassinate the British government representative in the Middle East.
6: Franklin Delano Roosevelt wins a fourth term.
: The aircraft carrier USS Lexington is heavily damaged by kamikazes.
9: General Patton's troops and tanks cross the Moselle River and threaten the city of Metz.
10: V-2 rockets continue to hit Britain, at the rate of about eight a day.
12: After numerous bombings while anchored in a fjord at Tromso, Norway, the German battleship Tirpitz is sunk.
17: The Germans give up Tirana, Albania, and the capital is liberated by the Albanian partisans (Allies).
21: San Marino declares war on Germany
20: Hitler leaves his wartime headquarters at Rastenberg, East Prussia, never to return; he goes to Berlin, where he will soon establish himself at the bunker.
23: Metz, France is taken, and Strasbourg, in eastern France, is liberated by French troops.
24: The first B-29 originating from Tinian, in the Marianas, raid Tokyo.
: The USS Intrepid is hit by kamikazes for the third time; other American ships are heavily damaged.
25: Japanese take Nanning in south China, as the war in that theatre continues.
26: The war in Italy is at a stalemate, partly because of heavy rains.
28: Antwerp is now a major supply port for the onward moving Allies.
30: Kunming, China, an important air base, is threatened by Japanese attacks.
: United States XXII Corps Arrives in European Theater.

December 1944
December 1944
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1: Heinrich Himmler ordered the crematoriums and gas chambers of Auschwitz Concentration Camp dismantled and blown up.[1]
3: The Dekemvriana ("December events") begin in the Greek capital, Athens, between members of the leftist National Liberation Front and government forces, backed by the British. The clashes are limited to Athens however, and the rest of the country remains relatively tranquil.
3: The British Home Guard is stood down.
5: The Allies are now in control of Ravenna, Italy.
8: The softening up bombardment of Iwo Jima begins.
14: Japanese defenders in Palawan in the Philippines kill over 100 American POW's in the Palawan Massacre.[1][2]
: Units of Air Group 80 from USS Ticonderoga flew seven strikes against Japanese positions in northern Luzon in the Philippine.[1]
15: Americans and Filipinos land troops at Mindoro island in the Philippines.[1][2]
16: The Battle of the Bulge begins as German forces attempt a breakthrough in the Ardennes region. The main object of Hitler's plan is the taking of Antwerp.
17: A typhoon hits the Third Fleet of Admiral Halsey; three destroyers capsize.
17: The Malmedy massacre: SS troops execute 86 American prisoners in the Ardennes offensive. The SS troops are led by SS commander Jochen Peiper.
18: Bastogne, an important crossroads, is surrounded.
20: General McAuliff's famous message of "Nuts" is sent to German officers at Bastogne demanding surrender.
22: The battle for Bastogne is at its height, with Americans running low on ammunition.
23: The skies clear over the Ardennes, permitting Allied aircraft to begin their attacks on the German offensive, the one factor that Hitler feared in his planning.
24: The American counter-attack at the "Bulge" begins.
24: The Belgian transport ship SS Leopoldville is sunk off the coast of France. More than 800 lives, predominantly those of American servicemen, are lost.
24: Manchester is attacked by V1 flying bombs
26: The siege of Bastogne is broken, and with it the Ardennes offensive proves a failure.
26: Racial tensions within the US military boil over into the Agana race riot on Guam
28: Churchill and his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden are in Athens in an attempt to reconcile the warring factions.
29: Soviet troops begin the Siege of Budapest.[1][2]
31: The Soviet-backed Hungarian Provisional Government declares war on Germany.[1][2]

[Mr.Torch]

1945
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1945 in other calendars Gregorian calendar 1945
MCMXLV
Ab urbe condita 2698
Armenian calendar 1394
ԹՎ ՌՅՂԴ
Assyrian calendar 6695
Bahá'í calendar 101–102
Bengali calendar 1352
Berber calendar 2895
British Regnal year 9 Geo. 6 – 10 Geo. 6
Buddhist calendar 2489
Burmese calendar 1307
Byzantine calendar 7453–7454
Chinese calendar 甲申年 (Wood Monkey)
4641 or 4581
— to —
乙酉年 (Wood Rooster)
4642 or 4582
Coptic calendar 1661–1662
Discordian calendar 3111
Ethiopian calendar 1937–1938
Hebrew calendar 5705–5706
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat 2001–2002
- Shaka Samvat 1867–1868
- Kali Yuga 5046–5047
Holocene calendar 11945
Igbo calendar 945–946
Iranian calendar 1323–1324
Islamic calendar 1364–1365
Japanese calendar Shōwa 20
(昭和２０年)
Juche calendar 34
Julian calendar Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar 4278
Minguo calendar ROC 34
民國34年
Thai solar calendar 2488
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1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1945th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 945th year of the 2nd millennium, the 45th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1940s decade.
Events

Below, events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
January 27: The Soviet Red Army liberates Auschwitz.

January – WWII: Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine continues; the United States Army crosses the Siegfried Line.
January 1 – WWII: Germany begins Operation Bodenplatte, an attempt by the Luftwaffe to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries
January 5 – Australia recognize the Polish Committee of National Liberation as the government of Poland.
January 7 – WWII: British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference at Zonhoven describing his supporting role at the Battle of the Bulge.
January 12 – WWII: The Soviet Union begins the Vistula–Oder Offensive in Eastern Europe against the German Army.
January 13 – WWII: The Soviet Union begins the East Prussian Offensive to eliminate German forces in East Prussia.
January 16 – WWII: Adolf Hitler takes residence in the Führerbunker in Berlin.
January 17
WWII: The Soviet Union occupies Warsaw, Poland.
The Holocaust: A Soviet patrol arrests Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary.
January 18 – The Holocaust: The SS begins evacuation of Auschwitz concentration camp. Nearly 60,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to other locations in Germany; as many as 15,000 die. The 7,000 too sick to move are left without supplies being distributed.
January 20 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated to a fourth term as President of the United States, the only President ever to exceed two terms.
January 23 – WWII
Hungary agrees to an armistice with the Allies.
German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the start of Operation Hannibal, the mass evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from the Courland Pocket, East Prussia and the Polish Corridor.
January 24 – WWII: AP war correspondent Joseph Morton, nine OSS men, and four SOE agents are executed by the Germans at Mauthausen concentration camp under Hitler's Commando Order of 1942 which stipulates the immediate execution of all captured Allied commandos or saboteurs without trial, even those in proper uniforms. Morton is the only Allied correspondent to be executed by the Axis during the war.
January 26 – WWII: Infantry action at Holtzwihr, France, for which Audie Murphy is awarded the Medal of Honor.[1]
January 27 – The Holocaust: The Soviet Red Army liberates the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps.
January 28 – WWII: Supplies begin to reach China over the newly reopened Burma Road.
January 30 - WWII
MV Wilhelm Gustloff, with over 10,000 mainly civilian Germans from Gotenhafen (Gdynia) is sunk in Gdańsk Bay by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea; up to 9,400 are thought to have died – the greatest loss of life in a single ship sinking in war action in history.
Raid at Cabanatuan: 121 American soldiers and 800 Filipino guerrillas free 813 American prisoners of war from the Japanese-held camp in the city of Cabanatuan in the Philippines.
Adolf Hitler makes his last public speech to be delivered personally, on broadcast radio, expressing the belief that Germany will triumph.
January 31 – WWII: Eddie Slovik is executed by firing squad near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines for desertion, the only U.S. soldier since the American Civil War ever executed for this offense.

February
The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, February 2, 1945.
During the Battle of Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines land on the island, February 19, 1945.

February – Raymond L. Libby of American Cyanamid's research laboratories at Stamford, Connecticut, announces a method of orally administering the antibiotic penicillin.[2]
February 3 – WWII:
Battle of Manila: United States forces enter the outskirts of Manila to capture it from the Japanese Imperial Army, starting the battle.
The Soviet Union agrees to enter the Pacific War against Japan once hostilities against Germany are concluded.
February 4–11 – WWII: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin hold the Yalta Conference.
February 6 – French writer Robert Brasillach is executed for collaboration with the Germans.
February 7 – WWII: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
February 9
Walter Ulbricht becomes leader of the German Communists in Moscow.
WWII: "Black Friday": A force of Allied Bristol Beaufighter aircraft suffers heavy casualties in an unsuccessful attack on German destroyer Z33 and escorting vessels sheltering in Førde Fjord, Norway.
February 10 – WWII: 3,608 drown when the troopship SS General von Steuben is sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13.[3]
February 10–20 – WWII: Operation Kita: The Imperial Japanese Navy returns "Completion Force", containing both its Ise-class battleships, safely from Singapore to Kure in Japan despite Allied attacks.
February 13 – WWII:
Soviet forces capture Budapest, Hungary, from the Nazis.
Royal Air Force bombing of Dresden, Germany.
February 14 – Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru join the United Nations.
February 16 – WWII:
American and Filipino ground forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines.
Combined American and Filipino forces recapture the Bataan Peninsula.
Venezuela declares war on Germany.
February 19–February 20 – 980 Japanese soldiers die as a result of a killing spree by long saltwater crocodiles in Ramree, Burma.[4]
February 19 – WWII – Battle of Iwo Jima: About 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima.
February 21 – The last V-2-rocket is launched from Peenemünde.
February 22 – WWII:
Italian Front: end of the Battle of Monte Castello, after nearly three months of fighting, Brazilian troops expel German forces of a pivot point in the (Tuscan) North Apennines, where their artillery was impeding the advance of British 8th Army toward Bologna;
Uruguay declares war on Germany and Japan.
February 23 – WWII:
Battle of Iwo Jima: A group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (taken by Joe Rosenthal), later wins a Pulitzer Prize.
The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, freed the captives of the Los Baños internment camp.
The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by combined American and Filipino ground troops.
American and Filipino troops enter Intramuros, Manila.
The German garrison in Poznań capitulates to Red Army and Polish troops.
Bombing of Pforzheim: Heaviest of a series of bombing raids on Pforzheim in Germany by Allied aircraft is carried out by the British Royal Air Force. As many as 17,600 people, or 31.4% of the town's population, are killed in the raid and about 83% of the town's buildings destroyed, two-thirds of its complete area and between 80 and 100% of the inner city.
Turkey joins the war on the allies side.
February 24 – The Egyptian Premier Ahmad Mahir Pasha is killed in Parliament after reading a decree.
February 28 – In Bucharest, a violent demonstration takes place, during which the bolşevic group opens fire on the army and protesters. In response, Andrei Y. Vishinsky, USSR vice commissioner of foreign affairs and president of the Allied Control Commission for Romania, travels to Bucharest to compel Nicolae Rădescu to resign as premier.

March

March – Anne Frank dies of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Lower Saxony, Germany.
March 1 – Franklin D. Roosevelt gives what will be his last address to a joint session of the United States Congress, reporting on the Yalta Conference.
March 2
Former U.S. Vice-President Henry A. Wallace starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The rocket-propelled Bachem Ba 349 Natter is first test launched at Stetten am kalten Markt. The launch fails and the pilot, Lothar Sieber, dies.[5]
March 3 – WWII:
Finland declares war on the Axis powers.
United States and Filipino troops take Manila, Philippines.
Bombing of the Bezuidenhout: The British Royal Air Force accidentally bombs the Bezuidenhout neighbourhood in The Hague, Netherlands, killing 511 people.
A possible experimental atomic test blast occurs at the Nazis' Ohrdruf military testing area.[dubious – discuss]
March 4 – In the United Kingdom, The Princess Elizabeth, later to become Queen Elizabeth II, joins the British Army's Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service as a truck driver/mechanic.
March 4 – Football club FC Red Star (in Serbian: FK Crvena Zvezda) formed in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
March 5 – WWII: Brazilian troops take Castelnuovo (Vergato), in the last prior operations for the Allied Spring 1945 offensive in Italy.
March 6
A Communist-led government is formed in Romania under Petru Groza following Soviet intervention.
Resistance fighters accidentally ambush and attempt to execute SS general Hanns Albin Rauter, the arch-persecutor of the Dutch.
March 7 – WWII: American troops seize the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen, Germany and begin to cross.
March 8
Josip Broz Tito forms a government in Yugoslavia.
The Nazi authorities kill 117 Dutch men in reprisal for the attempted murder of Hanns Albin Rauter.
Operation Sunrise: Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff meets with Allen Welsh Dulles of the United States Office of Strategic Services at Lucerne in neutral Switzerland to negotiate surrender of the Axis forces in Italy to the Allies.
March 9–10 – WWII: Bombing of Tokyo – USAAF B-29 bombers attack Tokyo, Japan, with incendiary bombs, killing 100,000 citizens in the firebombing.
March 9 – The film Les Enfants du Paradis premieres in Paris.
March 11
The Empire of Japan establishes the Empire of Vietnam, a puppet state which will last only until August 23, with Bảo Đại as its ruler.
Sammarinese general election gives San Marino the world's first democratically elected communist government, which will hold power to 1957.[6][7]
March 12 – WWII: Swinemünde is destroyed by the USAAF killing an estimated 8,000 to 23,000 civilians, mostly refugees saved by Operation Hannibal.
March 15 – The 17th Academy Awards ceremony is held, broadcast via radio for the first time. Best Picture goes to Going My Way.
March 16 – WWII: The Battle of Iwo Jima unofficially ends, with pockets of guerrilla resistance persisting until the official conclusion of the battle.
March 17 – WWII: Kobe, Japan is is fire-bombed by 331 B-29 bombers, killing over 8,000 people.
March 18 – WWII: 1,250 American bombers attack Berlin.
March 19 – WWII:
Adolf Hitler orders that all industries, military installations, machine shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany be destroyed.
Off the coast of Japan, bombers hit the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing about 800 of her crewmen and crippling the ship.
March 21 – WWII
British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma.
Bulgarian and Soviet troops successfully defend the north bank of the Drava River as the Battle of the Transdanubian Hills concludes.
March 22
Arab League is formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.
St. Mary's Cathedral, Hildesheim, is destroyed in an air raid.
March 24
WWII – Operation Varsity: Two airborne divisions capture bridges across the Rhine River to aid the Allied advance.
Sylvester the cat, a cartoon character, debuts in Life with Feathers.
March 26 – WWII: The Battle of Iwo Jima officially ends, with the destruction of the remaining areas of Japanese resistance.
March 29
WWII: The Red Army almost destroys the German 4th Army in the Heiligenbeil Pocket in East Prussia.
The "Clash of Titans": George Mikan and Bob Kurland duel at Madison Square Garden as Oklahoma State University defeats DePaul 52–44 in basketball.
March 30 – WWII:
The Red Army pushes most of the Axis forces out of Hungary into Austria.
Alger Hiss is congratulated in Moscow for his part in bringing positions of Western powers and the Soviet Union closer to each other at the Yalta Conference.

April
The Japanese battleship Yamato explodes after persistent attacks from U.S. aircraft during the Battle of Okinawa, 7 April 1945.
Adolf Hitler, along with his wife Eva Braun, committed suicide on 30 April 1945.

April 1 – WWII – Battle of Okinawa: The Tenth United States Army lands on Okinawa.
April 4 – WWII:
American troops liberate their first Nazi concentration camp, Ohrdruf extermination camp in Germany.
The Red Army enters Bratislava and pushes to the outskirts of Vienna, taking it on April 13 after several days of intense fighting.
April 6 – WWII: Sarajevo is liberated from Nazi Germany and the Independent State of Croatia (a fascist puppet state) by Yugoslav Partisans.
April 7 – WWII:
The only flight of the German ramming unit known as the Sonderkommando Elbe takes place, resulting in the loss of some 24 B-17s and B-24s of the United States Eighth Air Force.
The Japanese battleship Yamato is sunk 200 miles (320 km) north of Okinawa while en route on a suicide mission.
Kantarō Suzuki becomes Prime Minister of Japan.
April 8 – The SS begins to evacuate the Buchenwald concentration camp; inmates in the Buchenwald Resistance call for American aid and overpower and kill the remaining guards.
April 9
WWII: The Battle of Königsberg, in East Prussia, ends with Soviet forces capturing the city.
Abwehr conspirators Wilhelm Canaris, Hans Oster and Hans Dohanyi are hanged at Flossenberg concentration camp, along with pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
April 10 – WWII: Visoko is liberated by the 7th, 9th and 17th Krajina Brigades from the Tenth Division of Yugoslav Partisan forces.
April 11 – Buchenwald concentration camp is liberated by the United States Army.
April 12 – President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt dies suddenly at Warm Springs, Georgia; Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes the 33rd President.
April 14 – WWII: The Canadian First Army assumes military control of the Netherlands where German forces are trapped in the Atlantic wall fortifications along the coastline.[8]
April 15 – WWII:
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated by British and Canadian forces.
The Canadian First Army reaches the coast in northern Holland and captures Arnhem.
April 16 – WWII:
Battle of Berlin begins.
The Canadians take Harlingen, and occupy Leeuwarden and Groningen in the Netherlands.
6,500 drown when Goya is sunk by Soviet submarine L-3.
April 17 – WWII:
Brazilian forces liberate the town of Montese, Italy, from German forces.
Inundation of the Wieringermeer in the Netherlands by occupying German forces.
April 18 – American war correspondent Ernie Pyle is killed by Japanese machine gun fire on the island of Ie Shima off Okinawa.
April 19 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, a musical play based on Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, opens on Broadway and becomes their second long-running stage classic.
April 20 - WWII: On his 56th birthday Adolf Hitler leaves his Führerbunker to decorate a group of Hitler Youth soldiers in Berlin. It will be his last trip to the surface from his underground bunker.
April 22 – WWII:
Heinrich Himmler, through Count Bernadotte, puts forth an offer of German surrender to the Western Allies, but not the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler concedes defeat in his underground Berlin bunker after learning Felix Steiner could not mobilize enough men to launch a counterattack on the Soviets who had just broken through Germany.
April 24 – Retreating German troops destroy all the bridges over the Adige in Verona, including the historic Ponte di Castelvecchio and Ponte Pietra.
April 25
Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco.
WWII – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops link up at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two.
April 25–26 – WWII: Last major strategic bombing raid by RAF Bomber Command, the destruction of the oil refinery at Tønsberg in southern Norway by 107 Avro Lancasters.
April 26 – WWII:
Battle of Bautzen: The last "successful" German panzer-offensive in Bautzen ends with the city recaptured.
The British 3rd Infantry Division under General Whistler captures Bremen.[9]
Nazi surrenders mean the British and Canadians now control the German border with Switzerland from Basle to Lake Constance.
April 27
U.S. Ordnance troops find the coffins of Frederick William I of Prussia, Frederick the Great, Paul von Hindenburg, and his wife.
The Western Allies flatly reject any offer of surrender by Germany other than unconditional on all fronts.
April 28
Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are executed by Italian partisans as they attempt to flee the country. Their bodies are then hung by their heels in the public square of Milan.
The Canadian First Army captures Emden and Wilhelmshaven.
April 29
At the royal palace in Caserta, Lieutenant-Colonel Viktor von Schweinitz (representing General Heinrich von Vietinghoff) and SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Eugen Wenner (representing Waffen-SS General Karl Wolf) sign an unconditional instrument of surrender for all Axis powers forces in Italy, taking effect on May 2. Italian General Rodolfo Graziani orders the Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano forces under his command to lay down their arms.
Brazilian forces liberate the commune of Fornovo di Taro, Italy, from German forces.
Operation Manna: British Avro Lancaster bombers drop food into the Netherlands to prevent the starvation of the civilian population.
Adolf Hitler marries his longtime mistress Eva Braun in a closed civil ceremony in the Berlin Führerbunker.
April 30 – Death of Adolf Hitler: Adolf Hitler and his wife of one day, Eva Braun, commit suicide as the Red Army approaches the Führerbunker in Berlin. Karl Dönitz succeeds Hitler as President of Germany; Joseph Goebbels succeeds Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.

May

May – Interpol (being headquartered in Berlin) effectively ceases to exist (it is recreated on June 3, 1946).
May 1 – WWII:
Hamburg Radio announces that Hitler has died in battle, "fighting up to his last breath against Bolshevism."
Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda commit suicide after killing their six children. Karl Dönitz appoints Count Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk as the new Chancellor of Germany.
Troops of the Yugoslav 4th Army, together with the Slovene 9th Corpus NOV, enter Trieste.
Mass suicide in Demmin.
May 2 – WWII:
The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin. Soviet soldiers hoist the Red flag over the Reich Chancellery.
Prague liberated by Red Army in May 1945.
Lübeck is liberated by the British Army.
Surrender of Axis troops in Italy comes into effect.
Troops of the New Zealand Army 2nd Division enter Trieste a day after the Yugoslavs; the German Army in Trieste surrenders to the New Zealand Army.
Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg is evacuated at about this date.
Expatriate American poet Ezra Pound is arrested by the Italian resistance movement; released by them, on May 5 he turns himself in to the United States Army and is imprisoned as a traitor.
May 3 – WWII:
The prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland are sunk by the British Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and 120 members of his team surrender to U.S. forces (later going on to help to start the U.S. space program).
German Protestant theologian Gerhard Kittel is arrested by the French forces in Tübingen, Germany.
May 4 – WWII:
German surrender at Lüneburg Heath: The North German army surrenders unconditionally to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
Holland is liberated by British and Canadian troops.[10] German forces officially surrender one day later.
Denmark is liberated.[11] German forces officially surrender one day later.
The Holy Crown of Hungary is found by the United States Army 86th Infantry Division. The United States government keeps the crown in Fort Knox for safekeeping from the Soviets until it is returned to Hungary on 6 January 1978.
May 5 – WWII:
Prague uprising: Prague rises up against occupying Nazi forces.
The US 11th Armored Division liberates the prisoners of Mauthausen concentration camp, including Simon Wiesenthal.
American soldiers fighting in the Pacific theater listen to radio reports of Victory in Europe Day on May 8, 1945.
Canadian soldiers liberate the city of Amsterdam from Nazi occupation.
Admiral Karl Dönitz orders all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases.
A Japanese fire balloon kills five children and a woman, Elsie Mitchell, near Bly, Oregon, when it explodes as they drag it from the woods. They are the only people killed by an enemy attack on the American mainland during WWII.
May 6
WWII: Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") delivers her last propaganda broadcast to Allied troops (the first was on December 11, 1941).
Holocaust: Ebensee concentration camp in Austria is liberated by troops of the 80th Division (United States).
May 6–7 – The government of the Independent State of Croatia, the fascist puppet state established in the Croatian and Bosnian parts of occupied Yugoslavia, flees Zagreb for a location near Klagenfurt in Austria rather than fall into the hands of the Yugoslav Partisans, initiating the events of the Bleiburg repatriations.[12][13]
May 7 – WWII: General Alfred Jodl signs the unconditional German Instrument of Surrender at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war. The document takes effect the next day.
May 8 – WWII:
Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) as Nazi Germany surrenders, marking the end of WWII in Europe, with the final surrender being to the Soviets in Berlin, attended by representatives of the Western Powers.
Canadian troops move into Amsterdam, after German troops surrender.
Surrender of the Dodecanese is signed in Symi.
The British 8th Army, together with Slovene partisan troops and a motorized detachment of the Yugoslav 4th Army, arrives in Carinthia and Klagenfurt. The Croatian Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia are ordered by their commanders not to surrender to the Yugoslav Partisans but to attempt to retreat to Austria and surrender to the British, part of the events leading to the Bleiburg repatriations.
May 8–29 – Sétif and Guelma massacre: In Algeria, thousands die as French troops and released Italian POWs kill an estimated 6,000 to 40,000 Algerian citizens.

a black and white image of two Marines in their combat uniforms. One Marine is providing cover fire with his M1 Thompson submachinegun as the other with a Browning Automatic Rifle, prepares to break cover to move to a different position. There are bare sticks and rocks on the ground.
Marines of 1st Marine Division fighting on Okinawa, May 1945.

May 9 – WWII:
The Soviet Union marks V-E Day.
Hermann Göring is captured by the United States Army.
The Norwegian resistance movement in Oslo, Norway, arrests the traitor Vidkun Quisling.
The Red Army enters Prague.
General Alexander Löhr, Commander of German Army Group E near Topolšica, Slovenia, signs the capitulation of German occupation troops.
The German occupation of the Channel Islands ends with their liberation by British troops. Alderney, an annex of the Neuengamme concentration camp, is among the islands liberated.
May 12
Argentinian labour leader José Peter declares the Federación Obrera de la Industria de la Carne dissolved.
Rev. W. V. Awdry's children's book The Three Railway Engines, first of The Railway Series, is published in England.
May 14–15 – WWII – Battle of Poljana: The last battle of the War in Europe is fought at Poljana near Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia.
May 15 – WWII – Bleiburg tragedy (Croatian: "Way of the Cross"): Retreating troops of the Croatian Armed Forces of the former puppet Independent State of Croatia (intermingled with fleeing civilians) attempt to surrender to the British Army at Bleiburg but are directed to surrender to Yugoslav Partisans who open fire on them. The remainder, after orders are given by Josip Broz Tito, are force-marched through Croatia and Serbia, interned or massacred, with thousands dying.[14][15]
May 23 – President of Germany Karl Dönitz and Chancellor of Germany Count Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk are arrested by British forces at Flensburg. They are respectively the last German Head of state and Head of government until 1949.
May 23 – Heinrich Himmler, former head of the Nazi SS, commits suicide in British custody.
May 28 – William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") is captured. He is later charged with high treason in London for his English-language wartime broadcasts on German radio, convicted, and then hanged in January 1946.
May 29
German communists, led by Walter Ulbricht, arrive in Berlin.
Dutch painter Han van Meegeren is arrested for collaboration with the Nazis, but the paintings he had sold to Hermann Göring (Koch) are later found to be his fakes.
May 30 – The Iranian government demands that all Soviet and British troops leave the country.

June
Dwight Eisenhower and Georgy Zhukov, June 5, 1945.

June 1 – The British take over Lebanon and Syria.
June 5 – The Allied Control Council, military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power.
June 6 – King Haakon VII of Norway returns to Norway.
June 11
William Lyon Mackenzie King is re-elected as Canadian prime minister.
The Franck Committee recommends against a surprise nuclear bombing of Japan.[16]
June 12 – The Yugoslav Army leaves Trieste, leaving the New Zealand Army in control.
June 21 – WWII: The Battle of Okinawa ends with US occupation of the island until 1972.
June 24 – WWII: A victory parade is held in Red Square in Moscow.
June 25 – Seán T. O'Kelly is elected the second President of Ireland.
June 26 – The United Nations Charter is signed.
June 29 – Czechoslovakia cedes Carpathian Ruthenia to the Soviet Union.
June 30 – Distribution of John von Neumann's First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, containing the first published description of the logical design of a computer with stored-program and instruction data stored in the same address space within the memory (von Neumann architecture).

July
July 16: Trinity Test at night in New Mexico.

July 1 – WWII: Germany is divided between the Allied occupation forces.
July 5 – Australian Prime Minister John Curtin dies of a heart attack at age 60.
July 4 – The Brazilian cruiser Bahia is sunk by an accidentally induced explosion, killing more than 300 and stranding the survivors in shark-infested waters.
July 5 – WWII: The Philippines are declared liberated.
July 8 – WWII: Harry S. Truman is informed that Japan will talk peace if it can retain the reign of the Emperor.[16]
July 9 – A forest fire breaks out in the Tillamook Burn (the third in that area of Oregon since 1933).
July 15 – The Scott Morrison Award of Minor Hockey Excellence was first given; first recipient is Gordie Howe.
July 14 – Italy declares war on Japan.
July 16 – The Trinity Test, the first of an atomic bomb, using about six kilograms of plutonium, succeeds in unleashing an explosion equivalent to that of 19 kilotons of TNT.
July 16 – WWII: A train collision near Munich, Germany kills 102 war prisoners.
July 17–August 2 – WWII – Potsdam Conference: At Potsdam, the three main Allied leaders hold their final summit of the war.
July 21 – WWII: President Harry S. Truman approves the order for atomic bombs to be used against Japan.[16]
July 23 – WWII: French marshal Philippe Pétain, who headed the Vichy government during WWII, goes on trial for treason.
July 26 – Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after his Conservative Party is soundly defeated by the Labour Party in the 1945 general election. Clement Attlee becomes the new Prime Minister. It is the first time that Labour has governed Britain with a majority in the House of Commons.[17]
July 26 – The Potsdam Declaration demands Japan's unconditional surrender; Article 12 permitting Japan to retain the reign of the Emperor has been deleted by President Truman.[16]
July 27 – WWII: Bombing of Aomori – Two USAAF B-29s dropped a total of 60,000 leaflets on the city of Aomori, Japan, warning civilians of an air raid and urge them to leave immediately.
July 28 – An U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bomber crashes into the Empire State Building, killing 14 people, including all on board.
July 28 – WWII: Japan ambiguously rejects the Potsdam Declaration.[16]
July 29
The BBC Light Programme radio station is launched, aimed at mainstream light entertainment and music.
WWII: Bombing of Aomori: Aomori is firebombed by 63 USAAF B-29 heavy bombers, killing 1,767 civilians and destroying 18,045 homes.
July 30 – WWII: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis is hit and sunk by torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 in the Philippine Sea. Some 900 survivors jump into the sea and are adrift for up to four days. Nearly 600 die before help arrives. Captain Charles B. McVay III of the cruiser is later court-martialed and convicted.

August
August 9: The mushroom cloud from the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air.
September 2: Japan signs the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

August 6 – WWII: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima: A United States B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, drops an atomic bomb, codenamed "Little Boy", on Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 a.m. (local time).
August 7 – U.S. President Harry Truman announces the successful atomic bombing of Hiroshima while he is returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
August 8
The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States Senate, and this nation becomes the third to join the new international organization.
WWII: The Soviet Union declares war on Japan.
August 9 – WWII:
Atomic bombing of Nagasaki: A United States B-29 Bomber, Bockscar, drops an atomic bomb, codenamed "Fat Man", on Nagasaki, Japan, at 11:02 a.m. (local time).
The Soviet Union begins its army offensive against Japan in the northern part of the Japanese-held Chinese region of Manchuria.[18]
August 10 – WWII: Japan offers to surrender to the Allies, "provided this does not prejudice the sovereignty of the Emperor".
August 11 – WWII: The Allies reply to the Japanese surrender offer by saying that Emperor Hirohito will be subject to the authority of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces.
August 11–25 – Soviet troops complete occupation of Sakhalin.
August 13 – The Zionist World Congress approaches the British government to discuss the founding of the country of Israel.
August 14 – WWII: Emperor Hirohito accepts the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. His recorded announcement of this is smuggled out of the Tokyo Imperial Palace. At 19:00 hrs in Washington, D.C., U.S. President Harry S. Truman announces the Japanese surrender.
The August Revolution in Vietnam begins with the Viet Minh taking over the capital Hanoi who where assisted by the Japanese.
August 15
WWII: Gyokuon-hōsō: Emperor Hirohito's announcement of the unconditional surrender of Japan is broadcast on the radio a little after noon (Japan Standard Time). This is probably the first time an Emperor of Japan has been heard by the common people. Delivered in formal classical Japanese and without directly referring to surrender, the recorded speech is not immediately easily understood by ordinary people. The Allies call this day Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day). This ends the period of Japanese expansionism and begins the period of Occupation of Japan. Korea gains independence.
Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization founded as a specialized agency of the United Nations.
August 17
Philippines President José P. Laurel issues an Executive Proclamation putting an end to the Second Philippine Republic, thus ending to his term as President of the Philippines.
Proclamation of Indonesian Independence: Indonesian nationalists Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declare the independence of the Republic of Indonesia, with Sukarno as president, igniting the Indonesian National Revolution against the Dutch Empire.
The allegorical dystopian novella Animal Farm by George Orwell, a satire on Stalinism, is first published by Fredric Warburg in London.
August 19 – Chinese Civil War: Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek meet in Chongqing to discuss an end to hostilities between the Communists and the Nationalists.
August 30 – WWII: Vietnam's capital Hanoi is overthrown by the Viet Minh which ends the French occupation in what becomes North Vietnam and thus the southern provinces become South Vietnam. This ends the August Revolution.
August 31
WWII: Allied troops arrest German field marshal Walther von Brauchitsch.
A team at American Cyanamid's Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, New York, led by Yellapragada Subbarow, announces they have obtained folic acid in a pure crystalline form.[19] This vitamin is abundant in green leaf vegetables, liver, kidney, and yeast.[20]

September

September 2 – WWII ends:
Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita surrenders to Filipino and American forces at Kiangan, Ifugao.
The final official Japanese Instrument of Surrender is accepted by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz for the United States, and delegates from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, China, and others from a Japanese delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, on board the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
General Douglas MacArthur is given the title of Supreme Commander Allied Powers, and is also tasked with the occupation of Japan.[21]
September 2 – Democratic Republic of Viet Nam is officially established, by Ho Chi Minh.[21]
September 4 – WWII: Japanese forces surrender on Wake Island after hearing word of their country's surrender.
September 5
Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose", is arrested in Yokohama.
The Russian code clerk Igor Gouzenko comes forward with numerous documents implicating the Soviet Union in many spy rings in North America: both in the United States and in Canada.
September 8
American troops occupy southern Korea, while the Soviet Union occupies the north, with the dividing line being the 38th parallel of latitude. This arrangement proves to be the indirect beginning of a divided Korea which will lead to the Korean War in 1950.
Hideki Tōjō, Japanese prime minister during most of WWII, attempts suicide to avoid facing a war crimes tribunal.
September 9 – Chiang Kai-Shek officially accepts the Japanese capitulation at Nanking.[21]
September 10 – Vidkun Quisling is sentenced to death as a Nazi collaborator, in Norway.[21]
September 11
Radio Republik Indonesia starts broadcasting.
The Batu Lintang camp in Sarawak, Borneo is liberated by Australian forces.
September 12 – The Japanese Army formally surrenders to the British in Singapore.
September 18 – Typhoon Makurazaki in Japan kills 3,746 people.
September 20 – Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru demand that all British troops depart India.

October
October 24: The United Nations is formed. This was its flag. The modern version is slightly retouched.
October 18: Nuremberg trials begin, after Buchenwald closed.

October – Arthur C. Clarke puts forward the idea of a geosynchronous communications satellite in a Wireless World magazine article.
October 1–15 – Operation Backfire: Three A4 rockets are launched near Cuxhaven in order to show Allied forces the rocket with liquid fuel.
October 2– George Albert Smith becomes president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
October 3–10 – The Detroit Tigers win the World Series against the Chicago Cubs; the Cubs have not returned to the World Series since.
October 4 – The Partizan Belgrade sports society is founded in Belgrade, Serbia.
October 5 – A strike by the Set Decorator's Union in Hollywood results in a riot.
October 9 – Pierre Laval is sentenced to death for collaboration with the Nazis.[21]
October 14 – Czechoslovakia: A new provisional national assembly is elected.[21]
October 15 – WWII: Pierre Laval, the former premier of Vichy France, is shot to death by a firing squad for treason against France.
October 15–21 – The Fifth Pan-African Congress is held in Manchester.
October 16 – Food and Agriculture Organization established as a specialized agency of the United Nations.
October 17 – A massive number of people, headed for CGT, gather in the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina to demand Juan Perón's release. This is known to the Peronists as the Día de la lealtad (Loyalty Day) and considered the founding day of Peronism.
October 18 – Isaías Medina Angarita, president of Venezuela, is overthrown by a military coup.[21]
October 19 – Members of the Indonesian People's Army attack Anglo-Dutch forces in Indonesia.[21]
October 20 – Mongolians vote for independence from China.[21]
October 21 – Women's suffrage: Women are allowed to vote in France for the first time.
October 22 – Rómulo Betancourt is named provisional president of Venezuela.[21]
October 23 – Jackie Robinson signs a contract with the Montreal Royals baseball team.
October 24
The United Nations is founded by ratification of its Charter, by 29 nations.[21]
International Court of Justice ("World Court") established by the United Nations Charter.
The Norwegian Nazi leader Vidkun Quisling is shot to death by a firing squad for treason against Norway.[21]
October 25 – Getúlio Vargas is deposed as president in Brazil. José Linhares is named as temporary president.[21]
October 27 – Indonesian separatists riot and fight Dutch and British security forces.
October 29
Getúlio Vargas resigns as the president of Brazil.
At Gimbels Department Store in New York City, the first ballpoint pens go on sale at $12.50 each.
October 30 – The undivided country of India joins the United Nations. Pakistan is formed and joins later.

November

November 1
International Labour Organization's new constitution comes into effect.
John H. Johnson publishes the first issue of the magazine Ebony.
Telechron introduces the model 8H59 Musalarm, the first clock radio.
November 5 – Colombia joins the United Nations.
November 6 – Indonesians reject an offer of autonomy from the Dutch.[21]
November 9 – Soo bahk do Moo Duk Kwan is founded.
November 11 – Marshal Josip Broz Tito and the People's Front win a deciding majority (85%) in the Yugoslavian assembly.[21]
November 15
Harry S. Truman, Clement Attlee, and Mackenzie King share nuclear information with the U.N. and call for a United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.[16][21]
An offensive is begun in Manchuria by the Chinese Nationalists against further infiltration by the Chinese Communists.[21]
November 16
Charles de Gaulle is unanimously elected president, of France, by the provisional government.[21]
Cold War: The United States controversially imports 88 German scientists to help in the production of rocket technology.
The Friendly Ghost, the first Noveltoon featuring Casper is released.
The motion picture The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland, is released. The most realistic film portrayal of alcoholism up to this time, it wins several Academy Awards in the following year.
Yeshiva College is founded in New York City.
November 18 – The Tudeh party starts a bloodless coup and will form Azerbaijan within days. Soviet troops prevent Iranian troops from getting involved.
November 20 – The Nuremberg Trials begin: Trials against 22 Nazi war criminals of WWII start at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.[21]
November 26 – U.S. Ambassador to China Patrick J. Hurley resigns after he is unable to broker a deal between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse Tung.[21]
November 28 – An earthquake in Balochistan (Pakistan) causes a tsunami and kills 4,000.
November 29
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is declared (this day is celebrated as Republic Day until the 1990s). Marshal Tito is named president.
Assembly of the world's first general purpose electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC), is completed in the United States, covering 1,800 square feet (170 m2) of floor space, and the first set of calculations is run on it.

December

December 2
General Eurico Gaspar Dutra is elected president of Brazil.
French banks (Banque de France, BNCI, CNEP, Crédit Lyonnais, and Société Générale) nationalized.
December 3 – Communist demonstrations in Athens presage the Greek Civil War.
December 4 – By a vote of 65–7, the United States Senate approves the entry of the United States into the United Nations.
December 5 – A flight of United States Navy TBF Avenger torpedo bombers known as Flight 19 disappears on a training exercise from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale.
December 21 – General George S. Patton dies from injuries sustained in a car accident on December 9 in Germany.
December 27
Twenty-eight nations sign an agreement creating the World Bank.
Terror strikes are carried out against British military bases in Palestine.

Date unknown

A team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory led by Charles Coryell discovers chemical element 61, the only one still missing between 1 and 96 on the periodic table, which they will name promethium.[22] Found by analysis of fission products of irradiated uranium fuel, its discovery is not made public until 1947.
The first geothermal milk pasteurization is done in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
The Estonian flag disappears. The flag was eventually raised again on 24 February 1989.

Births
January
Rod Stewart
Tom Selleck

January 3
Stephen Stills, American rock singer and songwriter
Abbas Khattak, Commander of the Pakistan Air Force
January 4 – Richard R. Schrock, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
January 10
Jennifer Moss, British actress (d. 2006)
Rod Stewart, British rock singer
January 12 – André Bicaba, Burkinabé sprinter
January 14 – Einar Hákonarson, Icelandic painter
January 15
Vince Foster, deputy White House counsel during the first term of President Bill Clinton (d. 1993)
Princess Michael of Kent, member of the British Royal Family
January 20 – Robert Olen Butler, American writer
January 25 – Leigh Taylor-Young, American actress
January 26 – Jacqueline du Pré, English cellist (d. 1987)
January 27 – Harold Cardinal, Cree political leader, writer, and lawyer (d. 2005)
January 29
Jim Nicholson, Northern Irish politician
Tom Selleck, American actor
January 30 – Michael Dorris, American author (d. 1997)
January 31 – Joseph Kosuth, American artist

February
Bob Marley
Mia Farrow
Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein
Brenda Fricker

February 2 – David D. Friedman, American economist
February 3
Bob Griese, American football player
Philip Waruinge, Kenyan boxer
February 6 – Bob Marley, Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter and musician (ɗ. 1981)
February 7 – Gerald Davies, Welsh rugby player
February 9 – Mia Farrow, American actress
February 12 – Maud Adams, Swedish actress
February 14 – Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein
February 15 – Douglas Hofstadter, American cognitive scientist
February 16 – Jeremy Bulloch, English actor
February 17 – Brenda Fricker, Irish actress
February 20 – Henry Polic II, American actor (d. 2013)
February 24 – Barry Bostwick, American actor
February 25
Elkie Brooks, English singer
Roy Saari, American swimmer
February 26 – Marta Kristen, Norwegian actress
February 27 – Carl Anderson, American singer and actor (d. 2004)
February 28 – Bubba Smith, American football player and actor (d. 2011)

March
Eric Clapton

March 1 – Dirk Benedict, American actor
March 4
Dieter Meier, Swiss singer and children's writer
Tommy Svensson, Swedish football manager and player
Gary Williams, American basketball coach
March 7
John Heard, American actor
Arthur Lee, American musician
March 8
Jim Chapman, American politician
Micky Dolenz, American actor, director and rock musician (The Monkees)
Jay Ingram, Canadian television host, author and journalist
Anselm Kiefer, German painter
March 9 – Dennis Rader, American serial killer
March 13 – Anatoly Fomenko, Russian mathematician
March 15 – A. K. Faezul Huq, Bangladeshi lawyer and politician (d. 2007)
March 17 – Katri Helena, Finnish singer
March 19 – Cem Karaca, Turkish musician (d. 2004)
March 20
Jay Ingram, Canadian television host, author and journalist
Pat Riley, American basketball coach
March 26
Mikhail Voronin, Russian gymnast (d. 2004)
March 29
Walt Frazier, American basketball player
Willem Ruis, Dutch game show host (d. 1986)
March 30 – Eric Clapton, English rock guitarist
March 31 – Gabe Kaplan, American actor, comedian, and professional poker player

April

April 2 – Linda Hunt, American actress
April 4 – Daniel Cohn-Bendit, French activist
April 7 – Werner Schroeter, German film director
April 9 – Peter Gammons, American baseball sportswriter
April 12 – Lee Jong-wook, Korean Director-General of the World Health Organization (d. 2006)
April 13
Tony Dow, American actor, producer, and director (Leave It to Beaver)
Lowell George, American rock musician (Little Feat)
Bob Kalsu, American football player (d. 1970)
April 14 – Ritchie Blackmore, English rock guitarist (Deep Purple)
April 21 – Diana Darvey, British actress, singer and dancer (d. 2000)
April 24 – Doug Clifford, American drummer (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
April 25
Stu Cook, American bassist (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Björn Ulvaeus, Swedish rock songwriter (ABBA)
April 27 – August Wilson, American playwright (d. 2005)
April 29
Hugh Hopper, British musician (d. 2009)
Tammi Terrell, American soul singer (d. 1970)

May
Laurent Gbagbo

May 1 – Rita Coolidge, American pop singer
May 2 – Sarah Weddington, American attorney
May 4 – Narasimhan Ram, Indian journalist
May 5 – Kurt Loder, American film critic, author, and television personality
May 6
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, American musician
Bob Seger, American rock singer
May 8 – Keith Jarrett, American musician
May 9 – Jupp Heynckes, German football manager and former footballer
May 14 – Yochanan Vollach, Israeli footballer and president of Maccabi Haifa, CEO
May 15 – Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza, heir to the Portuguese crown
May 16 – Nicky Chinn, English rock songwriter (The Sweet, Suzi Quatro)
May 17 – Tony Roche, Australian tennis player
May 19 – Pete Townshend, English rock guitarist and lyricist (The Who)
May 21
Richard Hatch, American actor
Ernst Messerschmid, German physicist and astronaut
May 22 – Victoria Wyndham, American actress (Another World)
May 23
Lauren Chapin, American child actress and evangelist
Doris Mae Oulton, Canadian community developer
May 24 – Priscilla Presley, American actress and businesswoman
May 28 – John Fogerty, American rock singer (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
May 29 – Gary Brooker, English pianist and singer (Procol Harum)
May 30 – Gladys Horton, American singer (The Marvelettes) (d. 2011)
May 31
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, German film director (d. 1982)
Laurent Gbagbo, President of Côte d'Ivoire

June
Wolfgang Schüssel
Aung San Suu Kyi
Radovan Karadžić

June 1 – Frederica von Stade, American mezzo-soprano
June 2 – Jon Peters, American film producer
June 3 – Hale Irwin, American professional golfer
June 4
Anthony Braxton, American composer and musical instrumentalist
Gordon Waller, Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist (Peter and Gordon) (d. 2009)
June 5
John Carlos, American athlete
Théophile Georges Kassab, Syrian Roman Catholic archbishop (d. 2013)
Don Reid, American singer (The Statler Brothers)
June 6 – David Dukes, American actor (d. 2000)
June 7 – Wolfgang Schüssel, Chancellor of Austria
June 8 – Steven Fromholz, American singer-songwriter (d. 2014)
June 9 – Nike Wagner, German woman of the theater
June 10 – Benny Gallagher, Scottish singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, half of the duo Gallagher and Lyle
June 11 – Adrienne Barbeau, American actress, television personality and author
June 12 – Pat Jennings, Northern Irish footballer player
June 13 – Rodney P. Rempt, American admiral
June 14 – Jörg Immendorff, German painter
June 15 – Françoise Chandernagor, French writer
June 16
Claire Alexander, Canadian ice hockey player
Ivan Lins, Latin Grammy-winning Brazilian musician
June 17
P. D. T. Acharya, Secretary General Lok Sabha
Frank Ashmore, American actor
Art Bell, American radio talk show host
Ken Livingstone, British politician
Eddy Merckx, Belgian cyclist
June 19
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar poet, politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
Radovan Karadžić, Serbian politician
Greil Marcus, American music journalist and cultural critic
June 20 – Anne Murray, Canadian singer
June 24 – George Pataki, Governor of New York
June 25 – Carly Simon, American singer-songwriter
June 26 – Dwight York, American musician, fashion consultant, cult leader, and child molester
June 28 – David Knights, British bassist (Procol Harum)
June 29 – Chandrika Kumaratunga, President of Sri Lanka

July
Debbie Harry
Helen Mirren

July 1 – Debbie Harry, American rock singer (Blondie)
July 5 – Lu Sheng-yen, leader of the True Buddha School
July 6 – Burt Ward, American actor
July 7 – Matti Salminen, Finnish bass singer
July 7 – Michael Ancram, British politician
July 8 – Micheline Calmy-Rey, Swiss Federal Councilor
July 9 – Dean Koontz, American writer
July 10 – Ron Glass, American actor
July 11 – Richard Wesley, American playwright and screenwriter
July 15 – Jürgen Möllemann, German politician (d. 2003)
July 16 – Victor Sloan, Irish artist
July 17 – Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia
July 20
Kim Carnes, American singer-songwriter
Larry Craig, U.S. senator from Idaho
July 21 – John Lowe, English darts player
July 24 – Azim Premji, Indian businessman
July 26 – Dame Helen Mirren, British actress
July 28 – Jim Davis, American cartoonist
July 30 – Roger Dobkowitz, American game show producer

August
Steve Martin
Vince McMahon
Van Morrison

August 1 – Douglas D. Osheroff, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
August 2 – Joanna Cassidy, American actress
August 4 – Alan Mulally, American businessman, current CEO of the Ford Motor Company
August 5
Loni Anderson, American actress
Ja'net Dubois, American actress and singer
August 6 – Ron Jones, British director (d. 1993)
August 7 – Alan Page, American football player
August 9 – Posy Simmonds, English cartoonist
August 14
Steve Martin, American actor and comedian
Eliana Pittman, Brazilian singer and actress
Wim Wenders, German film director and producer
August 19 – Ian Gillan, English rock singer (Deep Purple)
August 22 – Ron Dante, American rock singer, songwriter, and record producer (The Archies)
August 24 – Vincent K. McMahon, American professional wrestling promoter, chairman and CEO of WWE
August 25 – Daniel Hulet, Belgian cartoonist (d. 2011)
August 26 – Tom Ridge, American politician
August 31
Van Morrison, Irish rock musician
Itzhak Perlman, Israeli-American violinist and conductor

September
Franz Beckenbauer
Ehud Olmert

September 1 – Mustafa Balel, Turkish writer
September 4 – Danny Gatton, American guitarist (d. 1994)
September 5 – Al Stewart, Scottish singer-songwriter
September 7 – Jacques Lemaire, Canadian ice hockey coach
September 8
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, American musician (Grateful Dead) (d. 1973)
Rogatien Vachon, Canadian ice hockey player
Kelly Groucutt, British Bassist (Electric Light Orchestra) (d. 2009)
September 9 – Doug Ingle, American songwriter and singer for Iron Butterfly
September 10 – José Feliciano, Puerto Rican singer
September 11 – Franz Beckenbauer, German footballer and coach
September 14 – Martin Tyler, British sports broadcaster
September 15 – Jessye Norman, American soprano
September 16 – Pat Stevens, American voice actress (d. 2010)
September 17 – Phil Jackson, American basketball coach
September 19 – Randolph Mantooth, American actor and motivational speaker
September 20
Candy Spelling, American author and socialite
Laurie Spiegel, American electronic composer
September 21
Shaw Clifton, General of the Salvation Army
Kay Ryan, American poet
September 23 – Paul Petersen, child actor and advocate of other child actors
September 25 – Dee Dee Warwick, American singer (d. 2008)
September 26 – Bryan Ferry, English singer-songwriter and musician (Roxy Music)
September 27
Max Boyce, Welsh comedian and singer
Jack Goldstein, Canadian artist (d. 2003)
September 29 – Nadezhda Chizhova, Russian athlete
September 30 – Ehud Olmert, 12th Prime Minister of Israel

October
John Lithgow
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva

October 1 – Donny Hathaway, American soul singer-songwriter (d. 1979)
October 2 – Don McLean, American rock singer-songwriter
October 3
Kay Baxter, American bodybuilder (d. 1988)
Viktor Saneyev, Soviet athlete
October 4 – Clifton Davis, American actor
October 5 – Brian Connolly, Scottish musician
October 6 – Ivan Graziani, Italian singer-songwriter (d. 1997)
October 12
Aurore Clément, French actress
Dusty Rhodes, American professional wrestler
October 13 – Susan Stafford, American television presenter
October 15 – Jim Palmer, American baseball player
October 18
Huell Howser, host of California's Gold. (d. 2013)
Yıldo, Turkish showman, footballer
October 19 – John Lithgow, American actor
October 20 – George Wyner, American actor
October 22 – Yvan Ponton, Canadian actor and sportscaster
October 24 – Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education
October 25
David Schramm, American astrophysicist (d. 1997)
Peter Ledger, Australian artist (d. 1994)
October 27
Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil
Carrie Snodgress, American actress (d. 2004)
October 29 – Melba Moore, American singer and actress
October 29 – Daniel Albright, American literary critic and musicologist
October 30 – Henry Winkler, American actor, producer and director
October 31 – Brian Doyle-Murray, American actor

November
Goldie Hawn

November 3 – Gerd Müller, German footballer
November 5 – Jacques Lanctôt, Canadian terrorist
November 7
Bob Englehart, American editorial cartoonist
Waljinah, Javanese singer
November 12
Michael Bishop, American author
Tracy Kidder, American journalist and author
Neil Young, Canadian singer-songwriter and musician
November 15 – Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Norwegian rock singer (ABBA)
November 18
Wilma Mankiller, Chief of the Cherokee Nation (d. 2010)
Mahinda Rajapaksa, President of Sri Lanka
November 21 – Goldie Hawn, American actress
November 23 – Jerry Harris, American sculptor
November 26
Daniel Davis, American actor
John McVie, English rock musician (Fleetwood Mac)
November 27 – Barbara Anderson, American actress
November 30 – Mary Millington, British porn star (d. 1979)

December

December 1 – Bette Midler, American actress, comedienne and singer
December 2 – Charles "Tex" Watson, American prisoner
December 7 – Clive Russell, English actor
December 9 – Michael Nouri, American actor
December 13 – Kathy Garver, American actress, author and online radio hostess
December 16 – Patti Deutsch, American voice actress
December 17
Ernie Hudson, American actor
Chris Matthews, American news anchor
December 19 – Elaine Joyce, American actress and game show panelist
December 20
Peter Criss, American rock drummer (KISS)
Sivakant Tiwari, senior legal officer of the Singapore Legal Service (d. 2010)
December 22 – Diane Sawyer, American news journalist
December 24
Lemmy Kilmister, English rock singer and bassist (Motörhead)
Nicholas Meyer, American screenwriter, producer, director and novelist
December 25 – Gary Sandy, American actor (WKRP in Cincinnati)
December 26 – John Walsh, American media personality
December 28 – Birendra of Nepal (d. 2001)
December 30 – Davy Jones, English actor and singer (The Monkees) (d. 2012)
December 31
Barbara Carrera, Nicaraguan-born American actress
Vernon Wells (actor), Australian film and television actor

Deaths
January

January 2 – Bertram Ramsay, British admiral (b. 1883)
January 3 – Edgar Cayce, American so-called "psychic" (b. 1877)
January 6
Josefa Llanes Escoda, Filipino advocate of women's suffrage and founder of the Girl Scouts of the Philippines (b. 1898)
Vladimir Vernadsky, Soviet mineralogist and geochemist (b. 1863)
January 7 – Thomas McGuire, American World War II fighter ace (b. 1920)
January 9
Jüri Uluots, Estonian statesman (b. 1890)
Dennis O'Neill, young victim of the Care Systems (b. 1932)
January 21 – Archibald Murray, British Army general (b. 1860)
January 22 - Else Lasker-Schüler, German poet and author (b. 1869)
January 23 – Newton E. Mason, United States Navy rear admiral (b. 1850)
January 30 – William Goodenough, British admiral (b. 1867)
January 31 – Eddie Slovik, American soldier (executed) (b. 1920)

February

February 1 – Prince Kiril of Bulgaria (b. 1895)
February 2
Adolf Brand, German writer (b. 1874)
Joe Hunt, American tennis champion (b. 1919)
Bogdan Filov, 28th Prime Minister of Bulgaria (executed) (b. 1883)
February 3 – Roland Freisler, Nazi German judge (b. 1893)
February 5
Denise Bloch, French World War II heroine (executed) (b. 1915)
Lilian Rolfe, French World War II heroine (executed) (b. 1914)
Violette Szabo, French World War II heroine (executed) (b. 1921)
February 10 – Anacleto Díaz, Filipino jurist (murdered during the Battle of Manila) (b. 1878)
February 11 – Al Dubin, Swiss songwriter (b. 1891)
February 12 – Antonio Villa-Real, Filipino jurist (murdered during the Battle of Manila) (b. 1878)
February 15 – Helmut Möckel, German youth leader and politician (b. 1909)
February 17 – Gabrielle Weidner, Belgian World War II heroine (b. 1914)
February 21 – Eric Liddell, Scottish runner (b. 1902)
February 25 – Mário de Andrade, Brazilian writer and photographer (b. 1893)

March

March – Margot Frank (b. 1926) and her younger sister Anne Frank, German-born Jewish diarist (typhus) (b. 1929)
March 2 – Emily Carr, Canadian artist (b. 1871)
March 3 – Aleksandra Samusenko, Soviet WWII tank commander (b. 1922)
March 4
Lucille La Verne, American actress (b. 1872)
Mark Sandrich, American director (b. 1900)
March 5 – Albert Richards, British war artist (b. 1919)
March 16 – Börries von Münchhausen, German poet (b. 1874)
March 18 – William Grover-Williams, French race car driver and war hero (b. 1903)
March 19 – Friedrich Fromm, German Nazi official (b. 1888)
March 20 – Lord Alfred Douglas, English poet (b. 1870)
March 22
Eliyahu Bet-Zuri, Israeli assassin (executed) (b. 1922)
Eliyahu Hakim, Israeli assassin (executed) (b. 1925)
March 23 – Elisabeth de Rothschild, French WWII heroine (executed) (b. 1902)
March 26
David Lloyd George, Welsh Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1863)
Tadamichi Kuribayashi, Imperial Japanese Army general (b. 1891)
March 29 – Ferenc Csik, Hungarian swimmer (b. 1913)
March 30 – Élise Rivet, French nun and war heroine (b. 1890)
March 31
Hans Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881)
Harriet Boyd-Hawes, American archaeologist (b. 1871)
Torgny Segerstedt, Swedish newspaper editor and publicist (b. 1876)

April
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Benito Mussolini
Adolf Hitler

April – Auguste van Pels, German-Jewish housemate of Anne Frank (b. 1900)
April 5 – Huldreich Georg Früh, Swiss composer (b. 1903)
April 7 – Elizabeth Bibesco, British writer (b. 1897) (pneumonia)
April 9
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian (hanged) (b. 1906)
Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German Abwehr (hanged) (b. 1887)
April 10
Gloria Dickson, American actress (b. 1917)
H.N. Werkman, Dutch artist and printer (executed) (b. 1882)
Walther Wever, German fighter ace (b. 1923)
April 12 – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States (b. 1882)
April 18
Arthur Andrew Cipriani, Trinidad and Tobago labour leader (b. 1875)
Ernie Pyle, American journalist (sniper fire) (b. 1900)
William, Prince of Albania (b. 1876)
April 21 – Walter Model, German field marshal (b. 1891)
April 22 – Käthe Kollwitz, German artist (b. 1867)
April 24 – Ernst-Robert Grawitz, German Reichsphysician (S.S. and Police) in the Third Reich (b. 1899)
April 27 – Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, Turkish author (b. 1867)
April 28
Benito Mussolini, Italian Fascist dictator (executed) (b. 1883)
Hermann Fegelein, German Nazi general (b. 1906)
April 29 – Malcolm McGregor, American actor (b. 1892)
April 30
Adolf Hitler, German Nazi dictator (suicide) (b. 1889)
Eva Braun, German wife of Adolf Hitler (suicide) (b. 1912)
William Darby, American creator of the U.S. Army Rangers (b. 1911)
Luisa Ferida, Italian actress (b. 1914) (executed)

May
Joseph Goebbels

May 1
Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi propagandist (suicide) (b. 1897)
Magda Goebbels, wife of Joseph Goebbels (suicide) (b. 1901)
May 2 – Martin Bormann, German Nazi leader (b. 1900)
May 4 – Fedor von Bock, German field marshal (b. 1880)
May 5 – Peter van Pels, German-Jewish love interest of diarist Anne Frank (b. 1926)
May 8
Ernst-Günther Baade, German general (b. 1897) (gangrene)
Wilhelm Rediess, SS and Police Leader of Nazi-occupied Norway (suicide) (b. 1900)
Josef Terboven, Reichskommissar of Nazi-occupied Norway (suicide) (b. 1898)
Bernhard Rust, Education Minister of Nazi Germany (suicide) (b. 1883)
May 11 – Kiyoshi Ogawa, Japanese kamikaze pilot (born 1922)
May 14 – Heber J. Grant, 7th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1856)
May 15 – Charles Williams, British author (b. 1886)
May 17 – Bobby Hutchins, Our Gang films child actor (b. 1925)
May 18 – William Joseph Simmons, American founder of the second KKK (b. 1880)
May 19 – Philipp Bouhler, German Nazi leader (b. 1899)
May 23 – Heinrich Himmler, German head of the SS (suicide) (b. 1900)
May 24 – Robert Ritter von Greim, German field marshal (suicide) (b. 1892)
May 31 – Odilo Globocnik, Austrian Nazi leader (suicide) (b. 1904)

June

June 8 – Robert Desnos, French poet and resistance fighter (b. 1900)
June 15 – Nikola Avramov, Bulgarian painter (b. 1897)
June 16
Henry Bellamann, American writer (b. 1882)
Nikolai Berzarin, Soviet Red Army general (b. 1904)
Aris Velouchiotis, Greek WW II Resistance leader (b. 1905)
June 18 – Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., American general, KIA on Okinawa (b. 1886)
June 23 – Giuseppina Tuissi, Italian resistance member (b. 1923)

July

July 5 – John Curtin, 14th Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1885)
July 12 – Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, German field marshal (b. 1895)
July 13 – Alla Nazimova, Russian actress (b. 1879)
July 16 – Addison Randall, American actor (b. 1906)
July 17 – Ernst Busch, German field marshal (b. 1885)
July 20 – Paul Valéry, French poet (b. 1871)
July 28 – Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith (b. 1864)
July 31 – Artemio Ricarte, Filipino general (b. 1866)

August

August 2 – Pietro Mascagni, Italian composer (b. 1863)
August 9 – Harry Hillman, American athlete (b. 1881)
August 10 – Robert Goddard, American rocket scientist (b. 1882)
August 15
Korechika Anami, Japanese general (b. 1887)
Matome Ugaki, Japanese admiral (b. 1890)
August 16 – Takijirō Ōnishi, Japanese admiral (b. 1891)
August 18 – Subhas Chandra Bose, Indian political leader (b. 1897)
August 19 – Tomás Burgos, Chilean philanthropist (b.1875)
August 25 – Willis Augustus Lee, American admiral (b. 1888)
August 26 – Franz Werfel, Austrian writer (b. 1890)
August 31 – Stefan Banach, Polish mathematician (b. 1892)

September

September 1 – Frank Craven, American actor (b. 1881)
September 6 – John S. McCain, Sr., American admiral (b. 1884)
September 12 – Sugiyama Hajime, Japanese general (b. 1880)
September 15 – Anton Webern, Austrian composer (b. 1883)
September 16 – John McCormack, Irish tenor (b. 1884)
September 20
Jack Thayer, Titanic survivor (b. 1894)
Eduard Wirths, German doctor, chief SS doctor at Auschwitz concentration camp (suicide) (b. 1909)
September 24 – Johannes Hans Geiger, German physicist and inventor (b. 1882)
September 26
Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer (b. 1881)
A. Peter Dewey, first American casualty in Vietnam (b. 1916)

October
Pierre Laval

October 10 – Joseph Darnand, Vichy France politician (executed) (b. 1897)
October 13 – Milton S. Hershey, American chocolate tycoon (b. 1857)
October 15 – Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France (executed) (b. 1883)
October 19
Plutarco Elías Calles, President of Mexico (b. 1877)
N.C. Wyeth, American illustrator (b. 1882)
October 21 – Henry Armetta, Italian actor (b. 1888)
October 24 – Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian traitor (executed) (b. 1887)
October 25 – Robert Ley, German Nazi politician (suicide) (b. 1890)
October 26 – Paul Pelliot, French explorer (b. 1878)
October 28 – Gilbert Emery, American actor (b. 1875)
October 31 – Henry Ainley, English actor (b. 1879)

November

November 7 – Gus Edwards, American songwriter (b. 1879)
November 8 – August von Mackensen, German field marshal (b. 1849)
November 11 – Jerome Kern, American composer (b. 1885)
November 16 – Sigurður Eggerz, Prime Minister of Iceland during World War I (b. 1875)
November 20 – Francis William Aston, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877)
November 21
Ellen Glasgow, American novelist (b. 1873)
Robert Benchley, American humorist, theater critic, and actor (b. 1889)
Alexander Patch, United States Army lieutenant general, World War II army commander (b. 1889)
November 23 – Charles Armijo Woodruff, 11th Governor of American Samoa (b. 1884)
November 25 – Doris Keane, American stage actress (b. 1881)
November 28 – Dwight F. Davis, American tennis player (b. 1879)
December 4 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1866)

December
George S. Patton

December 4 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, American biologist, geneticist and embryologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology (b. 1866)
December 5 – Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1864)
December 13
Juana Bormann, Nazi concentration camp guard (executed) (b. 1893)
Irma Grese, warden at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (executed) (b. 1923)
Josef Kramer, commandant of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp (executed) (b. 1906)
Elisabeth Volkenrath, supervisor at Nazi concentration camps (executed) (b. 1919)
December 14 – Forrester Harvey, Irish actor (b. 1884)
December 16 – Fumimaro Konoe, Prime Minister of Japan (suicide) (b. 1891)
December 21 – George S. Patton, U.S. general (car accident) (b. 1885)
December 22 – Otto Neurath, Austrian philosopher and political economist (b. 1892)
December 25 – Duy Tan, emperor of Vietnam (b. 1899)
December 26 – Roger Keyes, 1st Baron Keyes, British admiral (b. 1872)
December 28 – Theodore Dreiser, American author (b. 1871)


TL;DR WWII Ended

[Atreyu]

Holy gawd what are you people doing?!

1946

[[RUS] Vlad01]

Fucking, it's 1946 now.

1 year went after Soviets won a war.