Modern Era
D-Day (1944): The Allied Normandy Landings of Operation Overlord
Allied victory: about 156,000 troops came ashore by sea and air and secured a foothold in France, opening the Western Front that led to the liberation of western Europe.
Region
Europe
Modern Era
Potsdam Conference (1945): Truman, Stalin and the Fate of Germany
The Allies agreed on the occupation, denazification and demilitarisation of Germany, placed eastern German lands under Polish administration and issued the Potsdam Declaration to Japan, but deep disagreements remained.
Modern Era
Death of Adolf Hitler (1945): The Last Days in the Führerbunker
Hitler and Eva Braun died by suicide, their bodies were burned, and Germany surrendered a week later; Soviet investigators recovered the remains and secretly destroyed them in 1970.
Modern Era
Liberation of Bergen-Belsen (1945): What British Troops Found
British forces took over the camp and fought a typhus epidemic, but about 13,000 former prisoners died in the weeks after liberation; the evidence filmed there shaped Western understanding of Nazi crimes.
Modern Era
Bombing of Dresden (1945): The Allied Raids and Their Legacy
The historic centre of Dresden was destroyed and an estimated 18,000–25,000 people were killed, making the raids one of the most debated Allied actions of the war.
Modern Era
VE Day (1945): Victory in Europe and the German Surrender
Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending the war in Europe; Victory in Europe Day was celebrated on 8 May in the West and on 9 May in the Soviet Union.
Modern Era
Battle of Berlin (1945): The Fall of the Third Reich's Capital
Soviet victory; Berlin surrendered on 2 May 1945, two days after Hitler's suicide, and Germany surrendered unconditionally within a week.
Modern Era
Yalta Conference (1945): Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin
The Allies agreed on zones of occupation for Germany, a new frontier and government formula for Poland, the voting rules of the United Nations and Soviet entry into the war against Japan.
Contemporary
Operation Paperclip: German Scientists Brought to the US
More than 1,600 German and Austrian specialists were brought to the United States, boosting its rocket and aerospace programmes but sheltering some with Nazi pasts.
Contemporary
Greek Civil War (1946–1949): Communists Against the Government
Government victory; the Democratic Army was defeated in 1949, Greece stayed in the Western camp and the Communist Party remained banned until 1974.
Contemporary
Iron Curtain Speech (1946): Churchill at Fulton, Missouri
Churchill's warning of an iron curtain across Europe was widely criticised at first but became the defining image of the Cold War division of the continent.
Contemporary
Indian Independence 1947: How the British Raj Came to an End
British rule ended and power passed to two independent dominions, India and Pakistan, under the Indian Independence Act 1947.