May 1945: War In Europe Winding Down

V-E (Victory in Europe) Day is usually listed in the US as May 8. But surrenders were already underway in April.

April:
1,500,000 prisoners taken on the Western Front in April by the Allies; 120,000 German troops captured in Italy; up to the end of April, over 800,000 German soldiers surrendered on the Eastern Front.

Finland: On 25 April 1945, the last Germans were expelled by the Finnish Army;

Mussolini's death: On 27 April 1945, as Allied forces closed in on Milan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans. Executed 28 April;

Hitler's death: On 30 April, realizing that all was lost and not wishing to suffer Mussolini's fate, German dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide;


German forces in Italy surrender: On 29 April, the day before Hitler died, SS General Karl Wolff signed a surrender document agreeing to a ceasefire and surrender of all the forces at 2pm on 2 May; nearly 1,000,000 men in Italy and Austria;

 German forces in Berlin surrender: The Battle of Berlin ended on 2 May. On that date, General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling, the commander of the Berlin Defense Area, unconditionally surrendered the city to General Vasily Chuikov of the Soviet army;

German forces in North West Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands surrender: On 4 May 1945, the British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery took the unconditional military surrender from Generaladmiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, and General Eberhard Kinzel, of all German forces "in Holland [sic], in northwest Germany including the Frisian Islands and Heligoland and all other islands, in Schleswig-Holstein, and in Denmark… includ[ing] all naval ships in these areas." The number of German land, sea and air forces involved in this surrender amounted to 1,000,000 men. On 5 May, Großadmiral Dönitz ordered all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases. At 16:00, General Johannes Blaskowitz, the German commander-in-chief in the Netherlands, surrendered to Canadian General Charles Foulkes in the Dutch town of Wageningen in the presence of Prince Bernhard (acting as commander-in-chief of the Dutch Interior Forces).

Central Europe: On 5 May 1945, the Czech resistance started the Prague uprising.

German forces in Breslau surrender: At 18:00 on 6 May, General Hermann Niehoff, the commandant of Breslau, a 'fortress' city surrounded and besieged for months, surrendered to the Soviets;

Jodl and Keitel surrender all German armed forces unconditionally:  At 02:41 on the morning of 7 May, at SHAEF headquarters in Reims, France, the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies;

Victory in Europe: News of the imminent surrender broke in the West on 8 May, and celebrations erupted throughout Europe. In the US, Americans awoke to the news and declared 8 May V-E Day. As the Soviet Union was to the east of Germany it was 9 May Moscow Time when the German military surrender became effective, which is why Russia and many other European countries east of Germany commemorate Victory Day on 9 May.

That left Japan.