Curated category
April 1945 in Europe
- Battle of Nuremberg (1945)The Battle of Nuremberg lasted five days in April 1945, and it cost the United States four of those days just to capture a city center that was already…
- East Prussian offensiveThe East Prussian offensive officially ended on the 25th of April 1945. Yet some German units under Wehrmacht command refused to surrender until the entire…
- Spring 1945 offensive in ItalyOperation Grapeshot opened on the 6th of April 1945, when the 15th Allied Army Group unleashed a rolling artillery barrage against German positions along the…
- East Pomeranian offensiveThe East Pomeranian offensive was a Soviet Red Army campaign that changed the final shape of World War Two in Europe. From the 10th of February to the 4th of…
- Ruhr pocketThe Ruhr pocket ended with a field marshal shooting himself in a forest rather than face Allied captivity. In April 1945, some 317,000 German soldiers were…
- Death of Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler died by his own hand in the Führerbunker in Berlin on the 30th of April 1945, as Soviet artillery shelled the city above him.
- 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.
- Vienna offensiveJoseph Stalin reached an agreement with the Western Allies prior to April 1945 concerning the relative postwar political influence of each party in much of…
- Western Allied invasion of GermanyThe Western Allied invasion of Germany reached its decisive turning point on the 22nd of March 1945, when American troops crossed the Rhine under a bright…
- Battle of KönigsbergThe Battle of Königsberg took four days, but a siege had gripped the city since late January 1945 long before that. Soviet forces of the 3rd Belorussian…
- Elbe DayElbe Day, the 25th of April 1945, began with a small boat crossing a river in Germany. First Lieutenant Albert Kotzebue paddled across the Elbe near Strehla…
- 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.
- Capture of HamburgThe Western Front collapsed in the spring of 1945. Army Group B, led by Walter Model, fell to American forces near the Rhine River.