1945: The end of the war

Europe

Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt made arrangements for post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Their meeting resulted in many important resolutions:

An April meeting would be held to form the United Nations;
Poland would have free elections (though in fact they were heavily rigged by Soviets);
Soviet nationals were to be repatriated;
The Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's surrender.
The Red Army (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army) began its final assault on Berlin on 16 April. By now, the German Army was in full retreat and Berlin had already been battered due to preliminary air bombings. Most of the Nazi leaders had either been killed or captured. Hitler, however, was still alive, and was said to be slowly going mad. As a final resistance effort, he called for civilians, including children, to fight the oncoming Red Army in the Volkssturm militia. Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker, a concrete bunker beneath the Chancellery, where on 30 April 1945, he committed suicide, along with his newly-married wife, Eva Braun. This fulfilled Hitler's earlier promise that, should the Third Reich fall, he would never survive the surrender of his country. Admiral Karl Dönitz became leader of the German government, but the German war effort quickly disintegrated: German forces in Italy surrendered on 2 May 1945; those in northern Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands on 4 May 1945; and the German High Command under Generaloberst Alfred Jodl surrendered unconditionally all remaining German forces on 7 May in Reims, France. The Western Allies celebrated "V-E Day" on 8 May and the Soviet Union "Victory Day" on 9 May.

East Asia and the Pacific

In January the U.S. 6th Army landed on Luzon, the main island of the Phillipines. Manila was re-captured by March. U.S. capture of islands such as Iwo Jima in February and Okinawa (April through June) brought the Japanese homeland within easier range of naval and air attack. Amongst dozens of other cities, Tokyo was firebombed, and about 90,000 people died from the initial attack. The dense living conditions around production centres and the wooden residential constructions contributed to the large loss of life. In addition, the ports and major waterways of Japan were extensively mined by air in Operation Starvation which seriously disrupted the logistics of the island nation.

The last major offensive in the south-west Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia and securing the release of Allied POWs.

On 6 August 1945, the B-29 "Enola Gay", piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped an atomic bomb (Little Boy) on Hiroshima, effectively destroying it.

On 8 August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as had been agreed to at Yalta, and launched a large-scale invasion of Japanese occupied Manchuria (Operation August Storm).

On 9 August, the B-29 "BOCKS CAR", piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, dropped an atomic bomb (Fat Man) on Nagasaki.

The American use of atomic weapons against Japan prompted the emperor of Japan to bypass the existing government and intervene to end the war. The new inclusion of the Soviet Union in the war may have also played a part, but in his radio address to the nation Emperor Hirohito did not mention it as a major reason for his country's surrender.

The Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945 (V-J day), signing official surrender papers on 2 September 1945, aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered to the Chinese on 9 September 1945. This did not fully end the war, however, because Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace agreement. In the last days of the armed conflict, the Soviet Union occupied the southern Kuril Islands, an area previously held by Japan and claimed by the Soviets. The Japanese contest the occupation of these islands even today.

Resistance and Collaboration

Resistance during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. Resistance movements are sometimes also referred to as "the underground".

Among the most notable resistance movements were the Polish Home Army, the French Maquis and the Yugoslav Partisans. The Communist resistance was among the fiercest since they were already organised and militant even before the war and their ideology was in many respects directly opposite of that of the Nazis.

Before D-Day there were also many operations performed by the French Resistance to help with the forthcoming invasion. Communications lines were cut, trains derailed, roads, water towers and ammunition depots were destroyed and some German garrisons were attacked.

Many countries had resistance movements dedicated to fighting the Axis invaders, and Germany itself also had an anti-Nazi movement. Although Great Britain did not suffer invasion in World War II, the British made preparations for a British resistance movement, called the Auxiliary Units, in the event of a German invasion. Various organisations were also formed to establish foreign resistance cells or support existing resistance movements, like the British SOE and the American OSS (the forerunner of the CIA).

The home fronts

In the United Kingdom, women joined the work force in jobs that the men used to occupy. Food, clothing, petrol and other items were rationed. Access to luxuries was severely restricted, though there was also a significant black market. Families also grew victory gardens, small home vegetable gardens, to supply themselves with food, and the Women's Land Army recruited or conscripted over 80,000 women to work on farms. Civilians also served as Air Raid Wardens, volunteer emergency services and other critical functions. Schools and organisations held scrap drives and money collections to help the war effort. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later, such as fat to turn into nitroglycerin. A notable case was the collection of street railings as scrap iron, which changed the 'feel' of many older urban streets.

In the United States and Canada women also joined the workforce. In the United States these women are now called "Rosies" for Rosie the Riveter. Franklin D. Roosevelt stated that the efforts of civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice were as critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves. In Canada, the government established three military compartments for women: the CWAAF (Canadian Women's Auxiliary Air Force), CWAC (Canadian Women's Army Corps) and WRCNS (Women's Royal Canadian Naval Services).

In Germany, at least for the first part of the war, there were few restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available. This was due in large part to the reduced access to certain luxuries already experienced by German civilians prior to the beginning of hostilities; the war made some less available, but many were in short supply to begin with. It was not until comparatively late in the war that the civilian German population was effectively organised to support the war effort. For example, women's labour was not mobilised as thoroughly as in the United Kingdom or the United States. Foreign slave labour was more significant as a substitute for the males enlisted into the armed forces.

War crimes and attacks on civilians

Few forms of atrocity were excluded from the Eastern European theatre, as millions of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, as well as over a million Yugoslavs in disproportionate reprisal killings for Partisan activity. According to Hitler's notorious commissar order Soviet POWs were frequently shot in the field by the German Wehrmacht. The Soviet occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1941 was also brutal, resulting in the death or deportation of at least 1.8 million former Polish citizens. In 1940, the Soviet authorities ordered the execution of more than 22,000 Polish citizens, mainly Polish officers, but also scientists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, priests and others in the Katyn Massacre. Civilian populations suffered tremendously, the population of Kiev dropped by 70% between the early 1930s and 1945 under the Nazis.