1945 – Nineteen-Forty-Five

9 January – Americans land in the Gulf of Lingayen in the Philippines

12 January – Operation Vistula-Oder is launched on the Eastern Front

31 January – Red Army crosses the German border

11 February – The Yalta Conference is ended. The agreement between the U.S., Britain, Russia and France was to divide up Germany into four sections

13 February – Corregidor is assaulted by U.S. troops

19 February – Amphibious assault on Iwo Jima

6 March – Operation Frühingserwachen (Spring Awakening) is launched by the Germans in an attempt to retake Bucharest and the Hungarian oilfields

20 March – Mandalay is liberated by the 19th Indian Division

1 April – American troops land on Okinawa in Operation Iceberg

12 April – President Roosevelt dies

29 April – Surrender of all German troops in Italy

30 April – At 3:30pm Hitler commits suicide in the Chancellery Bunker

7 May – In Eisenhower’s headquarters at Rheims, General Alfred Jodl and Admiral Freideburg sign the unconditional surrender of all German armed force to the allies

9 May – In Berlin, Keitel, Freideburg, and stumpf sign a formal German surrender to the Soviets

13 June – All resistance on the Orokn peninsula in Okinawa ends

16 July – First atomic bomb is successfully tested

17 July – Potsdam conference

6 August – First atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

8 August – USSR declares war on Japan

2 September – General Mac Arthur accepts Japanese surrender

24 October – United Nations is officially born

20 November – International War Crimes trial begin at Nuremberg

1945