The Battle of Okinawa began. 50,000 American troops landed on Okinawa against little initial resistance and established a 13-kilometre (8.1 mi) beachhead.[1]
The Japanese ocean liner-turned-hospital ship Awa Maru was passing through the Taiwan Strait when the American submarine USS Queenfish (SS-393) mistook it for a destroyer, torpedoed and sank it. Of the 2,004 passengers and crew there was only one survivor.
The 6th Guards Tank Army of the 3rd Ukrainian Front captured the Hungarian city of Sopron on the Austrian border.[2]
The Soviet Union renounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact of April 1941, explaining that the "prolongation of that pact has become impossible."[4]
Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze was beached at Amoy after an attack by American B-25s.
American destroyers Bush, Colhoun, Leutze, Morris, Mullany, Newcomb, Rodman and Witter were all hit by Japanese kamikaze attacks off Okinawa. Bush and Colhoun were sunk while Leutze and Necomb were subsequently declared constructive total losses.
Died:Leon Feldhendler, 34, Polish Jewish resistance fighter (shot through the door of his home by an unknown assailant)
Operation Ten-Go: The Japanese battleship Yamato and nine other warships launched a suicide attack on Allied forces engaged in the Battle of Okinawa. Yamato was bombed, torpedoed and sunk by U.S. Navy aircraft south of Kyushu with the loss of 2,055 of 2,332 crew. Five other Japanese warships were sunk by American aircraft.
Germany sent out 120 student pilots to face 1,000 American bomber planes in a suicide operation with the objective of ramming their planes into the U.S. aircraft and then parachuting to safety. Only a few of the pilots managed to hit the bombers and three-quarters of the Luftwaffe pilots were shot down. It was the Sonderkommando Elbe group's first and last mission.[6]
In the "day of the great jet massacre," Allied aircraft shot down thirty of 50 Me 262 jet fighters. The loss was fatal to the Luftwaffe and the defense of Berlin was abandoned.[6][8]
US Army Corporal Rick Carrier discovers the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp, leading to the liberation of the camp on April 11th.
German submarine U-878 was depth charged and sunk in the Bay of Biscay by British warships.
Operation Opossum ended successfully with the rescue of the Sultan of Ternate and his family.
Allied commando unit Z Special Unit launched Operation Copper with the objective of capturing a Japanese officer for interrogation and discovering the location of two naval guns of Muschu Island, New Guinea. Eight commandos were landed but only one survived.
Adevastating tornado outbreak occurs across the United States, which kills 128 people and injures over 1,000 others. This outbreak would be heavily overshadowed due to the death of President Roosevelt.[12][13]
American destroyers Lindsey, Mannert L. Abele and Zellars were severely damaged off Okinawa by kamikaze attacks. Mannert L. Abele was sunk but Lindsey and Zellars survived, although they were out of action for the rest of the war.
The Vienna Offensive ended with the Soviet capture of Vienna itself.
German SS and Luftwaffe troops carried out the Gardelegen massacre in the northern German town of Gardelegen. 1,016 slave laborers were forced into a large barn which was then lit on fire.
Admiral Karl Dönitz grouped six U-boats into Wolfpack Seewolf and ordered them to the Atlantic to tie down Allied forces in the region. The Allies suspected that the U-boats were equipped to attack America's eastern seaboard with V-1orV-2 rockets and launched Operation Teardrop with the objective of sinking them.[15]
The British 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp pursuant to an April 12 agreement with the retreating Germans to surrender the camp peacefully. There they found 60,000 ill and emaciated prisoners and more than 13,000 corpses strewn about the camp.[17]
Harry S. Truman addressed Congress for the first time as president, in a speech broadcast over the major networks. "With great humility I call upon all Americans to help me keep our nation united in defense of those ideals which have been so eloquently proclaimed by Franklin Roosevelt," Truman said. "I want in turn to assure my fellow Americans and all of those who love peace and liberty throughout the world that I will support and defend those ideals with all my strength and all my heart. That is my duty and I shall not shirk it. So that there can be no possible misunderstanding, both Germany and Japan can be certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that America will continue the fight for freedom until no vestige of resistance remains!"[20]
American destroyer USS Pringle was sunk by a kamikaze attack off Okinawa.
Died:Ernst Bergmann, 53, German philosopher and proponent of Nazism (suicide)
In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill paid tribute to Franklin Roosevelt as "the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old."[21]
Died:Sōsaku Suzuki, 53, Japanese general (killed in action in the Philippines); Fritz Wächtler, 54, Nazi German politician (executed by the Nazis for desertion)
Soviet artillery began shelling Berlin at 11 a.m. on Hitler's 56th birthday.[1] Preparations were made to evacuate Hitler and his staff to Obersalzberg to make a final stand in the Bavarian mountains, but Hitler refused to leave his bunker. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler departed the bunker for the last time.[29]
Operation Herring began, with American aircraft dropping Italian paratroopers over Northern Italy.
Mussolini gave the last interview of his life to one of his few remaining loyal followers, the fascist newspaper director Gian Gaetano Cabella. Mussolini declared that "Italy will rise again ... For me, however, it is over."[30]
Died:Karl Holz, 49, German Nazi official (found dead in a barricaded police building in Nuremberg; unknown whether suicide or injury sustained in firefight); Herbert Lange, 35, German SS officer and commandant of Chełmno extermination camp (killed in action during the Battle of Berlin)
The Battle of Bautzen, one of the final battles of the Eastern Front, began around Bautzen, Germany.
Hitler ordered a final, all-out attack by the troops in Berlin under the command of ObergruppenführerFelix Steiner. Hitler expected every single man, tank and aircraft to be used in this attack.[31]
The battle of the Ruhr Pocket ended in Allied victory.
Hitler held a conference that afternoon in the Führerbunker to discuss the military situation. Upon being informed that the Steiner attack had not happened, and that the Soviets were now entering the northern suburbs of Berlin, he flew into a rage. He denounced the Army, complained that his generals and anyone who had deserted him were cowards and had failed him, then finally conceded that "everything is lost".[33] Over the protests of all those present, Hitler stated that he would stay in Berlin to the absolute end and then shoot himself, rather than try to escape to the south.[31] He allowed those who so wished to leave the bunker.
Heinrich Himmler secretly met with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden and asked him to act as an intermediary to offer the surrender of all German forces in the west.[34] The message took 48 hours to reach the Allies and they did not take it seriously.[35]
German radio broadcast a report that Adolf Hitler was in the "main fighting line" in Berlin and would "remain there despite all rumors." Allied circles doubted the report and suspected (incorrectly) that Hitler was in Bavaria organizing a last stand.[38]
Hermann Göring sent the so-called Göring Telegram, a message asking for permission to assume leadership of the Third Reich. Interpreting the telegram as an act of treason, Hitler relieved Göring of his official titles and ordered his arrest.[34]
Action of 23 April 1945: In one of the rare actions of the Pacific War to involve a German submarine, U-183 was sunk off the southern coast of Borneo by American submarine Besugo.
Antiship Bat missiles were used for the first time in combat when Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateers of the U.S. Navy launched two of them at Japanese vessels in Balikpapan Harbor in Borneo.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Cramer v. United States, deciding five-to-four to overturn the conviction of Anthony Cramer, a German-born naturalized citizen, for treason.
Shortly after sinking the American destroyer Frederick C. Davis, German submarine U-546 was sunk in the North Atlantic by U.S. Navy ships. With four of the six submarines in Seewolf now lost, Admiral Dönitz disbanded the wolfpack.[15]
The British Royal Air Force conducted its last significant mission of the war with a raid against Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden.[35]
OnBudget Day in the United Kingdom, Chancellor of the ExchequerSir John Anderson announced that expenditure over the past year had exceeded £6 billion for the first time in history, exceeding revenue by £2.825 billion. He also revealed that the war had cost the country a total of £27 billion through March 31. Anderson presented a "no change" budget and said that it might have to be superseded by another budget before the end of the year due to the tremendous impending events throughout the world.[42]
General Robert Ritter von Greim was taken on a risky flight from Munich to Berlin by Hanna Reitsch for a meeting with Hitler. During the flight Greim was injured by enemy fire that struck the cockpit. Hitler promoted Greim to field marshal (making him the last German officer ever to achieve that rank) and gave him command of the Luftwaffe. Greim was then flown back out of Berlin with the only airworthy plane left in the city.[35]
Via telephone hookup, President Truman addressed the delegates at the opening session of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) in San Francisco. "You members of this Conference are to be the architects of the better world," Truman said. "In your hands rests our future. By your labors at this Conference, we shall know if suffering humanity is to achieve a just and lasting peace. Let us labor to achieve a peace which is really worthy of their great sacrifice. We must make certain, by your work here, that another war will be impossible."[44]
The final Luftwaffe air victories of World War II were recorded when five Allied bombers were shot down over Aussig in the modern-day Czech Republic.
Philippe Pétain was arrested on the border between Switzerland and France.[46]
At the first plenary session of UNCIO, State Secretary Edward Stettinius, Jr. said that the world body should work out only a charter. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov said that the lessons of the failed League of Nations must be remembered.[47]
While attempting to flee to Switzerland, Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans. The next day, both were summarily executed near Lake Como along with twelve other leading fascists. The bodies of Mussolini, Petacci and others were then brought to the Piazzale Loreto in Milan and hung upside down on public display at a gas station.[49]
The U.S. Fifth Army reached Genoa, although most of the city was already in the hands of resistance fighters.[1][37]
The Western Allies rejected Himmler's proposal to surrender all German forces in the west, interpreting the offer as an attempt to split their alliance with the Soviets.[34]
The Red Army captured the Berlin airports of Tempelhof and Gatow, preventing the capital from receiving any further supplies by air.[50]
At the royal palace in Caserta, two German officers signed the terms of surrender of German forces in Italy. Hostilities would cease at noon on May 2.[51]
Hitler's dog Blondi died as a result of a test verifying the potency of the cyanide capsules Hitler had in his possession. The capsules had been given to him by Himmler and, having lost trust in Himmler after the revelation of his attempted negotiations with the Allies behind Hitler's back, wanted to confirm that the capsules were truly fatal.
German submarines U-286, U-307 and U-1017 were lost to enemy action.
Died:Adolf Hitler, 56, Führer of Germany (suicide); Eva Braun, 33, German wife of Adolf Hitler (suicide); William Orlando Darby, 34, U.S. Army officer (killed in action in northern Italy); Luisa Ferida, 31, Italian stage and film actress (shot by partisans); Osvaldo Valenti, 39, Italian film actor (shot by partisans)
^ abPaterson, Lawrence (2009). Black Flag: The Surrender of Germany's U-Boat Forces on Land and at Sea. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. pp. 53–54. ISBN978-1-84832-037-6.
^"Nation Bids Roosevelt Farewell". Brooklyn Eagle. April 15, 1945. pp. 1–2.
^Ziemke, Earl F. (1969). Battle for Berlin: End of the Third Reich. Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II, Battle Book #6. Ballantine Books.
