These German soldiers stand in the rubble-strewn streets of Bastogne, Belgium, on January 9, 1945, after being captured by the U.S. 4th Armored Division, which helped break the German siege of the city.
By early 1945, the war that Germany had unleashed on the world was back, engulfing the entire world. Unlike the events of 1918, Germany fought literally to the bitter end in 1945.
The Germans held on, even though by early 1945 virtually everyone knew that a catastrophic defeat was the inevitable outcome.
They didn’t give up, even when Russian soldiers arrived in the garden of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Not even the Japanese offered such resistance.
In March, the Western Allied forces crossed the Rhine and captured hundreds of thousands of soldiers from German Army Group B.
The Red Army had meanwhile invaded Austria, and both fronts were rapidly approaching Berlin. Strategic bombing raids by Allied aircraft struck German territory, sometimes destroying entire cities overnight.
“Flag Raising over the Reichstag” – the famous photograph by Yevgeny Khaldei from May 2, 1945. It shows Soviet soldiers raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag building after the Battle of Berlin. It was a reenactment of an earlier flag-raising ceremony. The photo was marked by controversy over the identities of the soldiers and the photographer, as well as some significant photo manipulation. Read more about this image .
In the early months of 1945, Germany put up a fierce defense, but was rapidly losing territory, supplies were running low, and all options were exhausted.
In April, Allied forces broke through the German defense line in Italy. On April 25, 1945, East and West Germany clashed on the Elbe River near Torgau, as Soviet and American troops clashed.
On April 30, as Russian troops marched into the outskirts of Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
The leadership of Germany passed to Joseph Goebbels, but within 24 hours he too took his own life. Elsewhere, other Nazi leaders were either in Allied custody or on the run as refugees.
On December 27, 1944, a group of Hitler Youth received instruction in the use of a machine gun somewhere in Germany.
The German surrender took place on May 7, one week after Hitler’s death. National Socialism, the proud and boastful movement of the 1930s, was in its final throes.
The Nazis had promised the German people dignity, respect, and prosperity—and for a time, it seemed as if they would keep those promises.
But their ultimate legacy was a war that claimed over 48 million lives, a racist genocide like no other in history, and a Germany that was devastated, occupied, and torn apart for over 40 years.
A formation of B-24 bombers from the 15th U.S. Air Force under Major General Nathan F. Twining thunders over the railway tracks in Salzburg, Austria, on December 27, 1944. The smoke from their bombs mingles with that from the enemy’s numerous smoke bombs.
A heavily armed German soldier carries ammunition crates forward during the German counteroffensive in the Belgian-Luxembourg salient on January 2, 1945.
An infantryman of the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army undertakes a solo mission near Bra, Belgium, on December 24, 1944, while being covered by a comrade in the background.
A Soviet machine gun crew crosses a river along the Second Baltic Front in January 1945. The soldier on the left holds his rifle above his head while his comrades push a floating device with a Maxim machine gun, followed by two men carrying several supply crates.
Low-flying C-47 transport planes drone overhead, bringing supplies to the besieged American forces fighting the Germans near Bastogne, Belgium, on January 6, 1945. In the distance, smoke rises from destroyed German equipment, while in the foreground, American tanks advance to support the infantry in the fight.
Refugees stand in a group on a street in La Gleize, Belgium, on January 2, 1945, waiting to be transported out of the war-torn town after it was recaptured by American forces during the German advance in the Belgian-Luxembourg salient.
A dead German soldier killed during the German counter-offensive in the Belgian-Luxembourg salient is left on a street corner in Stavelot, Belgium, on January 2, 1945, as fighting continues in the Battle of the Bulge.
From left: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin sit on the terrace of the Livadia Palace in Yalta, Crimea, in this photo from February 4, 1945. The three heads of state met to discuss the postwar reorganization of Europe and the fate of Germany.
Soviet troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front in action amidst the buildings of the Hungarian capital on February 5, 1945.
Across the English Channel, Britain was being continuously bombarded by thousands of V-1 and V-2 bombs fired from German-controlled territory. This photograph, taken from a rooftop on Fleet Street, shows a V-1 flying bomb heading toward central London. The distinctive skyline of London’s courthouses clearly marks the scene. The bomb fell on a side street off Drury Lane, destroying several buildings, including the Daily Herald editorial office. The last enemy action on British soil was a V-1 attack on Datchworth in Hertfordshire on March 29, 1945.
As more and more Volkssturm members were sent to the front, the German authorities came under increasing pressure regarding their supplies of army equipment and clothing. In a desperate attempt to fill this shortage, collection points known as “Volksopfer” (People’s Sacrifice) scoured the country, collecting uniforms, boots, and equipment from German civilians, as seen here in Berlin on February 12, 1945. The inscription “Volksopfer” bears the words “The Führer expects your sacrifice for the army and homeland defense. So that you can be proud that your homeland defense member can show himself in uniform—empty your wardrobe and bring us the contents.”
On February 22, 1945, a squad set out to repair telephone lines on the main road in Kranenburg. The floods had been caused by the retreating Germans breaching the dikes. During the flooding, British troops continued to be supplied in Germany using amphibious assault vehicles.
This combination of three photos shows the reaction of a 16-year-old German soldier after being captured by U.S. forces at an unknown location in Germany in 1945. Read more about the history of this image .
Flak breaks through the vapor trail of the B-17 Flying Fortress of the 15th Air Force during the attack on the railway stations in Graz, Austria, on March 3, 1945.
A view from Dresden’s town hall of the destroyed old town after the Allied bombing raids from February 13 to 15, 1945. Around 3,600 aircraft dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the German city. The resulting firestorm destroyed 34 square kilometers of the city center and killed over 22,000 people. Read more on this topic: “The Ruins of Dresden, 1945. “
Soldiers of the 3rd US Army storm into Koblenz on March 18, 1945, while a dead comrade lies against the wall.
Men of the American 7th Army stream through a breach in the defenses of the West Wall on March 27, 1945, on their way to Karlsruhe, Germany, which lies on the road to Stuttgart.
Private Abraham Mirmelstein of Newport News, Virginia, holds the Holy Scroll while Captain Manuel M. Poliakoff and Private Martin Willen of Baltimore, Maryland, hold a service at Rheydt Castle, the former residence of Nazi Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph Paul Goebbels, in Munich-Gladbach on March 18, 1945. These were the first Jewish services east of the Rur River and were held in memory of the Jewish soldiers killed in action from the 29th Division of the 9th U.S. Army.
American soldiers huddle aboard an assault boat as they cross the Rhine at St. Goar under heavy fire from German forces in March 1945.
An American soldier, shot by a German sniper in Koblenz, Germany, in March 1945, clutches his rifle and hand grenade.
The war-torn Cologne Cathedral rises above the devastated area on the west bank of the Rhine in Cologne on April 24, 1945. The train station and the Hohenzollern Bridge (right) were completely destroyed after three years of Allied air raids. Read more: ” Cologne Cathedral rises high above the ruins of the city after the Allied bombing raids in 1944. “
An American soldier of the 12th Armored Division guards a group of German soldiers captured in a forest at an unknown location in Germany in April 1945.
Adolf Hitler honors members of his National Socialist youth organization, the “Hitler Youth,” in a photograph allegedly taken in front of the Reich Chancellor’s Bunker in Berlin on April 25, 1945. This was just four days before Hitler committed suicide.
Partially completed Heinkel He-162 jet fighters stand on the assembly line at the underground Junkers factory in Tarthun, Germany, in early April 1945. The vast underground tunnels in a former salt mine were discovered by the 1st U.S. Army during its advance on Magdeburg.
Soviet officers and US soldiers at a friendly meeting on the Elbe River in April 1945.
The camps built by the Allies for their prisoners never seemed large enough. Here you can see an overcrowded cage of Germans rounded up by the Seventh Army during its advance on Heidelberg on April 4, 1945.
A US soldier stands amidst the rubble of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Völkerschlachtdenkmal) in Leipzig after the city was attacked on April 18, 1945. The massive monument, commemorating Napoleon’s defeat in 1813, was one of the city’s last strongholds to surrender. 150 SS fanatics, who had stored three months’ worth of ammunition and food in the building, entrenched themselves, determined to hold out as long as their supplies allowed. The artillery of the American First Army eventually forced the SS troops to surrender.
In April 1945, Soviet soldiers engaged in house-to-house fighting on the outskirts of Königsberg in East Prussia.
A German officer eats C rations while sitting amid the ruins of Saarbrücken, a German city and fortress along the Siegfried Line, in the spring of 1945.
Overwhelmed by emotion, this Czech mother kisses a Russian soldier in Prague (Czech Republic) on May 5, 1945, and thanks him for fighting for the liberation of her beloved homeland.
On May 1, 1945, subway traffic in New York came to a standstill when news of Hitler’s death arrived. The German leader and head of the Nazi Party had shot himself in the head in a bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. His successor, Karl Dönitz, announced on German radio that Hitler had died a heroic death and would continue the war against the Allies.
British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (right) reads the surrender pact in a tent at Montgomery’s 21st Army Group headquarters in the Lüneburg Heath on May 4, 1945, while high-ranking German officers (from left: Major Friedel, Rear Admiral Wagner, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg) look on. The pact called for an armistice on the British fronts in northwest Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands starting at 8:00 a.m. on May 5. The German forces in Italy had already surrendered on April 29, and the rest of the army in Western Europe on May 7. On the Eastern Front, the German surrender to the Soviets took place on May 8, 1945. More than five years of terrible warfare on European soil were officially over.
On VE Day (Victory in Europe Day), May 8, 1945, an angry crowd crowded into Whitehall in central London to hear the Prime Minister officially announce Germany’s unconditional surrender. More than a million people celebrated in the streets of London.
Looking north from 44th Street, New York’s Times Square is packed with crowds celebrating the news of Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II on Monday, May 7, 1945.
Victory celebrations on Red Square in Moscow, Soviet Union. On May 9, 1945, fireworks began, followed by gunfire and a sky illuminated by searchlights.
The destroyed Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany, with a wrecked German military vehicle in the foreground, at the end of World War II.
Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 ground attack aircraft fly in the skies over Berlin, Germany, in 1945.
A color photograph of the bombed-out old town of Nuremberg in June 1945, after the end of World War II. Nuremberg had hosted major Nazi Party conventions from 1927 to 1938. The last convention, scheduled for 1939, was canceled at the last minute due to a scheduling conflict: the German invasion of Poland one day before the convention. The city was also the birthplace of the Nuremberg Laws, a series of draconian anti-Semitic laws enacted by Nazi Germany. Allied bombing raids from 1943 to 1945 destroyed more than 90% of the city center and killed over 6,000 residents. Nuremberg would soon become famous one last time as the host of the Nuremberg Trials—a series of military tribunals set up to try the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany. The war crimes these men were accused of included “crimes against humanity,” the systematic murder of more than 10 million people, including some 6 million Jews.
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