May 6, 1945
- May 5: "The U.S. 11th Armored Division liberates the concentration camp at Mauthausen, Austria.
110,000 survivors are found, including 28,000 Jews.
Bodies of 10,000 inmates are discovered in a mass grave.
In the days following liberation, more than 3000 inmates will die. - "The camp at Gusen, Austria, near Mauthausen, is liberated by the U.S. Army; 2,000 inmates remain alive.
- "German troops surrender in Norway.
- "The presiding bishop of the German-Catholic bishops' conference instructs his priests to say a mass in Hitler's memory.
- "The U.S. 71st Infantry Division liberates the camp at Gunskirchen, Austria, where 18,000 inmates remain alive.
Hungarian author and journalist Geza Havas, force-marched to the camp from Mauthausen, dies a few hours before the Americans arrive. - "At the Ebensee, Austria, concentration camp, a brutal German Kapo (foreman) pleads with inmates not to turn him over to approaching Americans as a war criminal.
He is attacked by three Jewish boys and killed.
Other Germans at Ebensee meet similar fates.
Late in the day, a white flag is raised above the Ebensee guard tower. - May 6: "A death march from Schwarzheide, Germany, to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, that began on April 18 halts at Leitmeritz, Czechoslovakia.
- "The U.S. 11th Armored Division liberates the concentration camp at Ebensee, Austria.
Nearly 10,000 bodies are discovered in an enormous communal grave.
3,500 inmates remain alive; however, many of these survivors die from overindulging in food innocently offered to them by the Americans."
"The Allies often forced captured German soldiers to exhume victims of the Holocaust so that their corpses could be buried under more sanitary conditions.
Here, several German POWs unearth a mass grave at Kaufering III.
The Kaufering camps, 11 in all, were subsidiaries of the Dachau, Germany, camp.
The Nazis intended for prisoners to build fighter-aircraft factories, a program that never developed.
Thousands of Kaufering inmates died from disease, overwork, malnutrition, or execution, and their bodies were dumped like garbage."
"Anton Mussert (with hat) was the leader of the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging der Nederlanden (Dutch Nazi Party).
Although a firm supporter of the Nazis, he had very little influence over events during the long years of occupation.
Hitler had no respect for him.
On May 7, 1945, he was arrested by the Dutch Resistance.
Mussert was executed exactly one year later."
"On April 29, 1945, Hitler chose Admiral Karl Dönitz (pictured) as his successor, naming him president and supreme commander of what remained of Germany's armed forces.
The Führer was convinced that the SS, the Wehrmacht, and the Luftwaffe had betrayed him.
Only the German Navy, which had long ceased to be a factor in the war, seemed to Hitler to be untainted.
Further, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring had broken with the regime and attempted to strike separate deals with the Allies in futile attempts to save their skins.
So Dönitz succeeded Hitler mainly by default.
During the 23 days that President Dönitz led Germany, he perpetuated Hitler's anti-Soviet policies.
Found guilty at Nuremberg on counts of waging aggressive war and war crimes, Dönitz was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment."
"With a bronze bust of Adolf Hitler tucked under his arm, a Soviet soldier celebrates the taking of the Berlin Reich Chancellery building.
The last German forces, mostly old men and young boys of the Hitler Youth, could do little to hold back the vast Soviet Army.
Berlin fell on May 2, and on May 7, at a schoolhouse near Reims, France, the German forces unconditionally surrendered.
Nearly six years of European war--and death and devastation without parallel in history--had ended."
"Celebrating their hard-fought victory, a soldier raises a Soviet flag from the roof of the Reich Chancellery, the seat of Nazi power, now occupied by the Soviet Army.
Under the leadership of war-hardened Generals Zhukov and Konev, the Soviet Army swept into the city.
Frightened citizens of Berlin, fearing retribution, sought to flee the devastated capital."
"SS troops in Copenhagen, Denmark, turn over their weapons before surrendering.
The long years of conflict had taken their toll.
Recognizing that the war was lost, these soldiers respond with joy to the order to proceed to the British lines, knowing that they had survived a war that many of their comrades had not."
"Liberation was welcomed by every prisoner -- although those who had collaborated with the Nazis had qualms about their altered situations.
This Polish slave laborer (left) who relaxed on May 4, 1945, with a young companion, in quarters that had been occupied by the adjutant of the Flossenbürg, Germany, concentration camp, was later accused of being a Kapo who had mistreated the camp's Jewish prisoners."
"Symbolic victories over their erstwhile captors were often important to camp prisoners.
Here, for example, some of the former prisoners of the concentration camp at Mauthausen, Austria, tear down the Nazi eagle and swastika over the camp's main gate.
Former inmates had suffered Nazi terror in horrifyingly unique ways, and were eager to destroy physical reminders of the Third Reich.
It was left to some Allied soldiers, who encountered German troops mainly as battlefield adversaries, to regard Nazi artifacts as souvenirs to be gathered and kept."
"The Allies often made practical--and ironic--use of the former concentration camps to house German prisoners of war.
This British soldier stands watch over German POWs being held in what had been the Neuengamme concentration camp."