World War 2 Photographs
Part 5
1945
This year a world at war found peace. Healing would not be easy. Victory for allied nations appeared inevitable, but the road was bumpy. The photographs reveal the heart break of casualties, victories that were diminished by the death of brave soldiers, and the courage of the armed forces that fought the barbarism of enemies in a no holds barred war .
January: U.S. technology provides the Army Air Force with the "buzz bomb" that is superior to the German V-1 rocket.
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 World War 2 Photographs Part 5 |
January 9: Japanese offer heavy resistance to U,S. invasion of Luzon (Philippines) and U.S. Seventh Fleet treats its burn victim casualties. Americans also exact a toll.
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January 17: Warsaw liberated by Red Army, but retrospectively, it meant Soviet domination.
Russian Offensive
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January 26: The German offensive in Belgium is halted. Two U.S. soldiers escaping barrage. World War 2 Photographs Part 5
February: Americans attack Manila against heavy Japanese resistance, and very few are captured alive.
February 4: 5,000 allied civilian prisoners freed from Japanese camp in Manila.
February 4: Big 3 meet at Yalta (Russian Crimea) to discuss post war geopolitics.
February 19: U.S. invades Iwo Jima----650 miles from Tokyo.
 4,000 U.S. deaths |
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February 23: Mt. Surabachi on Iwo taken by Marines, 28th Regiment, Fifth Division.
 Iconic photo-28th Marine Regiment Fifth Division |
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February: 10th Mountain Division in Northern Italy joined by Brazilian troops.
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March 6: U.S.First Army moves into a bomb ravaged Cologne.
March 7: First Army seizes Remagen Bridge spanning the Rhine River. Believed to be the "beginning of the end" for the Nazi regime . World War 2 Photographs Part 5
March 9: 11th Armored Division, Third Army at Andernoch, Germany.
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 Germans surrender with arms over heads. |
March: 15 year old German prisoner of war.
March 12: Slave laborers freed by Soviet army catch Nazi civilian policeman.
March 19: U.S. 7th Army loses a comrade in fire fight east of the Rhine River. Three days later the 7th links with U.S. First Army and left the field strewn with enemy bodies.
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March 20: British retake Mandalay, Burma with Japanese dead trapped in tunnel.
April 1: U.S. infantry join marines in attack on southwest coast of Okinawa. By April 19, heavy casualties. When the battles are ended on June 15, almost 7,000 American dead.
World War 2 Photographs Part 5 click to enlarge
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April: Top brass meet in Germany. Generals Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Hodges.
April: Pfc Mickey Rooney entertains Seventh Army at undisclosed location in Germany.
April 12: Eightieth Division liberates prisoners at Buchenwald (Jena, Germany), and 3rd Armored Division encountered this scene (right) when they entered Lager Nordhausen.
 gas chamber starvation |
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Rudolph Hoss, Kommandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, hung as war criminal for deaths of over 1.1 million Jews. Reportedly, his camp could kill over 2,000 per hour.
April 12: The passing of one president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the elevation of another, Harry S. Truman.
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April: German prisoners of war dig graves for 15,000 fallen Americans in Belgium.
April 20: Allied Tanks in Nuremberg
April 25: Americans and Soviet soldiers meet on bridge crossing Elbe River.
April 29: U.S. Seventh Army enters Munich birthplace of Nazi Party.
April: Lake Como, Italy---Italian partisans execute Benito Mussolini and mistress, Clara Petacci, and then hang them by their heels.
May: German V-2 rocket scientist, Wernther von Braun surrenders to Americans and will play a large part in the later U.S. space program.
May 1: Announcement of the suicide deaths of Hitler and companion, Eva Braun. G.I. occupies Hitler's Munich bedroom at the Brown House.
May: Unconditional surrender at Reims, France after 5 years, eight months, 6 days of war.
May 23: Gestapo chief, Heinrich Himmler, apprehended by British, and suicide by cyanide capsule.
May: U.S. Military Railway Service in India improvises, in the absence of a switching engine, to move train.
World War 2 Photographs Part 5
May: Americans on Okinawa utilize bomb crater to bathe along side downed Japanese plane.
May 30: United States troops repulse bonzai attack on Mindaneo, Philippines.
June: Captured 17 year old German spy executed by U.S. firing squad.
June 15: Colonel Francis I. Fenton, First Marine Division, Okinawa, kneels over the body of his dead son, Michael, killed in action. Both served in the same regiment. Death is on the eve of Japanese surrender of Okinawa.
July 14: U.S.S. Massachusetts shells, for the first time, a Japanese home island, Honshu.
August 6: Hiroshima struck by atomic bomb.
August 9: Nagasaki struck by atomic bomb.
,August 31: General MacArthur greets liberated General Jonathan M. Wainwright captured in the Philippines, who said,"Oh boy! This is what I've been hoping and waiting for three and half years. I couldn't be happier". Wainwright was imprisoned in Manchuria.
September 2 : Japanese formally surrender on the deck of U.S.S. Missouri.
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See Part 1: World War 2 Pictures 1939-1940
See Part 2: World War ii Pictures 1941-1942
See Part 3: World War 2 Photos 1943
See Part 4: World War ii Photos 1944
American Wars | Causes of World War 2 | World War 2 Photographs Part 5