April 1945

April 6, 1945 (Friday)

• The Allies began Operation Grapeshot, the Spring offensive in Italy.
• The Battle of Slater's Knoll ended in decisive Australian victory on Bougainville Island.
• Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze was beached at Amoy after an attack by American B-25s.
• American destroyers
  Witter
  were all hit by Japanese kamikaze attacks off Okinawa. Bush and Colhoun were sunk while Leutze and Necomb were subsequently declared constructive total losses.
• Died:
  Leon Feldhendler
  , 34, Polish Jewish resistance fighter (shot through the door of his home by an unknown assailant)

April 7, 1945 (Saturday)

• Operation Ten-Go: The Japanese battleship Yamato and nine other warships launched a suicide attack on Allied forces engaged in the Battle of Okinawa. Yamato was bombed, torpedoed and sunk by U.S. Navy aircraft south of Kyushu with the loss of 2,055 of 2,332 crew. Five other Japanese warships were sunk by American aircraft.
• The Allies began Operation Amherst, a Free French and British Special Air Service attack with the goal of capturing Dutch canals, bridges and airfields intact.
• Germany sent out 120 student pilots to face 1,000 American bomber planes in a suicide operation with the objective of ramming their planes into the U.S. aircraft and then parachuting to safety. Only a few of the pilots managed to hit the bombers and three-quarters of the Luftwaffe pilots were shot down. It was the Sonderkommando Elbe group's first and last mission.^[6]
• Kantarō Suzuki replaced Kuniaki Koiso as Prime Minister of Japan.
• German submarine U-1195 was depth charged and sunk southeast of the Isle of Wight by British destroyer Watchman.
• Born: Werner Schroeter, film director, in Georgenthal, Germany (d. 2010)
• Died: Elizabeth Bibesco, 48, English writer and socialite (pneumonia); Seiichi Itō, 54, Japanese admiral (killed in the sinking of the Yamato)

April 8, 1945 (Sunday)

• Operation Amherst ended in Allied victory in the Netherlands.
• The Battle for Cebu City ended in Allied victory.
• The Battle of Lijevče Field ended in victory for the forces of the Independent State of Croatia.
• The
  Chicago Cardinals selected halfback Charley Trippi of the University of Georgia
  as the #1 overall pick.

April 9, 1945 (Monday)

• The Battle of Königsberg ended in Soviet victory.
• The Battle of West Hunan began as part of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
• The Battle of Bologna began in Italy.
• German cruiser Admiral Scheer was sunk in an RAF raid on Kiel.
• German submarines
  Skaggerak by Mosquito aircraft of No. 143 and No. 235 Squadron RAF
  .
• Australia's Z Special Unit began Operation Opossum with the objective of rescuing the Sultan of Ternate from Ternate Island.
• Charles de Gaulle nationalized Air France.^[7]
• The last B-17 rolled off the line at Boeing's assembly plant in Seattle.^[8]
• Born: Peter Gammons, sportswriter and media personality, in Boston, Massachusetts
• Died:
  Johann Georg Elser, 42, German carpenter who attempted to assassinate Hitler on November 8, 1939 (shot at Dachau concentration camp
  )

• The Battle of the Hongorai River began in New Guinea.
• The
  Flak Bait completed a record 200th bombing mission.^[8]
• Flooding of the
  IJsselmeerdijk
• In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill paid tribute to Franklin Roosevelt as "the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old."^[21]
• One-armed baseball player
  St. Louis Browns, going 1-for-4 against the Detroit Tigers.^[22]
• Historian
  Tran Trong Kim was appointed the Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam.^[23]

April 18, 1945 (Wednesday)

• The First Canadian Army captured the eastern end of the IJsselmeer causeway, trapping German forces in the western Netherlands.^[24]
• SS guards began loading 5,000 concentration camp prisoners aboard the immobilized ocean liner
  Cap Arcona in the Baltic.^[24]
• Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff met with Adolf Hitler and disclosed his negotiations with the Allies. Hitler told him to get better terms.^[25]
• Benito Mussolini went to Milan to establish his government there. His mistress Clara Petacci came along.^[25]
• Died:
  William, Prince of Albania
  , 69

April 19, 1945 (Thursday)

• Burma Defence Army, fell to the 5th Indian Division.^[26]
• The Battle of the Seelow Heights ended in Soviet/Polish victory.
• The Battle of Odžak began in Croatia between Yugoslav Partisans and the Croatian Armed Forces.
• Richard Dimbleby described Belsen concentration camp on the BBC shortly after its liberation by the British.^[27]
• German submarines U-251, U-548 and U-879 were lost to enemy action.
• Johnny Kelley won the Boston Marathon.^[28]
• The Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical Carousel opened at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway.
• Died: Sōsaku Suzuki, 53, Japanese general (killed in action in the Philippines); Fritz Wächtler, 54, Nazi German politician (executed by the Nazis for desertion)

April 20, 1945 (Friday)

• Soviet artillery began shelling Berlin at 11 a.m. on Hitler's 56th birthday.^[1] Preparations were made to evacuate Hitler and his staff to Obersalzberg to make a final stand in the Bavarian mountains, but Hitler refused to leave his bunker. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler departed the bunker for the last time.^[29]
• The Seventh United States Army captured Nuremberg and pushed south.^[29]
• Operation Herring began, with American aircraft dropping Italian paratroopers over Northern Italy.
• Mussolini gave the last interview of his life to one of his few remaining loyal followers, the fascist newspaper director Gian Gaetano Cabella. Mussolini declared that "Italy will rise again ... For me, however, it is over."^[30]
• The comedy-fantasy film The Horn Blows at Midnight starring Jack Benny was released.
• Born: Gregory Olsen, entrepreneur, engineer and scientist, in Brooklyn, New York
• Died: Karl Holz, 49, German Nazi official (found dead in a barricaded police building in Nuremberg; unknown whether suicide or injury sustained in firefight); Herbert Lange, 35, German SS officer and commandant of Chełmno extermination camp (killed in action during the Battle of Berlin)

April 21, 1945 (Saturday)

• The Battle of Bautzen, one of the final battles of the Eastern Front, began around Bautzen, Germany.
• Hitler ordered a final, all-out attack by the troops in Berlin under the command of Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner. Hitler expected every single man, tank and aircraft to be used in this attack.^[31]
• The battle of the
  Ruhr Pocket
  ended in Allied victory.
• The Battle of Bologna ended with the Polish II Corps and supporting Allied units capturing Bologna.
• German submarine U-636 was depth charged and sunk west of Ireland by British warships.
• Norbert Masur, German-born representative of Sweden to the World Jewish Congress who had flown in from Stockholm, met in Germany with Heinrich Himmler to agree the release of women from Ravensbrück concentration camp.^[32]
• The stage musical Perchance to Dream by Ivor Novello premiered at the Hippodrome Theatre in London.
• Died:
  Ryuku Islands); Walter Model
  , 54, German field marshal (suicide)

April 22, 1945 (Sunday)

• Hitler held a conference that afternoon in the Führerbunker to discuss the military situation. Upon being informed that the Steiner attack had not happened, and that the Soviets were now entering the northern suburbs of Berlin, he flew into a rage. He denounced the Army, complained that his generals and anyone who had deserted him were cowards and had failed him, then finally conceded that "everything is lost".^[33] Over the protests of all those present, Hitler stated that he would stay in Berlin to the absolute end and then shoot himself, rather than try to escape to the south.^[31] He allowed those who so wished to leave the bunker.
• Heinrich Himmler secretly met with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden and asked him to act as an intermediary to offer the surrender of all German forces in the west.^[34] The message took 48 hours to reach the Allies and they did not take it seriously.^[35]
• The U.S. Seventh Army crossed the Danube.^[35]
• German submarine
  Neal A. Scott
  .
• The British Fourteenth Army captured Taungoo and Oktwin, Burma.^[36]
• The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 to win the Stanley Cup, four games to three.
• Soviet forces liberated the 3,000 remaining inmates of Sachsenhausen concentration camp.^[37]
• Earth and High Heaven by Canadian author Gwethalyn Graham topped the New York Times Fiction Best Sellers list.
• Died:
  Luzon, Philippines
  )

April 23, 1945 (Monday)

• The Race to Berlin ended in a tie.^{[citation needed]}
• German radio broadcast a report that Adolf Hitler was in the "main fighting line" in Berlin and would "remain there despite all rumors." Allied circles doubted the report and suspected (incorrectly) that Hitler was in Bavaria organizing a last stand.^[38]
• Hermann Göring sent the so-called Göring Telegram, a message asking for permission to assume leadership of the Third Reich. Interpreting the telegram as an act of treason, Hitler relieved Göring of his official titles and ordered his arrest.^[34]
• The main Flossenbürg concentration camp was liberated by the 90th Infantry Division, 358th and 359th Regiments (United States Army).^[39]
• Action of 23 April 1945: In one of the rare actions of the Pacific War to involve a German submarine,
  Besugo
  .
• Antiship
  Bat missiles were used for the first time in combat when Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateers of the U.S. Navy launched two of them at Japanese vessels in Balikpapan
  Harbor in Borneo.
• The 101 arrestees in the
  Freeman Field Mutiny
  were released.
• The U.S. Supreme Court decided Cramer v. United States, deciding five-to-four to overturn the conviction of Anthony Cramer, a German-born naturalized citizen, for treason.
• The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) was founded in the United Kingdom when the Institution of Industrial Safety Officers (IISO) was formed as a division of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). The Institution gained its charitable status in 1962 and would continue to operate as a not-for-profit organisation.

April 24, 1945 (Tuesday)

• Battle of Berlin: Red Army troops completed encirclement of Berlin.^[40]
• The Battle of Halbe began on the Eastern Front.
• Shortly after sinking the American destroyer
  Frederick C. Davis, German submarine U-546 was sunk in the North Atlantic by U.S. Navy ships. With four of the six submarines in Seewolf now lost, Admiral Dönitz disbanded the wolfpack.^[15]
• The British Royal Air Force conducted its last significant mission of the war with a raid against Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden.^[35]
• The final evacuation of the
  a death march away from liberating American troops.^[41]
• On Budget Day in the United Kingdom, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Anderson announced that expenditure over the past year had exceeded £6 billion for the first time in history, exceeding revenue by £2.825 billion. He also revealed that the war had cost the country a total of £27 billion through March 31. Anderson presented a "no change" budget and said that it might have to be superseded by another budget before the end of the year due to the tremendous impending events throughout the world.^[42]
• The 1945 Major League Baseball All-Star Game scheduled for July 10 at Fenway Park was cancelled due to wartime travel restrictions.
• Born: Doug Clifford, rock drummer (Creedence Clearwater Revival), in Palo Alto, California
• Died: Ernst-Robert Grawitz, 45, German physician and SS officer (probable murder-suicide of his entire family with grenades)

April 25, 1945 (Wednesday)

• Elbe Day: Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe River near Torgau in Germany.
• The
  Samland Offensive
  ended in Soviet victory.
• The Red Army consolidated its investment of Berlin^[43] and cut the telephone lines to the Führerbunker.
• General Robert Ritter von Greim was taken on a risky flight from Munich to Berlin by Hanna Reitsch for a meeting with Hitler. During the flight Greim was injured by enemy fire that struck the cockpit. Hitler promoted Greim to field marshal (making him the last German officer ever to achieve that rank) and gave him command of the Luftwaffe. Greim was then flown back out of Berlin with the only airworthy plane left in the city.^[35]
• Via telephone hookup, President Truman addressed the delegates at the opening session of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) in San Francisco. "You members of this Conference are to be the architects of the better world," Truman said. "In your hands rests our future. By your labors at this Conference, we shall know if suffering humanity is to achieve a just and lasting peace. Let us labor to achieve a peace which is really worthy of their great sacrifice. We must make certain, by your work here, that another war will be impossible."^[44]
• The final Luftwaffe air victories of World War II were recorded when five Allied bombers were shot down over Aussig in the modern-day Czech Republic.
• Born: Stu Cook, bass guitarist (Creedence Clearwater Revival), in Oakland, California; Björn Ulvaeus, musician and member of ABBA, in Gothenburg, Sweden
• Died: Miotero Geninetti, 40, Italian partisan (shot);^[45] Walter Gross, 40, German physician and Nazi politician (suicide)

April 26, 1945 (Thursday)

• The
  Battle of Baguio
  ended in Allied victory.
• The Battle of Collecchio began around the town of Fornovo di Taro, Italy.
• Philippe Pétain was arrested on the border between Switzerland and France.^[46]
• At the first plenary session of UNCIO, State Secretary
  Edward Stettinius, Jr. said that the world body should work out only a charter. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov said that the lessons of the failed League of Nations must be remembered.^[47]
• Horka massacre: Germans carried out a massacre of a field hospital column of the 9th Polish Armored Division in Horka, Saxony, killing some 300 Polish POWs, mostly wounded soldiers and medical personnel (see German atrocities committed against Polish prisoners of war).^[48]
• The war film Counter-Attack starring Paul Muni and Marguerite Chapman was released.
• Died: Sigmund Rascher, 36, German SS doctor (executed by the Nazis at Dachau concentration camp for fraud)

April 27, 1945 (Friday)

• While attempting to flee to Switzerland, Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans. The next day, both were summarily executed near Lake Como along with twelve other leading fascists. The bodies of Mussolini, Petacci and others were then brought to the Piazzale Loreto in Milan and hung upside down on public display at a gas station.^[49]
• The Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front captured Potsdam directly adjacent to the city of Berlin.^[37]
• The Battle of Davao began.
• The U.S. Fifth Army reached Genoa, although most of the city was already in the hands of resistance fighters.^[1][37]
• The Western Allies rejected Himmler's proposal to surrender all German forces in the west, interpreting the offer as an attempt to split their alliance with the Soviets.^[34]
• The Red Army captured the Berlin airports of Tempelhof and Gatow, preventing the capital from receiving any further supplies by air.^[50]
• U.S. troops liberated
  Kaufering concentration camp and found thousands of corpses.^[37]
• The provisional government of Austria headed by Karl Renner asserted its independence from Germany.^[37]
• Born: August Wilson, playwright, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (d. 2005)
• Died: Hans Schleif, 43, German architect and member of the SS (suicide)

April 28, 1945 (Saturday)

• Adolf Hitler learned of Himmler's offer to surrender and ordered him to be arrested.^[34]
• Hitler and Eva Braun were married in the Führerbunker.^[1]
• The U.S. Fifth Army took Alessandria and Vicenza.^[49]
• In the Philippines, the
  Eighth United States Army took Digos and advanced toward Davao City.^[49]
• German submarine U-56 was sunk in an RAF raid on Kiel.
• Died: Hermann Fegelein, 38, German SS-Gruppenführer (shot by the Nazis following a trial for desertion); Benito Mussolini, 61, Italian leader of the National Fascist Party and Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943 (shot by partisans); Clara Petacci, 33, mistress of Benito Mussolini (shot by partisans)

April 29, 1945 (Sunday)

• Adolf Hitler dictated his last will and testament designating Karl Dönitz as his successor.
• At the royal palace in Caserta, two German officers signed the terms of surrender of German forces in Italy. Hostilities would cease at noon on May 2.^[51]
• The Battle of Collecchio ended in Allied victory.
• Dachau liberation reprisals: German prisoners of war were killed at the Dachau concentration camp after the U.S. 45th Infantry Division entered the concentration camp complex.
• Hitler's dog Blondi died as a result of a test verifying the potency of the cyanide capsules Hitler had in his possession. The capsules had been given to him by Himmler and, having lost trust in Himmler after the revelation of his attempted negotiations with the Allies behind Hitler's back, wanted to confirm that the capsules were truly fatal.
• German submarines U-286, U-307 and U-1017 were lost to enemy action.
• Born: Hugh Hopper, bass guitarist, in Whitstable, Kent, England (d. 2009); Tammi Terrell, singer, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 1970)
• Died: Matthias Kleinheisterkamp, 51, German SS-Obergruppenführer (committed suicide after being captured by the Soviets); Malcolm McGregor, 52, American film actor; Achille Starace, 55, Italian fascist leader (shot by partisans)

April 30, 1945 (Monday)

• Death of Adolf Hitler: Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide at around 3.30 p.m., when the Red Army was less than 500m (1,640 feet) from the Führerbunker. In accordance with Hitler's Last Will and Testament, Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels took on Hitler's former roles as Head of State and Head of Government of Germany respectively.
• The Battle of Bautzen ended in a localized German victory.
• German submarines U-879 and U-1107 were lost to enemy action.
• German submarine U-326 was torpedoed and sunk west of Brest, France, by an American B-24.
• The Hockey Hall of Fame named its first inductees. Players: Hobey Baker, Charlie Gardiner, Eddie Gerard, Frank McGee, Howie Morenz, Tommy Phillips, Harvey Pulford, Hod Stuart and Georges Vézina. Builders: H. Montagu Allan and Lord Stanley of Preston.^[52]
• Died: Adolf Hitler, 56, Führer of Germany (suicide); Eva Braun, 33, German wife of Adolf Hitler (suicide); William Orlando Darby, 34, U.S. Army officer (killed in action in northern Italy); Luisa Ferida, 31, Italian stage and film actress (shot by partisans); Osvaldo Valenti, 39, Italian film actor (shot by partisans)

References