1945 | Political Events
Political Events
World War II ends in Europe May 8 and in the Pacific August 14, but only after major new military and naval activity and after the deaths of three of the world's five leading heads of state.
Massive operations in both theaters mark the closing months of the war. Adolf Hitler permits his forces in Belgium to fall back January 8, but only on condition that they continue fighting all the way. Red Army forces strike across the Vistula January 12 with warplanes, multiple-rocket launchers, other artillery, and thousands of tanks and soldiers. By the time they outrun their supply lines they are on the River Oder within 50 miles of Berlin, but fortified pockets of German troops remain around Königsberg, Breslau, Danzig, Budapest, and elsewhere.
U.S. northern and southern forces meet January 16 at Houffalize, north of Bastogne, to consolidate a single line and force the Germans back into Germany. Texas-born Lieut. Audie Murphy, 20, single-handedly holds off a German force of six tanks and 250 men January 26, earning the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery (wounded three times, the baby-faced lieutenant has won 23 previous medals, including the Distinguished Service Cross and the Croix de Guerre with palm, and is the most highly decorated war hero). By the end of January U.S. losses in the Battle of the Bulge have totaled more than 76,000, including 16,000 dead, and the Germans have lost perhaps twice that many, weakening the Wehrmacht to the point that it has little heart to continue. Not until 1947 or 1948 will all the bodies be discovered.
Nearly 1,000 U.S. B-17s raid Berlin February 3, abandoning the policy of attacking only military targets: they drop tons of explosives that kill an estimated 25,000 civilians, but Adolf Hitler remains safe in the two-story underground bunker that Albert Speer has built for him beneath the garden of the Reich Chancellory. Admiral Sir Bertram H. Ramsay, Royal Navy, has been killed in a plane crash outside Paris January 2 at age 61.
The Yalta Conference begins February 4 and ends February 11 with Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt, and Premier Stalin pledging "unity of purpose and of action." Critics will charge for more than 60 years that FDR and Churchill caved in to Stalin's demands at the Crimean Black Sea resort and gave him a free hand to take over eastern Europe, but Red Army boots are on the ground in Poland, eastern Germany, the Baltic nations, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans, giving the western Allies no choice. Deathly ill with congestive heart failure, Roosevelt has been accompanied to Yalta by aides who include his friend Admiral William D. Leahy, now 69, who in December 1941 was named to the newly-created position of presidential chief of staff.
Greek communists agree under British pressure in February to disband their guerrilla forces (see civil war, 1944; but see also 1946).
A fleet of 796 four-engine RAF Lancaster bombers designed by Roy Dobson, 54, raid Dresden the night of February 13 in "Operation Thunderclap" with phosphorus and high explosive bombs, creating a firestorm that roasts civilians, suffocates them, or buries them alive; 311 U.S. B-17s stoke the Dresden fires next day, more than 650,000 firebombs have been dropped by the time the third aerial assault ends, more than 1,600 acres have been destroyed along with cultural treasures that include the Frauenkirche, the Semper Opera, and the Zwinger Museum; the death toll is at least 39,773 and may exceed 100,000.
The RAF bombs the town of Pforzheim the night of February 23, killing nearly one fourth of its 80,000 inhabitants.
The Lüftwaffe sends the world's first operational jet bomber into action, but the Arado Ar 234 has little effect.
The retreating Wehrmacht destroys bridges across the Rhine but leaves the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen; the U.S. 9th Armored Division seizes the bridge, and the 1st Armored Division crosses it to occupy Cologne; by March 10 the Allies control the west bank of the Rhine from Nijmegen in the Netherlands to Koblenz. The 9th Armored Division reaches the Rhine opposite Düsseldorf by March 16 and joins with the 1st Armored Division to take more than 325,000 German prisoners in the Battle of the Ruhr.
U.S. forces invade Luzon in force January 9, landing on the shore of Lingayen Gulf under the command of Gen. MacArthur and taking the Japanese by surprise. A second U.S. corps lands at Subic Bay at the northern end of the Bataan Peninsula January 29; some 511 tattered survivors of the 1942 Bataan "death march"—many of them crippled and gruesomely emaciated—are liberated January 30. A force of 400 U.S. Army Rangers and Filipino guerrillas, led by Lieut. Col. Henry A. Mucci, now 33, has penetrated 30 miles behind Japanese lines north of Manila to reach the Cabanatuan prison camp that once held 10,000 men (see 1942). Gen. MacArthur fears that U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war are about to be slaughtered and races toward Manila without leaving its Japanese defenders a way out. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita fails to force the commander of his naval defense force there to evacuate the city, the U.S. 6th Army launches an attack on Manila February 3 under the command of Gen. Walter Krueger, and Gen. MacArthur enters the city February 4; Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi makes a last-ditch defense despite the wishes of Gen. Yamashita and winds up losing 16,665 of his 17,000-man force. U.S. casualties are 1,000 killed, 5,500 wounded. Most of the once beautiful city has been destroyed by the time it falls to the Americans March 4 and an estimated 100,000 of its people have been killed in a single month, a death toll exceeded only by those at Berlin and Stalingrad.
Japanese forces invade Indochina and arrest the French governor general Jean Decoux March 9 (see 1940).
More than 300 U.S. B-29 Superfortress bombers arrive over Tokyo just after midnight March 10, drop nearly 500,000 napalm incendiary cylinders, and start fires that destroy 16 square miles of buildings. The cylinders release 100-foot streams of fire when they detonate, flames spread rapidly throughout densely packed wooden dwellings, the 1,800° F. heat makes asphalt boil, and the superheated air creates a wind that sucks victims into the flames. Precision bombing of Japanese military targets has proved ineffective so Gen. Curtis Le May has ordered the raid on Tokyo with the clear intent of breaking the enemy's will to fight; Carl Spaatz, Army Air Corps, has previously directed the strategic bombing of Germany and has coordinated the raid, the vast majority of the estimated 100,000 dead are civilians, and in the next few months the Air Corps will firebomb more than 60 smaller Japanese cities.
U.S. troops invade Mindinao in the Philippines beginning March 10.
U.S. forces take Iwo Jima March 16 after 35 days of heavy fighting that has cost nearly 6,000 U.S. and 19,000 Japanese lives on the eight-square-mile volcanic island 650 miles from the Japanese mainland. Six Marines have raised the U.S. flag in February atop Mount Suribachi (the U.S. Pacific high command has received the news in Navajo code—dibeh [sheep], no-dah-ih [Ute], gah [rabbit], tkin [ice] shush [bear], wol-la-chee [ant], moasi [cat], lin [horse], yeh-hes [itch], or Suribachi; [see Guadalcanal, 1942; Saipan, 1944]; the number of Navajo code talkers has risen to 400). Alabama-born Gen. Holland M. (McTyeire) "Howlin' Mad" Smith, 63, has led the Marine Corps attack and announces March 28 that the island is secure, the Navajo are credited with having saved thousands of U.S. lives (the code talkers will not be permitted to discuss their work until 1969), but the battle has left 25,000 Marines dead or wounded and most of the 22,000-man Japanese garrison annihilated.
The League of Arab States organized March 22 unites Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen with headquarters at Cairo to coordinate efforts toward achieving complete independence and mutual cooperation and prevent the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. By 1974 the League will include 20 Arab states, including Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Somalia, Sudan, and Mauritania.
Jewish terrorists in Palestine dynamite railroads and scuttle British police launches used to apprehend illegal immigrants. Polish-born militant Menachem (Wolfovitch) Begin, 32, arrived 3 years ago after serving time in a Soviet labor camp and leads the Irgun Zvai Leumi that spearheads opposition to British control (see 1941). Zionist leader and Hadassah founding president Henrietta Szold dies at Jerusalem February 13 at age 84 (see 1946).
President Roosevelt meets with Saudi Arabia's king Abdul-aziz February 15 on board the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Quincy in the Suez Canal, they find themselves in agreement on most issues, the king laments the plight of Europe's Jews but says the solution to their problem cannot be achieved at the expense of Palestine's Arab inhabitants, FDR promises that no decisions will be made on the matter without consulting Arab nations.
Former British prime minister David Lloyd George dies at Ty-newydd near Llanystumdwy, Caernarvonshire, Wales March 26 at age 82, having been elevated to the peerage January 1 as 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor; former British colonial administrator F. D. Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger, dies at Abinger, Surrey, April 11 at age 87.
Lady Astor retires from Parliament under pressure from her domineering husband; now 65, she has been repeatedly returned since her first election in 1919 and has consistently opposed Winston Churchill.
Field Marshal Walter Model dies at Dusseldorf April 2 at age 54. The SS executes former German military intelligence (Abwehr) chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris April 9 at the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. Dead at age 58, Canaris was a leader among anti-Hitler conspirators in last year's failed assassination attempt.
Machine-gun crossfire on an Italian hillside April 7 halts the Japanese-American 442nd Reginald Combat Team on the road leading north to Bologna, but Hawaiian-born Sgt. Yukio Okutsu, 23, crawls to within 30 yards of the German emplacement and hurls two grenades, killing the three gunners. He dashes to a second position, throws another grenade, wounds two Germans, captures two others, and although stunned by a rifle bullet that glances off his helmet charges a third position and captures its four-man crew, enabling his platoon to proceed with its assault.
President Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Ga., April 12 at age 63 just after posing in his cottage for a portrait by painter Elizabeth Shumatoff. Eleanor Roosevelt is recalled from a meeting of the Thrift Club at Philadelphia; told at Washington of her husband's death, she flies to Warm Springs and accompanies his body on the train back to Washington. Roosevelt's death comes 2 months after the Yalta Conference; he is succeeded by his vice president Harry S. Truman, whose onetime political mentor Thomas J. "Boss" Pendergast has died at Kansas City January 26 at age 72.
A San Francisco meeting to discuss the formation of an international body to be called the United Nations has a U.S. delegation led by Chicago-born Secretary of State Edward R. (Reilly) Stettinius Jr., 44, who headed United States Steel before the war, administered the Lend-Lease program, and advised President Roosevelt at Yalta (see 1943; 1946; commerce [Bretton Woods], 1944). Other delegates include Australian feminist Lady Jessie Mary Grey Street, 56. President Roosevelt had been preparing for the conference at San Francisco, where the charter of a United Nations organization is to be drafted.
Reports that German troops in and around the French coastal town of Royan are protecting the port of Bordeaux prompt the Allied command to order an aerial attack. B-24s based in England drop 2,000-pound bombs on the area April 14 and follow up the next day with incendiaries and napalm, the first use of napalm in the European theater of war. Some 1,200 bombers take part in the action, which kills French civilians as well as German soldiers. French soldiers move in 1 hour after the bombing ends.
The Battle of Vienna in April results in heavy damage to much of the city; Saint Stephen's Cathedral (the Stephanskirche) is burned out along with many other structures and will not be reconstructed until 1952.
Nuremberg falls to the U.S. 7th Army April 21 as Russian forces under the command of Marshal Zhukov and Marshal Konev reach the suburbs of Berlin. Members of the Wehrmacht surrender to the Western Allies at the rate of 30,000 per day, and some 1.5 million are put to work building camps to house the prisoners of war.
The Gestapo takes Albrecht Haushofer out of his cell at Berlin's Moabit Prison April 23 and shoots him in the head. Dead at age 42, he was active in the German underground before his arrest late last year.
German test pilot Hanna Reitsch, 33, flies high-ranking officers into Berlin in April, eluding Allied forces that surround the city. Her exploits have won her the Iron Cross, but although Adolf Hitler approved her proposal to train women suicide pilots of rockets aimed at British targets, the plan was abandoned last year after D-Day. Her plan to organize a squadron of women fliers to fight on the same terms as the men of the Lüftwaffe was rejected out of hand.
Russian and U.S. patrols meet April 25 on the Elbe just south of Berlin and celebrate far into the night with whiskey, vodka, and accordion music. The forces of Marshal Konev and Gen. Mark Clark link up at Torgau, Adolf Hitler's hope of a collapse in the alliance between capitalists and communists is shattered, and Heinrich Himmler begins surrender negotiations.
Partisan machine guns kill Benito Mussolini and 12 of his former cabinet officers April 28 at Lake Como. On the run since his rescue from prison in September 1943, Il Duce has emerged from beneath a pile of coats and begged for mercy, but his 61-year-old body is hung upside down in Milan's Piazza Loretto along with that of his mistress Clara Petacci. German armies in Italy surrender unconditionally April 29.
Adolf Hitler eats a vegetarian lunch and then shoots himself April 30 at age 56 in his bunker at Berlin, having married his mistress Eva Braun, 33, the night before as Soviet troops converged on the city (she chews a cyanide pill). Joseph Goebbels, now 47, also commits suicide after killing his wife and six children in the Berlin bunker.
Hitler aide Martin Bormann, 45, is seen May 2 in a tank crossing Berlin's Weidenammer Bridge. Bormann will not be positively identified hereafter, but rumors will persist that he is alive and living in Argentina or Chile (his skeleton will be positively identified in 1998 and his ashes dropped into the sea a year later).
Germany surrenders unconditionally May 7 (Admiral Doenitz has become head of state upon the death of Hitler and takes responsibility for the surrender). President Truman proclaims May 8 (Victory in Europe) Day, and Adolf Hitler's "Thousand-Year Reich" ends after a mere 12 years.
Czechslovakia's president Eduard Benes returns to Prague May 18 after 7 years in exile and sets about trying to restore the nation's liberal, democratic regime (see 1938). He has appointed government officials in April and they are approved by the Provisional National Assembly that he nominates in the fall (see 1946).
U.S. authorities remove Hungary's 944-year-old Crown of St. Stephen to keep it out of Russian hands and store it in Fort Knox, where it will remain until early 1978 before being returned.
German troops evacuate Norway, whose Haakon VII returns to Oslo June 7 after a self-imposed exile of 5 years and 22 months in England.
Allied forces in Burma link up the Lido Road with the Burma Road in January. Newark, N.J.-born Col. Robert F. Seedlock, 33, U.S. Corps of Engineers, has shaved 200 miles off the supply line by finding part of the route taken by Marco Polo in the 13th century, and he has directed the work of 1,000 engineers and 20,000 Chinese laborers since last year, rebuilding more than 600 miles of roads and bridges on the eastern half of the Himalayas to permit transport of men and equipment to China. Chinese forces drive down the Burma Road as Gen. Stillwell regains the offensive, and the Japanese are defeated, but 7,000 Allied troops have been hospitalized with malaria or other tropical diseases, and 3,800 are listed as dead, wounded, or missing in action. British forces mount an offensive beginning January 14 under the command of Field Marshal William J. Slim; they establish bridgeheads across the Irrawaddy River on both sides of Mandalay, capture the enemy's communications center at Meiktila, trap the Japanese 15th Army (four divisions plus reinforcements and one tank regiment), retake Mandalay March 21, and retake Rangoon May 2 in the last of a series of amphibious landings. Burmese nationalist Bogyoke Aung San, now 30, was an anti-British student revolutionary before the war, the Japanese reached him in China 5 years ago and persuaded him to let them help him raise a "Burma Independence Army." They trained a group of 30 Burmese on an island off the Chinese coast, but while serving as minister of defense in a puppet government he became skeptical of their promises and as a major general he has brought the Independence Army over to the Allied cause in March. Aung San's trusted fellow officer Col. U Ne Win (originally Shu Maung), 33, has commanded Burmese forces in the delta region and delivers a radio address, saying "The Burmese Army is not only the hope of the country but its very life and soul"; there is widespread belief that the British will quickly grant the country independence (see 1947). Japan has lost about 45,000 men in the final Burma campaign; most of the 35,000 British casualties are wounded, not killed.
U.S. troops land on Okinawa in the Ryukyus April 1 under the command of Kentucky-born Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., 58, who is killed in action June 18. The landing is far larger than last year's D-Day landing in Europe, and although there is no initial resistance the Battle of Okinawa will be far more costly in terms of human life. Some 143 Japanese high-school girls and their 15 teachers have organized a nursing corps to treat wounded soldiers but are pushed back to the village of Miwa at the southern end of the island, where they accept death from fire and lack of oxygen in a cave rather than surrender. U.S. forces triumph June 22 after 82 days of savage fighting, but it has taken half a million Americans to subdue 110,000 Japanese; the U.S. death toll is about 12,000 (total U.S. casualties are 49,151), the Japanese lose 100,000, and thousands of them surrender at the end, the first such surrenders since the war began.
Washington announces reconquest of the Philippines July 5.
Australia's prime minister John Curtin dies at Canberra July 5 at age 60, having established welfare-state economic policies in his 4-year term. He is succeeded by fellow Labor Party leader Francis M. (Michael) Forde, 54, and beginning July 12 by Labor Party leader Joseph Benedict "Ben" Chifley, 59, who will remain in office until 1949, expanding the nation's social services, reforming its banking system, and opening it up to more immigration (if only to whites). The nation's small population has hindered Australia's development but will more than double in the next half century, becoming more polyglot and more vibrant as eastern Europeans pour in along with Asians who will be barred entry until 1966.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom established by President Truman July 6 under Executive Order 9586 is an award for meritorious service on behalf of the United States. It will continue into the 21st century as the nation's highest civilian decoration (see 1963).
Full air war against Japan's home islands of Honshu and Kyushu begins July 10 from bases in the Marianas and Okinawa. Columbus, Ohio-born Army Air Force Gen. Curtis (Emerson) LeMay, 38, heads the U.S. 21st bomber command in the Marianas and orders his B-29s stripped of guns and ammunition to make room for six-ton loads of incendiaries that are dropped at night from altitudes of 5,000 to 7,000 feet instead of the 25,000 to 30,000 used for daytime bombing.
Carrier-based air attacks on Tokyo begin July 17 after U.S. planes have dropped leaflets threatening Japan with aerial destruction unless she surrenders unconditionally. Former prime minister Keisuke Okada and others press for an end to the war, supporting moves to overthrow the Tojo government and make peace overtures, but Hideki Tojo and other militarists remain adamant against surrender.
An atomic bomb ("the Gadget") is tested successfully at 5:29 in the morning of July 18 atop a tower near Alamogordo, N. M., 120 miles south of Albuquerque while President Truman is en route by warship to Europe for a conference with other world leaders at Potsdam. Admiral William D. Leahy, has told President Truman, "The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives," but he is proved wrong. The horrific losses sustained in the recent conquest of Okinawa have made it likely that an invasion of Japan's home islands could cost as many as 1 million U.S. lives.
The crushing defeat of Britain's Conservative government in the general elections stuns Prime Minister Churchill and all the world. Churchill has been unwilling to dissolve Parliament before the end of the Pacific war, Labour Party leader Clement R. (Richard) Attlee, 62, has campaigned on promises of a welfare state, announcement of the balloting results is delayed for 3 weeks until July 26 to allow for returns from British forces overseas, and it is then learned that Labour has won 48 percent of the vote, Conservatives 39.3 percent, Liberals 9, others 3.4. Labour gains a Parliamentary majority of 146 seats, and Attlee's government will rule until 1951.
The 10,000-ton Portland-class heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis leaves California's Mare Island Navy Yard on a secret cargo mission, delivers essential components of the atomic bomb to Tinian Island in the Marianas July 27, and is torpedoed in the Pacific Ocean just after midnight July 30 while en route from Guam to the Philippines; she has been sailing in a straight line without any escort, the torpedoes fired by Lieut. Comdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto from the submarine I-58 kill 400 of the cruiser's 1,196 officers and crew outright and destroy her main communications center, no S.O.S. is received, the ship rolls over and sinks 12 minutes later, and no survivors are spotted until August 2, when a Navy pilot on a routine mission spots some wreckage and drops a life raft along with whatever supplies he has aboard. By that time all but 320 of the 800 men who managed to scramble into the sea have drowned, been killed by sharks, died from burns, injuries, dehydration, or in some cases been murdered by crazed brothers in arms during their 100 hours in the water. Navy Lieut. (Robert) Adrian Marks, 28, is summoned from the island Pelelieu and pilots the PBY5A Catalina rescue plane that lands in 12-foot swells and picks up 56 men. Unable to take off, Marks waits until the destroyer Cecil J. Doyle arrives, followed by six other rescue ships. Only 317 survive, and the ship's commander, Capt. Charles B. (Butler) McVay 3rd, 47, is court-martialled in December, the first officer in U.S. Navy history to face a court-martial for losing his ship to enemy action in time of war. Convicted on charges of having failed to run a zigzag course in a war zone, he is sentenced to lose 100 numbers in his temporary grade of captain and in his permanent grade of commander as well, but the sentence will be remitted in February of next year in light of his illustrious record; although the captain will be promoted to rear admiral after he retires next year, his career has been ruined and he will be driven by hate mail to commit suicide in 1968.
A group of 836 U.S. Boeing B-29 Superfortresses launched against 10 key targets in Japan and two in Korea August 1 is the largest single-day B-29 operation; 784 of the planes reach their destinations, dropping incendiaries, high explosives, and mines.
The Potsdam Conference ends August 2 after 16 days of deliberations by President Truman, Generalissimo Stalin, and Prime Minister Churchill (who has been replaced as PM July 28 by Clement Attlee). The world leaders demand an unconditional surrender by Japan and establish the Oder-Neisse line as the border of eastern Germany and Poland, divide Germany into four occupational zones (British, French, Soviet, and U.S.), and agree that Germany is to be disarmed and demilitarized, her National Socialist institutions dissolved, her leaders tried as war criminals, and democratic ideals encouraged with restoration of local self-government and freedom of speech, press, and religion subject to military security requirements. Manufacture of war matériel is to be prohibited and strict controls placed on production of metals, chemicals, and machinery essential to war. The accords are designed to be temporary but some provisions will remain in place for 45 years.
Japanese air ace Saburo Sakai downs a U.S. B-29 over Japan in early August to end a career in which he has blasted 64 Allied aircraft out of the skies from the cockpit of his Zero fighter (Mitsubishi has produced nearly 10,430 of the planes since 1940) (see Sakai, 1941). Sakai lost one eye in combat, has flown half-blind, and has only recently accepted a commission as commander after years of refusal.
Tokyo rejects the Potsdam Declaration that has called upon Japan to surrender and accept an occupation with the objective of establishing "a peacefully inclined and responsible government" based on "the freely expressed will of the Japanese people." It has also called for trials and purges of those who "deceived and misled" the Japanese people into war. U.S. planes drop leaflets over Hiroshima August 4 warning, "Your city will be obliterated unless your Government surrenders."
The atomic bomb (code name: "Little Boy") that America dropped on Hiroshima August 6 is a 10-foot long, 9,000 pound device with the explosive power of 20,000 tons of TNT. The U.S. Army Air Force Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay piloted by Quincy, Ill.-born Capt. Paul Tibbets Jr., 30, has flown from the Pacific atoll of Tinian, bombardier Major Thomas Ferebee, 26, looks through the eyepiece of his Norden bombsight, and he drops "Little Boy" from an altitude of 31,000 feet. The bomb explodes 1,890 feet above its target (the Aloi Bridge), flattening four square miles of Hiroshima and killing as many as 75,000 Japanese outright; temperatures at ground zero exceed 6,000° C., birds in flight burst into flame, and the heat incinerates or vaporizes nine out of 10 people within half a mile. Another 50,000 will die within months from burns and radiation sickness, hundreds will be disfigured, and the ultimate death toll from the bomb will be 150,000 out of a population of 300,000.
Isolationist Sen. Hiram W. Johnson dies at Bethesda, Md., August 6 at age 78.
Manhattan Project physicist Ted Hall hands over about 300 documents related to the atomic research at Los Alamos, N.M., to New York KGB agent Lona Cohen, who has gone to New Mexico on instructions from her Soviet controllers (see Hall, 1944). She escapes detection by hiding the materials in a Kleenex box, and delivers them to the Russians. Physicist Igor Vasilevich Kurchatov, 42, achieves the first Soviet atomic chain reaction (see 1949).
Soviet Russia violates her 1941 non-aggression treaty with Japan August 8 and declares war, sending troops into Manchuria, where Japanese troops are commanded by Gen. Otozo Yamada, now 63. Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky has 5,500 tanks, 28,000 artillery pieces, and 4,370 aircraft to Yamada's 1,155 tanks, 5,360 artillery pieces, and 1,800 aircraft. The Japanese are untrained in mechanized warfare, and in 8 days of hostilities they lose an estimated 84,000 killed and 594,000 captured (Soviet casualties come to 8,219 killed, 22,264 wounded). The Russians incarcerate Manchuria's emperor Kang Te (Kang Teh, the former Chinese emperor Pu Yi); now 39, he will remain a prisoner until 1950.
The atomic bomb (code name: "Fat Man") that America dropped on Nagasaki in Kyushu August 9 by the B-29 bomber Bockscar is a plutonium-core bomb with the same explosive power as "Little Boy." It kills 70,000 to 80,000 Japanese outright, and many of the 75,000 survivors will die from burns and radiation sickness. Leaflets dropped earlier had threatened "a rain of ruin the like of which has never been seen on earth."
Japan sues for peace August 10. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Gen. Korechika Anami, and some others have harbored hopes that newly developed jet aircraft and biological weapons might still bring victory; former foreign minister Shigenori Togo and only two other members favored surrender at an August 9 council meeting, but Emperor Hirohito has given orders at 2 o'clock in the morning of August 10 that the terms of the Potsdam agreement are to be accepted. Naruhiko Higashikuni, now 57, is appointed head of the government, former prime minister Fumimaro Konoye serves as vice president, and Privy Council president Kantaro Suzuki, now 77, announces acceptance of the Allied surrender terms August 14 (he soon thereafter escapes an assassination attempt by nationalists and is forced into hiding). President Truman proclaims V-J (Victory over Japan) Day August 14, the Japanese hear a recorded message from the emperor that does not mention defeat or surrender (few have ever heard his voice), his minister of war Gen. Anami commits ritual suicide August 15 at age 58 to thwart a coup by officers intent on continuing hostilities, other military and naval higher ups follow suit, but fighting in Manchuria continues until August 17. Retreating Japanese forces destroy their 9-year-old Unit 731 biological-weapons facility, where thousands of civilians and U.S. POWs have been subjected to tests that included dissection while they were still alive. The release of plague-infected animals from Unit 731 and other such facilities cause outbreaks that will kill at least 30,000 in the Harbin area by 1948. The Allies give Shiro Ishii and his colleagues immunity from war-crimes prosecution in return for access to results of his field tests.
World War II ends after nearly 6 traumatic years in which an estimated 54.8 million have died, most of them civilians. Many millions more are left crippled, blind, mutilated, homeless, orphaned, and impoverished. Europe has 10 million displaced persons. The war has directly involved 57 nations, but the Soviet Union, Germany, China, and Japan have borne the lion's share of casualties. Counting only military personnel, the USSR has lost 7.5 million; Germany nearly 2.9 million; China 2.2; Japan 1.5; Britain nearly 398,000; Italy 300,000; the United States more than 290,000. More than 8.2 million men and women have been in the U.S. Army at war's end, up from fewer than 200,000 in 1939, and another 3.8 million have been in the navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.
France has lost nearly 211,000 men, including colonial troops (but not including 36,877 prisoners of war who died in captivity); Canada has lost 39,139; Australia 29,395; New Zealand 12,262; South Africa 8,681; India 36,092; the rest of the British Empire 30,776.
Indonesians proclaim independence from the Netherlands August 17, and Allied (mostly British Indian) troops resist nationalist forces until Dutch reinforcements arrive (see 1922). Achmad Sukarno, 44, helped found the Indonesian Nationalist Party in 1928, was exiled in 1933, returned to the Japanese-controlled islands in 1942, and leads the struggle against Dutch rule; his rival Sutan Sjahrir, 36, gains support from more militant nationalists with his pamphlet "Our Struggle" ("Perdjuangan Kita") and serves as prime minister of the nascent republican government (see 1946).
Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose dies August 18 at age 48 in the fiery crash at Taipei of a Japanese bomber that was to have taken him to the Soviet Union.
U.S. forces land in Japan August 28. Gen. MacArthur is named supreme commander of Allied occupation forces.
Formal Japanese surrender terms signed September 2 aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay provide for Soviet control of Outer Mongolia, Chinese sovereignty over Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Taiwan, and Hainan, with joint U.S. and Soviet occupation of Korea until an independent government can be established there after 35 years as a Japanese colony (see 1948). Military planners at Potsdam have divided Korea arbitrarily in July, with the Soviet Union to accept the surrender of Japanese forces north of the 38th parallel, U.S. authorities to accept the surrender south of that line (see 1948). Gen. MacArthur, Royal Navy Pacific Fleet commander in chief Admiral Bruce A. Fraser, and other Allied dignitaries sign the papers: Japan cedes the Kuril Islands and southern part of Sakhalin to the USSR. Emperor Hirohito is to remain Japanese head of state, but the Japanese high command and military establishment is to be disbanded, and a U.S. army of occupation is to rule Japan.
Vietnamese communists headed by Ho Chi Minh proclaim the Democratic Republic of Vietnam September 2 (see 1931; Viet Minh, 1941). The Japanese have declared Vietnam an independent nation in March, with the French puppet emperor Bao Dai (Nguyen Vinh Thuy), now 31, as its ruler in preference to the nationalist prince Cuong De, now 65, who remains in Japan, but Bao Dai agrees to abdicate in return for being named "supreme adviser" to Ho; when France tries to reassert her colonial claims to northern and central Vietnam, Bao Dai goes into exile in Hong Kong and China after 19 years on the throne, ending the Nguyen dynasty that has reigned since 1802 (see 1946). The country is temporarily divided at the latitude of 16° North, leaving various parts of central Vietnam under the control of different occupation forces. Ho Chi Minh's forces capture former interior minister Ngo Dinh Diem, 44, at Hue, and Ho invites Diem to join his new, independent government in hopes of obtaining Roman Catholic support, but Diem rejects the offer and will live abroad for the next decade (see 1954). Former Vietnamese puppet emperor Duy Tan dies in a plane crash December 26 at age 46 and is buried in French Equatorial Africa, having served with the Free French under the name Major Vinh San.
The Japanese garrison on Wake Island surrenders September 4 (see 1941).
Gen. MacArthur makes his way by automobile to the U.S. Embassy in the heart of war-torn Tokyo September 8 and orders the American flag unfurled "as a symbol of hope for the oppressed and as a harbinger of victory for the right." He sets up headquarters in the Dai Ichi Insurance Building, which has escaped the bombing and whose higher floors command a view of the Imperial Palace.
Japanese forces in China capitulate formally September 9 at Nanjing. They are estimated to number 1 million, their leaders sign surrender papers with representatives of Chiang Kai-shek, Japan signs a treaty with China that formally returns Taiwan to Chinese sovereignty, and Japanese forces evacuate Taiwan after 50 years of occupation; Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalists arrive on the island, impose martial law, and seize foodstuffs that are then sold on the Shanghai market for money to support Chiang's forces against Mao Zedong's (Mao Tse-tung's) army (see human rights, 1947).
Gen. MacArthur orders the arrest of 39 Japanese political leaders September 11. Gen. Hideki Tojo sees U.S. military police outside his Tokyo house and shoots himself in the chest, but U.S. physicians abort his suicide attempt and nurse him back to health. Naruhiko Higashikuni resigns a week later in protest, having served as head of state for only 50 days before Gen. MacArthur announced his intentions to introduce his own political reforms. Former prime minister Fumimaro Konoye is indicted for war crimes but commits suicide at Tokyo in December at 54 (see war crimes trials, 1946).
The British at Singapore accept formal surrender of Japanese forces in Southeast Asia (estimated to number 585,000) September 12 (see 1942; 1946). The British reoccupy Hong Kong, which they lost to the Japanese in December 1941 and will rule until 1997.
The French convict former Indochinese governor general Jean Decoux of having collaborated with the Vichy government and abetting the Japanese war effort, even though he transferred his loyalties to Gen. de Gaulle's Free French more than a year ago and has tried to undermine Japanese occupation forces. Decoux will be imprisoned for 2 years.
Marshal Pétain is sentenced to death August 15 for treason, but his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment (now 89, he will live to July 1951). Former French premier Pierre Laval is executed October 15 at age 62 for having collaborated with the enemy. French communists and socialists who have led the Résistance prevail in elections for the constituent assembly October 21. Gen. de Gaulle outmaneuvers them, is elected by the assembly as president of the provisional government November 16, forms a cabinet November 21, but will resign early next year in the face of continuing Leftist opposition (see 1958).
President Truman dissolves the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) September 20. Major Gen. William J. Donovan has resigned as OSS chief August 25 and continues from his New York law office to urge creation of a permanent U.S. intelligence agency (see CIA, 1947).
Italy emerges from decades of Fascist dictatorship; Tyrolean-born politician Alcide De Gasperi, 64, served 16 months in prison for anti-Fascist activities before the war, has organized a center-right Christian Democratic Party, heads a coalition government that takes office December 10, and will head eight successive coalition governments until 1953, working to shape the shattered nation's moral and material recovery (see 1946).
Former Nazi leaders go on trial at Nuremberg in November on charges of conspiring to wage aggressive war and committing crimes against humanity. Josef Stalin has pressed for the immediate execution of Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitl, Franz von Papen, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Julius Streicher, and others; Winston Churchill has raised no objection, but Schenectady, N.Y.-born Col. Telford Taylor, 36, U.S. Army, has urged an international trial. Robert Ley has hanged himself in his prison cell October 25 at age 55 after writing a statement denouncing anti-Semitism. President Truman has persuaded Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson to be chief U.S. prosecutor in May, and Col. Taylor is appointed assistant prosecutor. The four-man panel of judges (one each from Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States) is shown horrific film footage taken by liberators of the German concentration camps, survivors give personal testimony, and the prosecutors read sickening eye-witness accounts (see 1946).
Former German field marshal August von Mackenson dies at Celle, Germany, November 8 at age 95.
Gen. Patton is killed in an automobile accident in Germany December 21 at age 60. He has been removed from command of the 3rd Army in October and transferred to the 15th Army; Admiral Roger J. B. Keyes, 1st Baron Keyes (of Zeebrugge and of Dover), Royal Navy (ret.), dies at Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, December 26 at age 73.
A revolutionary junta overthrows the 4-year-old military government of Venezuela's Gen. Isais Medina Angarita and sets up Rómulo Betancourt, 37, as provisional president. Although he joined the Communist Party briefly while in Costa Rica in the 1930s and still has left-wing leanings, Betancourt is an anticommunist who helped found the liberal Acción Democrática Party 4 years ago. He will serve until 1948 and, again, from 1959 to 1964, encouraging agrarian reform, industrial development, and a more democratic participation in government (see 1947).
Former Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles dies at Mexico City October 19 at age 68, having lived in exile in California from the mid-1930s until 1941.
Brazil's president Getulio Vargas resigns October 25 after nearly 15 years of dictatorship as pressures mount for a more liberal government. Chief Justice José Linhares becomes president pro tem; voters elect Gen. Enrico Dutra president December 2 (see 1950).