Curated playlist
1945 in military history
- Berlin Declaration (1945)The Berlin Declaration of the 5th of June 1945 did something that the German Instrument of Surrender of the 8th of May had not done: it formally transferred the full civil authority of a defeated nation to four foreign powers. The military…
- Surrender of JapanAt 8:15 in the morning on the 6th of August 1945, a single aircraft released a single bomb over Hiroshima. Sixteen hours later, President Harry S. Truman went on the air to promise Japan "a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has…
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and NagasakiThe atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of them civilians. On the 6th of August 1945, the United States dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, on the 9th of August, a second…
- End of World War II in AsiaAt 3:24 on the morning of the 2nd of September 1945, a ceremony in Tokyo Bay brought the deadliest conflict in human history to its formal close in Asia. Japan signed the surrender documents aboard a United States warship, and President…
- Death of Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini was shot at the wall of the Villa Belmonte in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra. It was the afternoon of the 28th of April 1945. The partisan who fired, using the nom de guerre Colonnello Valerio, borrowed a MAS-38…
- End of World War II in EuropeThe end of World War II in Europe came down to a single signature, placed in the early hours of the 7th of May 1945, in a schoolhouse in Reims, France. General Alfred Jodl, chief-of-staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, set his…
- Hirohito surrender broadcastAt precisely noon on the 15th of August, 1945, a radio announcer instructed the Japanese nation to stand for an announcement "of the highest importance." The national anthem, Kimigayo, was played. Then came a voice that no ordinary…
- Operation PlutoOperation Pluto began with a question in early April 1942. Lord Louis Mountbatten, then Vice-Admiral and Chief of Combined Operations, approached Geoffrey Lloyd, the Secretary for Petroleum. He asked whether an oil pipeline could be laid…
- Battle of BerlinAt 8:30 in the morning on the 22nd of April 1945, ninety-six shells fell on the centre of Berlin in the space of a few minutes. A Soviet war correspondent watching the batteries open fire recorded what he heard the battery commander say…
- Trinity (nuclear test)Trinity was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, and it happened at 5:29 in the morning on the 16th of July 1945, in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico. The name translates from Spanish as "journey of the dead man". For a…