Timeline of World War II (1945) - April 1945

April 1945
1st
15th
1: U.S. troops start Operation Iceberg, which is the Battle of Okinawa. It would have been a leaping off base for a mainland invasion.
1: Americans retake Legaspi, Albay in the eastern Philippines was helping the Philippine Commonwealth troops and Bicolano guerillas, one of the original Japanese landing sites in December,1941.
2: Soviets launch Vienna Offensive against German forces in and around the Austrian capital city.
2: German armies are surrounded in the Ruhr region.
4: Bratislava, the capital of the Slovak Republic, is overrun by advancing Soviet forces. The remaining members of Prime Minister Jozef Tiso's pro-German government fled to Austria.
4: Ohrdruf death camp is liberated by the Allies.
5: Po Valley Campaign begins in northern Italy.
7: The Japanese battleship Yamato is sunk in the North of Okinawa as the Japanese make their last major naval operation.
9: Battle of Königsberg ends in Soviet victory.
9: A heavy bombing at Kiel by the RAF destroys the last two major German warships.
9: Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is executed at Flossenburg prison.
10: Buchenwald concentration camp liberated by American forces.
11: Spain breaks diplomatic relations with Japan.
11: Japanese kamikaze attacks on American naval ships continue at Okinawa; the carrier Enterprise and the battleship Missouri are hit heavily.
12: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies suddenly. Harry S. Truman becomes president of the United States.
13: Vienna Offensive ends with Soviet victory.
14: Large-scale firebombing of Tokyo.
15: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated by the British Army.
16: The Battle of the Seelow Heights and the Battle of the Oder-Neisse begin as the Soviets continue to advance towards the city of Berlin.
18: Ernie Pyle, famed war correspondent for the GI's, is killed by a sniper on Ie Shima, a small island near Okinawa.
19: Switzerland closes its borders with Germany (and former Austria).
19: Allies continue their sweep toward the Po Valley.
19: The Soviet advance towards the city of Berlin continues and soon reach the suburbs.
20: Hitler celebrates his 56th birthday in the bunker in Berlin; reports are that he is in an unhealthy state, nervous, and depressed.
21: Soviet forces under Georgiy Zhukov (1st Belorussian Front), Konstantin Rokossovskiy (2nd Belorussian Front), and Ivan Konev (1st Ukrainian Front) launch assaults on the German forces in and around the city of Berlin as the opening stages of the Battle of Berlin.
21: Hitler ordered SS-General Felix Steiner to attack the 1st Belorussian Front and destroy it. The ragtag units of "Army Detachment Steiner" are not fully manned.
22: Hitler is informed late in the day that, with the approval of Gotthard Heinrici, Steiner's attack was never launched. Instead, Steiner's forces were authorised to retreat.
22: In response to the news concerning Steiner, Hitler launches a furious tirade against the perceived treachery and incompetence of his military commanders in front of Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Krebs, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Burgdorf, and Martin Bormann. Hitler's tirade culminates in an oath to stay in Berlin to head up the defence of the city.
22: Hitler ordered German General Walther Wenck to attack towards Berlin with his Twelfth Army, link up with the Ninth Army of General Theodor Busse, and relieve the city. Wenck launched an attack, but it came to nothing.
23: Hermann Göring sends a radiogram to Hitler's bunker, asking to be declared Hitler's successor. He proclaims that if he gets no response by 10 PM, he will assume Hitler is incapacitated and assume leadership of the Reich. Furious, Hitler strips him of all his offices and expels him from the Nazi Party.
23: Albert Speer makes one last visit to Hitler, informing him that he ignored the Nero Decree for scorched earth.
24: Meanwhile, Himmler, ignoring the orders of Hitler, makes a secret surrender offer to the Allies, (led by Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Red Cross) provided that the Red Army is not involved. The offer is rejected; when Hitler hears of Himmler's betrayal, he orders him shot.
24: Forces of the 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front link up in the initial encirclement of Berlin.
24: Allies encircle last German armies near Bologna, and the Italian war in effect comes to an end.
25: Elbe Day: First contact between Soviet and American troops at the river Elbe, near Torgau in Germany.
26: Hitler summons Field Marshal Robert Ritter von Greim from Munich to Berlin to take over command of the Luftwaffe from Göring. While flying into Berlin, von Greim is seriously wounded by Soviet anti-aircraft fire.
27: The encirclement of German forces in Berlin is completed by the 1st Belorussian Front and the 1st Ukrainian Front.
28: Head of State for the Italian Social Republic, Benito Mussolini, heavily disguised, is captured in northern Italy while trying to escape. Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, are shot and hanged in Milan the next day. Other members of his puppet government are also executed by Italian partisans and their bodies put on display in Milan.
29: Dachau concentration camp is liberated by the U.S. 7th Army. All forces in Italy officially surrender and a ceasefire is declared.
29: Allied air forces commence Operations Manna and Chowhound, providing food aid to the Netherlands under a truce made with occupying German forces.
29: Hitler marries his companion Eva Braun.
30: Hitler and his wife commit suicide, he by a combination of poison and a gunshot. Before he dies Adolf Hitler dictates his last will and testament. In it Joseph Goebbels is appointed Reich Chancellor and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz is appointed Reich President.

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