Skip to content
Curated playlist

1945 in Germany

  • Battle of Nuremberg (1945)Nuremberg fell to US troops on Adolf Hitler's 56th birthday. The city had hosted his grandest Nazi rallies.
  • Berlin Declaration (1945)Germany's May 1945 military surrender never said who would govern the country. The Berlin Declaration did.
  • East Pomeranian offensiveSoviet forces paused before Berlin in 1945 to clear Pomerania first. Generals still debate that delay.
  • Ruhr pocketField Marshal Walter Model dissolved his army group in April 1945 rather than surrender.
  • Operation PlunderPatton wanted the world to know his army crossed the Rhine before Montgomery's.
  • Potsdam AgreementThe Potsdam Agreement was a communiqué, not a peace treaty, yet it shaped Germany until 1990.
  • Potsdam ConferenceMid-conference at Potsdam in 1945, British voters replaced Winston Churchill with Clement Attlee.
  • German Instrument of SurrenderGermany surrendered twice in World War II in Europe, a day apart. The Soviets rejected the first signing in France.
  • Nuremberg trialsCould leaders be held criminally responsible for starting a war? The 1945 Nuremberg trials put that to the test.
  • Western Allied invasion of GermanySeven German soldiers surrendered at Nierstein, then paddled themselves back across the Rhine.
  • Flensburg GovernmentAn admiral with no political experience led Germany's last Nazi government for exactly three weeks.
  • Soviet occupation zone in GermanyIn April 1946, Soviet authorities forcibly merged two German parties into one. It became East Germany's governing party.
  • Battle of KönigsbergKönigsberg, a fortress city built to resist huge siege guns, fell in four days in April 1945.
  • Elbe DayElbe Day began when four American soldiers paddled a small boat across a river in Germany.
  • Lapland WarIn the Lapland War, Finland fought its former German allies, though neither side truly wanted to.
  • Battle of BerlinThe famous photo of Soviet soldiers planting a flag on the Reichstag was a re-enactment.
  • Capture of HamburgThe Capture of Hamburg was one of the last battles fought on the Western Front of the Second World War. It unfolded in Lower Saxony between the 18th of April and the 3rd of May 1945. By then the Red Army was besieging Berlin, and the war…
  • Vistula–Oder offensiveWhy did the Red Army stop 43 miles from an essentially undefended Berlin in early 1945?

Queue