MacArthur ordered the Japanese government to submit a plan to tax away all war profits.
The Austrian People's Party won the Austrian election. The Christian Democratic party still exists.
Zionist terrorists attacked coast guard stations near Tel Aviv.
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Little Boy was assembled on Tinian.
Pierre Laval was delivered to Linz Austria from Spain, where he was then turned over to the French.
Ethnic Germans were murdered in Ústí nad Labem, Czechoslovakia.
Field Marshal Alexander appointed Governor General of Canada.
The Takao is sunk by British frogmen with limpet mines at Singapore.
The US gives Japan a specific warning about eight cities being slated for destruction if Japan does not surrender.
Pro Nazi Lutheran minister and theologian Ludwig Müller committed suicide.
Gen. Artemio Ricarte y García, early pro independence Philippine general and collaborator with the Japanese, died of dysentery at age 78.
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Army Group Center, now completely disintegrated, quit all resistance with troops surrender to the Western Allies where they cold, and to the Soviets if they could not.
Axis forces surrendered at Slovenski Gradek.
A new Austrian republic was declared.
Fighting was fierce again on Okinawa.
Burmese nationalist Aung San lead his forces into support of the Allies.
Japan abrogated its treaties with the other Axis countries.
The Battle of the Malacca Strait began between the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Chinese lines were broken by the Japanese, and the Chinese Army was in full retreat.
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British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery accepted the unconditional surrender of the German forces in the Netherlands, northwest Germany including all islands, Denmark and all naval ships in those areas.
The US Seventh United States Army captured Innsbruck, Salzburg and Berchtesgaden.
German forces in northeast Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria begin rearguard actions in an attempt to reach Anglo American lines.
The Red Army too the Oranienburg concentration camp.
Konrad Barde, 47, German Generalmajor committed suicide.
Fedor von Bock, 64, German field marshal was killed by a strafing British aircraft while traveling by car.
Yugoslav partisans entered Fiume.
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The Red Army took Berlin.
Yevgeny Khaldei took the staged Raising a Flag over the Reichstag photograph, showing Soviet troops raising the flag of the Soviet Union atop the Reichstag. The unretouched variant is shown above, i which one soldier is wearing two watches, which was later edited out of the photo as at least one of them was no doubt picked up somewhere.
The Nisei 552nd Field Artillery Bn liberated a Dachau death march.
The Germans surrendered in Italy and Southern Austria. Among those going into Allied captivity is Dr. Wernher von Braun.
Admiral Dönitz's formed the Flensburg Government.
Eamon de Valera paid a visit to Dr Eduard Hempel, the German minister in Ireland, to offer his condolences on the death of Hitler. Nobody has ever been able to grasp this.
Erich Bärenfänger, 30, German Generalmajor, Martin Bormann, 44, German Nazi official; Wilhelm Burgdorf, 50, German general; Walther Hewel, 41, German diplomat; Hans Krebs, 47, German general; and Franz Schädle, 38, German commander of Hitler's personal bodyguard, killed themselves.
Peter Högl, 47, German SS-Obersturmbannführer, Ewald Lindloff, 36, Waffen-SS officerMartin Strahammer, 54, German Generalmajor; and Joachim von Siegroth, 48, German Generalmajor were killed in action.
The British landed on Rangoon.
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Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans while attempting to cross into Switzerland.
The Red Army took Potsdam, Prenzlau, Angemunde and Tempelhof airfield.
US troops liberated Kaufering concentration camp.
The Western Allies rejected Himmler's peace offer for the Germans to lay down their arms in the west and sent a reminder that the German surrender was to be unconditional.
One of the interesting things here is that its not entirely clearly that the Western Allies understood the offer the way it was made. Theoretically, it might have been possible to accept the offer as a largescale troop surrender which, while it would have ended fighting in the west, it would not have ended the war against Germany.
The U.S. Fifth Army reached Genoa, Italy, which was mostly already liberated by Italian partisans.
SS architect Hans Schleif committed suicide at age 43. Schleif had been involved in removing cultural material from Poland, but he oddly never really seemed to be fully on board with the worst elements of Nazism. His death was probably needless, but he probably would have served time after the war.
Former Austrian chancellor Karl Renner set up a provisional government composed of Social Democrats, Christian Socialists, and Communists and proclaimed the reestablishment of Austria as a democratic republic. This became the Second Austrian Republic, which remains today.
US and Philippine forces commenced the Battle of Davao. US forces took Baguio.
The Battle of the Seelow Heights ended in Soviet/Polish victory.
The US 1st Army took Leipzig.
Robert Cappa, the famous photographer, took a series of photos in an event that occurred in this battle, in which a tank crewman who was manning a machinegun in a building was killed by a German sniper. The bloody scene and the soldier's lifeless body is the recalled photograph. A nearly as dramatic photo of another crewman stepping over him to man the gun is not as well recalled.
Richard Dimbleby broadcast the conditions of Belsen on the BBC.
The Battle of Odžak began in Croatia between Yugoslav Partisans and the Axis aligned Croatian Armed Forces. The last battle to be fought in the Second World War in Europe, it would continue until May 25.
Pyinmana, the base of the Japanese aligned Burma Defence Army, fell to the 5th Indian Division.
Japanese Gen. Sōsaku Suzuki, age 53, was killed in action in the Philippines.
Nazi Party member Fritz Wächtler, age 54, was executed by the Nazis for desertion over the surrender of Bayreuth. The charge was unjust and due to rivalry on the part of other Nazis.
It's amazing to think of this sort of infighting when it should have been obvious they'd all be facing trials by the victors soon.
The U-251, U-548 and U-879 were sunk.
Johnny Kelley won the Boston Marathon.
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The Germans began the evacuation of Buchenwald.
Soviet forces take Wiener Neustadt
Elements of the US 40th Division landed on Masbate to assist Filipino guerillas.
Operation Roast ended in a British victory in Italy.
The British 2nd Army took Munster.
The Red Army launched the Vienna Offensive. They also took Magykanizsa and Kremnica.
The US 10th Army made easy advances on Okinawa.
The U-321 was sunk by a Vickers Wellington of No. 304 Polish Bomber Squadron southwest of Ireland.
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Bach’s Easter Oratorio, the companion piece to his Passions was first performed in an Easter service in Leipzig, April 1, 1725. The composer conducted.
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Incarcerated menace Adolf Hitler published a statement admitting that he was born in Austria, not Germany, but arguing that he had lost his Austrian citizenship after volunteering to serve in the German Army during World War I . He claimed that mentally, he'd always been a German.
He nonetheless did not renounce his Austrian citizenship until 1925, and didn't acquire German citizenship until 1932.
Ma Rainey recorded See See Rider, the first known recording of the blues standard which has an unknown origin and date of origin. It's at least a couple of decades older than the recording.
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Officials of the Serbian puppet government fled to Austria.
The Battle of Debrecen began in Hungary.
The Dumbarton Oaks Conference concluded.
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A two week Allied hiatus of bombing of Italian targets came to an end. Milan and Turin were struck by the RAF, which also struck Berlin for the first time since May 21. U.S. bombers began a heavier attack on Rome and a precision bombing attack on Italian rail yards at San Lorenzo and Vittorio. The US bombed an Austrian target for the first time.
Fr. Jakob Gapp, age 46, was executed by the Germans.
Fr. Gapp was an Austrian with outspoken anti-Nazi views and had gone into exile, first in France and then in Spain, as a result. He'd been kidnapped by German agents posing as refugees needing help to cross the Spanish border and sentenced to death. He was beatified on November 24, 1996.
In Natrona County, the high was 87.4 F and the low 52.3F.
