May 1, 1944:
- April 27: "Of 2,775 death-marchers moving east from Rehmsdorf, Germany (near Buchenwald), 1,000 are killed by grenades and machine-gun fire from SS guards at Marienbad, Czechoslovakia, for attempting to flee.
Twelve hundred more will be killed on the march and another 500 will be murdered after arriving at Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia.
Of the 2,775 marchers, just 75 will survive. - "The concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, is liberated by the Red Army; 3,000 inmates remain alive.
- "The camp at Kaufering, Germany, is liberated by the U.S. Army.
Very few inmates remain alive. - April 28: "The SS works with the Red Cross to safely transport 150 Jewish women from the concentration camp at Ravensbrück, Germany, to neutral Sweden.
On the way, five of the women are killed during an Allied air raid. - "Deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is captured and executed by Italian partisans at Dongo, Italy; See April 29, 1945.
- "Heinrich Müller, Gestapo chief from 1934 to 1945, is seen for the last time, in Hitler's bunker.
- April 29: "Hitler designates Admiral Karl Dönitz to succeed him as Führer and Reich president. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is named Reich chancellor.
- "While trapped with intimates in his bunker beneath Berlin, Hitler dictates his final political testament.
The document blames the Jews and their "collaborators" for the war and all of Germany's problems. Hitler ends by warning Germany: 'Above all, I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.' - "Via a Radio Stockholm broadcast, Hitler learns of the April 28 execution of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
- "Mussolini's corpse, and that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, are strung upside down in Milan's Piazza Loreto and mutilated by an angry mob.
- "The U.S. 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions liberate the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany, and find 32,000 living inmates and 50 railroad cars piled with emaciated corpses.
- "At Allach, Germany, near Munich, many Jewish refugees die of overeating following the arrival of supplies brought by American troops.
- "The Neuengamme, Germany, concentration camp is liberated by Britain's Royal Army.
Very few inmates remain alive. - "123 SS guards captured at the Dachau, Germany, concentration camp are summarily executed by outraged American troops.
- April 30: "Hitler and his bride, Eva Braun, commit suicide in Hitler's bunker below Berlin.
- "Hitler's valet and other intimates ascended with the bodies to the Chancellery garden.
The corpses were doused with gas and set ablaze. - "Allied troops capture Munich, Germany.
- "The Soviet Army captures the Reichstag building in Berlin.
- "Soviet troops liberate the Ravensbrück, Germany, camp, where about 2,000 inmates remain alive.
In two years, 30,000 Jews and non-Jews, most of them women and children, have died there. - Late April: "Photographic images of the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, are widely circulated in Great Britain.
- May 1945: "After 68 months of war, just one of every ten of Poland's prewar Jewish population of 3.3 million is alive.
- "Thirty thousand prisoners transported from Mauthausen, Austria, and Warsaw revolt at the labor camp at Ebensee, Austria.
When they are ordered into a tunnel packed with explosives, they refuse to budge, confusing the SS and Volksdeutsche guards, all of whom are mindful of the advancing Allies and the likelihood of war-crimes trials.
The prisoners' defiance is successful and they are left unharmed. - "Reich Minister of Education Bernhard Rust commits suicide.
- "SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann, deeply involved in the September 1941 Babi Yar massacre, commits suicide.
- "Martin Luther, the former deputy to Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, dies of heart failure.
- Early May: "Martin Bormann, Hitler's influential secretary, is likely killed by Soviet troops as he attempts to flee Berlin on foot.
Rumors of his survival will continue for years. - May 1: "Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, commit suicide in the Führerbunker after fatally poisoning their six children.
- "A Jew in a group of laborers from the camp at Sonneberg, Germany, chants and dances with joy upon word of Hitler's death.
A German guard calmly shoots the man dead. - "The concentration camp at Stutthof, Poland, is liberated by the Red Army.
Just 120 inmates remain alive."
"Benito Mussolini was arrested by Communist partisans in April 1945 as he tried to flee to Austria disguised as a German soldier.
The partisans shot him on April 28. Subsequently, his body, along with that of his mistress--Clara Petacci--and five other close confidants, was hanged in Milan, Italy's Piazzale Loreto and mutilated by an angry mob.
Ironically, Mussolini ignored the advice of his son and others when he refused to fly out of the country to temporary safety.
Petacci, too, was foolishly stubborn, and refused to abandon Il Duce."
"These emaciated children survived the Ravensbrück, Germany, concentration camp. >br> Though Ravensbrück imprisoned mostly women, it also included a children's camp at Uckermark and a separate section for men.
In December 1944 and January 1945, Uckermark was recognized as a selection and extermination camp for Ravensbrück.
At the end of January, a large selection took place; old, sick, or weak women were taken to Uckermark and murdered, many by gassing.
These selections continued into spring, leading to the deaths of at least 5,000 women."
"A sparse complement of guards leads numerous prisoners in a death march from the Dachau, Germany, concentration camp on April 29, 1945.
This photograph, surreptitiously taken by a German civilian, shows the emaciated prisoners as they march through the Bavarian countryside down the Nördlichen Münchner Strasse in Grünwald. Few civilians tried to help the suffering marchers."
"These physically and psychologically abused men were among those liberated from the Dachau, Germany, concentration camp by the U.S. Army on April 29, 1945.
One American soldier said the camp's inmates 'were skin and bones.'
Many of the survivors had lived for months on starvation rations.
A large percentage of them died even after being liberated."
"Former prisoners often seized opportunities for revenge against camp guards.
This German, previously a guard at Dachau, was beaten by inmates who, against the odds, had survived his cruelty."
"Thirty minutes after the camp's liberation, a human body continues to burn in one of Dachau's crematorium ovens.
As the death toll mounted, the Nazis kept Dachau's ovens operating night and day.
Still, it was not nearly enough to dispose of the bodies of the hundreds who were dying each day."
"Two British soldiers guard the infamous Alex Bernard Hans Piorkowski, former commandant of Dachau.
While relatively few of the inmates at Dachau were gassed, Piorkowski assured that conditions there were so appalling that inmates died by the thousands of starvation, disease, and abuse (including outright execution) at the hands of the camp's personnel."
"Jack Hallett, an American soldier who helped liberate Dachau, noted that the 'first thing I saw was a stack of bodies--oh, 20 feet long and about, oh, as high as a man could reach....
And the thing I'll never forget was the fact that closer inspection found people whose eyes were still blinking maybe three or four deep inside the stack.'
A particularly haunting aspect of the terrible scene photographed here is the clothed young woman among the dozens of shaven, naked male bodies."