Curated playlist
Conflicts in 1945
- Western New Guinea campaignThe Western New Guinea campaign brought soldiers from three different armies onto the same stretch of tropical coastline in 1944 and 1945. Forces of the Dutch East Indies army, known as the KNIL, fought alongside American and Australian…
- Invasion of the Kuril IslandsThe Invasion of the Kuril Islands was a Soviet military operation against Japan in the last days of the Second World War. It never turned on one great battle. It moved instead from island to island across a long chain, over a span of about…
- Soviet invasion of South SakhalinSoviet troops kept fighting on Sakhalin for over a week after Japan surrendered.
- Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaignOn Betio, a tiny coral island, Japan built over 100 machine gun nests and 500 pillboxes.
- Battle of Nuremberg (1945)Nuremberg fell to US troops on Adolf Hitler's 56th birthday. The city had hosted his grandest Nazi rallies.
- Budapest offensiveSoviet armies closed a ring around Budapest in late December 1944. Roughly 79,000 troops were trapped.
- East Prussian offensiveSome German units kept fighting in East Prussia until the whole country surrendered. That was May 9, 1945.
- Spring 1945 offensive in ItalyItalian partisans liberated Milan on the 25th of April 1945, before Allied troops entered.
- 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.
- Silesian offensivesThe Soviet push on Berlin was delayed about two months in 1945 to protect its flanks.
- Battle of LuzonMost Japanese soldiers who died in the Battle of Luzon were killed by starvation and disease, not enemy fire.
- Borneo campaignAustralian soldiers paddled handmade folboats toward Tarakan island on the 1st of May 1945.
- Battle of the BulgeIn the Battle of the Bulge, an American general answered a surrender demand with one word: Nuts.
- Battle of Manila (1945)In 1945, a Japanese admiral refused orders to leave Manila and chose to fight to the last man.
- Battle of West HunanIn April 1945, Japan sent 80,000 men into west Hunan to seize one Chinese airfield. They were pushed back by June 7.
- Vienna offensiveThe Vienna offensive of 1945 reached a city that had already endured continuous bombardment for a full year. Many of its buildings and facilities were damaged or destroyed before a single Soviet soldier arrived. The assault was carried out…
- Soviet invasion of ManchuriaThe Soviet invasion of Manchuria began one minute past midnight on the 9th of August 1945.
- Soviet–Japanese WarJapan expected a Soviet attack in autumn 1945 or spring 1946, but it came in August.
- Western Allied invasion of GermanySeven German soldiers surrendered at Nierstein, then paddled themselves back across the Rhine.
- Battle of KönigsbergKönigsberg, a fortress city built to resist huge siege guns, fell in four days in April 1945.
- Italian Civil WarThe Italian Civil War left even its own veterans unsure how they had ended up on the side they chose. Nuto Revelli, who became a partisan commander, wrote of the night of the 25th of July: "If on the night of the 25th of July I had been…
- 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.
- World War II in YugoslaviaYugoslavia's army surrendered in eleven days in April 1941. The war that followed lasted four more years.
- Vistula–Oder offensiveWhy did the Red Army stop 43 miles from an essentially undefended Berlin in early 1945?
- World War IIHistorians still disagree about the day World War II began. Most choose 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.