It was on April 30, 1945 that the Red Army occupied Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker and the United Nations was being founded in San Francisco. Alexander Kluge covers this single historic day and unravels its passing hours across the different theatres of the Second World War, including the life of a small German town occupied by American forces and the story of two SS officers stranded on the forsaken Kerguelen Islands. The collective experiences Kluge paints here are jarring, poignant and imbued with meaning.
Acclaimed historian and New York Times bestselling author Craig Shirley delivers a compelling account of 1945, particularly the watershed events in the month of April, that details how America emerged from World War II as a leading superpower. In the long-awaited follow-up to the widely praised December 1941, Craig Shirley's April 1945 paints a vivid portrait of America--her people, faith, economy, government, and culture. The year of 1945 bought a series of watershed events that transformed the country into an arsenal of democracy, one that no longer armed the world by necessity but henceforth protected the world by need. At the start of 1945, America and the rest of the world were grieving millions of lives lost in the global conflict. As President Roosevelt was sworn into his fourth term, optimism over an end to the bloody war had grown--then, in April, several events collided that changed the face of the world forever: the sudden death of President Roosevelt followed by Harry S. Truman's rise to office; Adolph Hitler's suicide; and the horrific discoveries of Dachau and Auschwitz. Americans doubled down on their completion of the atomic bomb and their plans to drop them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the destruction ultimately leading the Japanese Empire to surrender on V-J day and ending World War II for good. Combining engaging anecdotes with deft research and details that are both diminutive and grand, April 1945 gives readers a front-row seat to the American stage at the birth of a brand-new world.
Operation 'Berlin', the Soviet offensive launched on 16 April, 1945, by Marshals Zhukov and Koniev, isolated the German Ninth Army and tens of thousands of refugees in the Spreewald 'pocket', south-east of Berlin. Stalin ordered its encirclement and destruction and his subordinates, eager to win the race to the Reichstag, pushed General Busse's 9th Army into a tiny area east of the village of Halbe. To escape the Spreewald pocket, the remnants of 9th Army had to pass through Halbe, where barricades constructed by both sides formed formidable obstacles and the converging Soviet forces subjected the area to heavy artillery fire. By the time 9th Army eventually escaped the Soviet pincers, it had suffered 40,000 killed and 60,000 taken prisoner. Teenaged refugees recount their experiences alongside Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans attempting to maintain military discipline amid the chaos and carnage of headlong retreat. While army commanders strive to extricate their decimated units, demoralised soldiers change into civilian clothing and take to the woods. Relating the story day by day, Tony Le Tissier shows the impact of total war upon soldier and civilian alike, illuminating the unfolding of great and terrible events with the recollections of participants.
Members of the Rainbow Division, 42nd Infantry discuss what it was like to participate in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April of 1945.
The life-altering experiences of the American soldiers who liberated three Nazi concentration camps. On April 4, 1945, United States Army units from the 89th Infantry Division and the 4th Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face to face with the monstrous reality of Hitler’s Germany. These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity: railroad cars stacked with emaciated, lifeless bodies; ovens full of incinerated human remains; warehouses filled with stolen shoes, clothes, luggage, and even eyeglasses; prison yards littered with implements of torture and dead bodies; and—perhaps most disturbing of all—the half-dead survivors of the camps. For the American soldiers of all ranks who witnessed such powerful evidence of Nazi crimes, the experience was life altering. Almost all were haunted for the rest of their lives by what they had seen, horrified that humans from ostensibly civilized societies were capable of such crimes. Military historian John C. McManus sheds new light on this often-overlooked aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on a rich blend of archival sources and thousands of firsthand accounts—including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections—Hell Before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.
LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.
On April 16th, 1945 the Red Army launched their fourth largest offensive along the Eastern Front during World War II. The objective was to seize Berlin before the Western Allies.Sixteen days later, the former capital of the Third Reich fell to the conquering armies of Generals Georgi Zhukov and his rival Ivan Koniev. The cost to capture the largest urban complex on mainland Europe from a handful of understrength Heer and Waffen-SS divisions, supported by Volkssturm and Hitlerjugend formations armed mainly with Panzerfaust anti-armour rockets, was exceptionally high. The Red Army suffered more casualties among its soldiers than during the six month siege of Stalingrad, and it lost more armoured vehicles than during the Battle of Kursk.Total losses among the defenders and civilian population remain unknown. Central Berlin was left a wasteland. The scars of the street fighting are still visible today, seventy-five years after the battle.When Bloody Streets was first published in 2008 it detailed the tactical street fighting in Berlin day-by-day for the first time through vivid first person accounts and period aerial imagery of the city. Ten years later this ground breaking study is back in print completely revised. Previously unpublished first person accounts from both the German and Soviet perspectives supplement archival documents that include new data from the operational war diaries of the 1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts. The book is highly illustrated throughout with period images of the city, aerial overviews, and wartime photos.Building on more than 15 years of research, the second edition of Bloody Streets is a capstone to the author's prior works on the final climatic battles along the Eastern Front. It will remain a benchmark study of the Battle of Berlin for years to come.
LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.
LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.
