April 1945 might have been the pivotal month in all world history, considering all of the historical events and people who eventually ended up in books, articles, photos, and movies—likely thousands, both from a Judeo-Christian and a secular perspective. Looking day by day, this was April 1945, eighty years ago.
April 1 – Easter Sunday. The Battle of Okinawa, Japan began. It was the largest and deadliest battle in the Pacific theater during World War II. (About a quarter million people died.)
April 4 – Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany was liberated by US troops. It was part of the Buchenwald camp system.
April 7 – The US Navy sank the Japanese battleship Yamato. It’s the largest battleship ever built. Over 3,000 Japanese sailors perished.
April 8 – A train carrying 4,000 people to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany stopped next to an ammunition train right before it was bombed by Allied aircraft—over 3,500 were killed.
April 9 – The US Liberty ship SS Charles Henderson exploded in an Italian port, unloading its cargo of 500-pound bombs. Over 500 people were killed, and 1,800 were injured.
April 9 – German Lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at the Flossenburg concentration camp in Bavaria. (Camp was liberated two weeks later.)
April 11 – US Army liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.
April 12 – Canadian forces liberated Westerbrook camp in the Netherlands. Ann Frank was held there August-September 1944 before being transferred to Bergen-Belsen. She died there in February 1945. (Bergen-Belsen was liberated April 15.)
April 12 – US President Franklin Roosevelt died.
April 13 – German guards herded over 1,000 prisoners into a barn near Buchenwald, locked the doors, and set it on fire, shooting anyone who tried to get out.
April 15 – British and Canadian troops liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
April 16 – The German transport ship MV Goya was torpedoed and sunk by a Russian submarine. It was carrying 7,000 wounded troops and civilians fleeing the advancing Russian army. Only 183 survived in one of the deadliest maritime disasters of all time.
April 17 – US and British troops located 1,000 tons of uranium ore stored in Germany. It was transported to the UK.
April 18 – American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ernie Pyle was killed during the battle of Okinawa.
April 19 – The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel opened on Broadway. (Never underestimate the American desire to be entertained.)
April 20 – Soviet forces captured the headquarters of the German High Command near Berlin.
April 22 – Adolf Hitler admitted to those closest to him that the war was lost and that he would kill himself.
April 22 – Soviet and Polish forces liberated Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.
April 22 – Prisoners revolted at the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia. All 600 were killed.
April 23 – Hermann Göring asked Adolph Hitler if he could assume control of the Third Reich. Hitler considered it treasonous and ordered his arrest.
April 24 – New US President Harry Truman was briefed on the status of the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb.
April 25 – US and Soviet forces met at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two.
April 28 – Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was executed by partisans.
April 29 – Adolf Hitler married his partner, Eva Braun.
April 29 – US Army liberated Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
April 29 – German forces in Italy surrendered.
April 29 – British RAF and US aircraft dropped thousands of tons of food into the German-occupied Netherlands as civilians were starving. Truck convoys followed with 1,000 tons of food per day.
April 30 – Stalag Luft I prisoner of war camp in Germany was liberated by Soviet forces. 9,000 American, British, and Canadian airmen were set free.
April 30 – Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves. Karl Dönitz was made president of Germany.
April 30 – The Russian Army liberated the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. This was the camp that held Dutch Christians Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie (The Hiding Place book and film). Betsie died in mid-December 1944, and Corrie was released because of a clerical error on December 31, a week before she would have been sent to the gas chambers.
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In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing (2 Timothy 4, NIV).
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They look to us down through the years
to bear the torch they’ve thrown
from failing hands as Heaven nears,
as God comes for His own.
They go to that better place
where tears and strife are gone,
but still they watch with shining face
that they may cheer us on
as we labour with the tools they left,
and with new ones, too,
to preserve the warp and weft
of the good earth they knew,
and that some perished to defend
for a Godly living end.
Thanks for this powerful and sobering post for what it means both from the secular and the believer’s standpoint. And it’s a good review of WWII closing events because I have observed that a lot of people seem to have forgotten what they learned about WWII.
Although I have long been well aware of this history or horrors, (my uncle served in the OSS) this post moved me to tears while reading the passage from 2 Timothy. Thank you, Dan.
Thank you, Dan! Corrie’s Hiding Place changed my entire worldview when I read it (I think I was eight).
Wonderful post. A lot of this timeline was new information to me.
Thank you for all you do.
Yesterday, 80 years ago…
On 23 April 1945, units of the Red Army liberated the Zeithain and Mühlberg prisoner of war camps.
My father, a Dutch sergeant, was one of the prisoners of camp Mühlberg (Stalag IV-b Mühlberg).
His two-year imprisonment was a journey from one camp to another,
Camp 1 – Stalag XI-a Altengrabow (near Magdeburg)
Camp 2: Stalag IV-b Mühlberg (near Leipzig)
Camp 3: Stalag XVIII-c Markt Pongau (near Salzburg)
Camp 4: Stalag 369 Kobierzyn (near Krakau)
Camp 5: Stalag IV-b Mühlberg
Thanks for this, Dan – my dad was with the Canadian and British troops who liberated Bergen-Belsen. What he saw overwhelmed him (he had spent most of the war in an office in Halifax so was totally unprepared for the horrors of war). He spent time in a phychiatric ward until he had a miraculous encounter with God who restored his mind and set him free from the fear. I wrote a short piece about it on Substack – https://marcialeelaycock.substack.com/p/war-story
Thanks for writing your dad’s story. It needed to be told.
Bless you, Dan, for doing this.
Very well done.
Our freedom came with a great price. May our wonderful God help us appreciate those who paid the ultimate price. Thanks, Dan, for reminding us.