Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s - 1940s - 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
Years: 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 - 1945 - 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950
Events:
- January 5 - The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro-Soviet government of Poland
- January 7 - British General Bernard Montgomery holds a press conference in which he claims credit for victory in the Battle of the Bulge
- January 12 - World War II: The Soviets begin a very large offensive in Eastern Europe against the Nazis.
- January 13 - Soviet patrol arrests Raoul Wallenberg in Hungary
- January 16 - Adolf Hitler moves into his underground bunker
- January 17 - World War II: Soviets occupy Warsaw
- January 17 - Nazis begin to evacuate from Auschwitz concentration camp
- January 27 - The Red Army arrives at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland and find the Nazi concentration camp where 1.1-1.5 million people were murdered.
- January 28 - World War II: Supplies begin to reach China over the newly reopened Burma Road.
- January 31 - Eddie Slovik is executed, the first American soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion
- February 2 - World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill leave to meet with Soviet leader JosephStalin at the Yalta Conference.
- February 3 - World War II: Russia agrees to enter the Pacific Theatre conflict against Japan.
- February 4 - World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin begin the Yalta Conference (ends February 11)
- February 7 - World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila
- February 13 - World War II: Soviet Union forces capture Budapest, Hungary from the Nazis.
- February 13 - World War II: The British Air Force bombs Dresden, Germany.
- February 14 - Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru join the United Nations.
- February 16 - World War II: American forces land on Corregidor island in the Philippines.
- February 16 - American forces recapture the Bataan Peninsula
- February 19 - World War II: Battle of Iwo Jima - about 30,000 United States Marines landed on Iwo Jima starting the battle.
- February 23 - Following the American victory at the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Surabachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo will later win a Pulitzer Prize.
- February 23 - World War II: The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by American forces.
- February 24 - Egyptian Premier Ahmed Maher Pasha is killed in Parliament after reading a decree.
- March 1 - World War II: Adolf Hitler orders that all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany be destroyed.
- March 6 - Communist-led government formed in Romania
- March 8 - Josip Broz Tito forms a government in Yugoslavia
- March 22 - The Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.
- April 10 - The Allied Forces liberated their first Nazi concentration camp, Buchenwald.
- April 12 - United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945) dies in office; Vice President Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) takes the Oath of Office.
- April 25 – Founding negotiations of United Nations in San Francisco
- April 28 - Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are hanged upside down by Italian partisans as they attempt to flee the country.
- April 30 - Adolf Hitler and his wife of one day, Eva Braun, commit suicide as Russian troops approach Berlin.
- May 1 - Josef Goebbels and his wife commit suicide after killing their 6 children.
- May 2 - The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin. Soviet soldiers hoist the red flag over the Reichstag.
- May 3 - Rocket scientist Werner von Braun and 120 members of his team surrender to US forces. They later help start the US space program.
- May 5 - Ezra Pound, poet and author, is arrested by American soldiers in Italy for treason.
- May 5 - US armored unit liberates prisoners of Mauthausen concentration camp – including Simon Wiesenthal
- May 8 - V-E Day (Victory in Europe, as Nazi Germany surrenders) commemorates the end of World War II in Europe.
- May 23 - Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi Gestapo, commits suicide in British custody.
- May 25 - In Atlantic, ships can finally keep their lights lit
- May 28 - William Joyce, known as “Lord Haw-Haw” is captured. He is later charged with high treason in London for his English-language wartime broadcasts on German radio. He is hanged in January of 1946.
- June 1 - British take over Lebanon and Syria
- June 6 - King Hakon VII of Norway return to Norway
- June 11 - William Lyon Mackenzie King is reelected as Canadian prime minister.
- June 24 - Victory parade in Red Square
- June 26 - United Nations charter signed.
- July 1 - Germany is divided between Allied occupation forces
- July 16 - The Trinity Test, the first test of an atomic bomb, using 6 kilograms of plutonium, succeeds in detonating, unleashing an explosion equivalent to that of 20 kilotons of TNT.
- July 17 - Harry S. Truman, Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill (and later his successor, Clement Atlee) opened the Potsdam Conference for the final Allied summit of World War II.
- July 23 - French marshall Henri Petain, who headed the Vichy government during World War II goes on trial, charged with treason.
- July 26 - Winston Churchill resigns as Great Britain’s prime minister after his Conservative Party is soundly defeated by the Labour Party. Clement Atlee becomes the new prime minister.
- July 28 - A US bomber accidentally crashes into the Empire State Building, killing 14 people.
- July 29 - The USS Indianapolis is hit and sunk by an I-58 Japanese submarine. Some 900 survivors jump into the sea and are adrift for 4 days. Nearly 600 die before help arrives. Captain Charles Butler MacVey III is later court-martialed.
- July 29 - The BBC Light Programme radio station was launched, aimed at mainstream light entertainment and music.
- August 6 - August 9 - Two atomic bombs, (Little Boy and Fat Man) are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, ending World War II.
- August 13 – Zionist World Congress approaches British government to talk about founding of Israel.
- August 15 - Imperial Japan surrenders. The United States called this day V-J Day (Victory in Japan).
- August 17 - Indonesian nationalists declare independence from the Netherlands. Achmad Sukarno becomes president.
- End of August - Mao Tse-Tung and Chiang Kai-shek meet in Chungking to discuss an end to hostilities between the Communists and the Nationalists.
- September 2 - Ho Chi Minh promulgates the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, and unity from the north to the south.
- September 5 - Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist “Tokyo Rose,” is arrested in Yokohama.
- September 8 - US troops occupy southern Korea, Russians occupy the north. This arrangement proves to be the beginning of a divided Korea.
- September 8 - Hideki Tojo, Japanese prime minister during most of World War II, attempts suicide to avoid facing a war crimes tribunal.
- September 20 – Mohandas Gandhi and Jawanahral Nehru demand that British troops leave India
- October 10 - Russian code clerk Igor Gouzenko defects to Canada. He helps the West gain an understanding of Soviet spy rings in North America.
- October 15 - The former Vichy French premier Pierre Laval is executed by firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.
- October 17 - Colonel Juan Peron stages a coup d'etat, becoming ruler of Argentina.
- October 18 - The first German war crimes trial begins in Nuremberg.
- October 21 - Women in France are allowed to vote for the first time.
- October 23 - Jackie Robinson signs a contract with the Montreal Royals.
- October 27 – Indonesian separatists riot and fight Dutch and British security forces
- October 29 – Getulio Vargas, president of Brazil, resigns
- November 1 - John H. Johnson publishes the first issue of Ebony Magazine.
- November 13 - Charles de Gaulle is elected president of France.
- November 29 - The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia is proclaimed. Marshal Tito is named president.
- November - Assembly of the world’s first general purpose electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer (ENIAC), is completed. It covers 1800 feet of floor space. The first set of calculations is run on the computer.
- December 20 - Gen. George S. Patton dies in a car accident at the age of 60.
- December 27 - Twenty-eight nations sign an agreement creating the World Bank.
- December 27 - Terror strikes against British military bases in Palestine.
- Foundation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
- Poland has two rival governments
- Discovery of Nag Hammadi scriptures
- Dutch painter Hans Van Meegeren is arrested for collaboration with nazis but the paintings he had sold to Goering are found to be fakes.
- Female suffrage in Guatemala and Japan
Art, Culture & Fashion
- 1945 in film
- The Lost Weekend. Winner of Academy Awards for Best Picture; Ray Milland, Best Actor; Billy Wilder, Best Director, Best Screenplay
- Mildred Pierce Winner of Academy Award for Joan Crawford, Best Actress.
- Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck
- With Rossellini's Roma Città aperta, Italian neorealist cinema begins.
- Paramount Studios releases theatrical short cartoon titled "The Friendly Ghost", featuring ghost named Casper
- Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert's The Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) is released following the liberation of France
- 1945 in literature
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Black Boy by Richard Wright
- Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson
- Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
- Loving by Henry Green
- The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper
- Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
- Stuart Little by E.B. White
- A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks
- Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan
- Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht
- The Bosnian Trilogy by Ivo Andric
- The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
- 1945 in music
- Jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, makes his first record for Victor
- Hit songs of 1945:
- "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe" – Johnny Mercer
- "You Belong to My Heart" – Bing Crosby and Xavier Cugat Orch
- "Rum and Coca-Cola" – The Andrews Sisters
- "It Might as Well be Spring" – Dick Haymes
- "My Dreams are Getting Better All the Time" – Doris Day and Les Brown
- Bebop begins to emerge as popular style of jazz to contrast music of the big bands. Development of bebop is attributed in large part to trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker
- 1945 in sports
- 1945 in television
- The BBC begins broadcasting again, in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, where it left off six years earlier at the start of the war.
Science and Technology
- Arthur C. Clarke puts forward idea of a communications satellite in a Wireless World magazine article
- At Mayo Clinic, streptomycin first used to treat tuberculosis
- Percy Spencer accidentally discovers that microwaves can heat food. Invention of microwave oven follows.
- Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Newburgh, New York become the first cities to add fluoride to drinking water
- The first nuclear reactor outside of the U.S. is built in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada.
- High-altitude west-to-east winds across Pacific, discovered by Japanese in 1942 and by Americans in 1944, are dubbed "jet stream"
- Salvador Edward Luria and Alfred Day Hershey independently recognize that viruses undergo mutations
- Herbicide 2,4-D is introduced. Later used as a component of Agent Orange
- Team lead by Charles DuBois Coryell discovers element 61, the only one still missing between 1 and 96 on Periodic Table. New element is called promethium
Births:
- January 3 - Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), singer, songwriter and guitarist
- January 3 - Victoria Principal, actress
- January 10 - Rod Stewart, singer
- January 19 - Maria Jespen, theologian
- January 26 - Jacqueline du Pré, cello player (+ 1987)
- January 27 - Nick Mason, musician of Pink Floyd
- January 28 - Marthe Keller, actress
- January 29 - Tom Selleck, actor
- January 30 - Michael Dorris, author (+ 1997)
- February 3 - Bob Grises, Football Hall of Famer
- February 5 - Charlotte Rampling, actress
- February 6 - Bob Marley, reggae superstar
- February 7 - Pete Postlethwaite, actor
- February 9 - Mia Farrow, actress
- February 17 - Brenda Fricker, actress
- February 28 - Bubba Smith, Football Hall of Famer
- March 19 - Cem Karaca, Turkish rock musician
- March 30 - Eric Clapton, blues guitarist
- April 27 - August Wilson, playwright
- May 31 - Rainer Werner Fassbinder, director
- June 17 - Eddy Merckx, Belgian cycling champion
- June 19 - Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar poet and Nobel peace laureate
- August 14 - Steve Martin, actor and comedian
- August 19 - William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd president of the United States of America
- August 31 - Itzhak Perlman, violinist
- August 31 - Van Morrison, musician
- September 3 – Aldo Moro, Italian politician
- September 8 - Jose Feliciano, singer
- November 12 - Neil Young, singer, songwriter, musician
Deaths:
- January 3 - Edgar Cayce, psychic, “exhaustion”
- January 22 - Else Lasker-Schuler, poet
- January 31 - Eddie Slovik, American soldier
- February 11 - Al Dubin, Swiss songwriter
- February 11 - J. S. H. Lokerman, Dutch resistance fighter
- March 2 - Emily Carr, artist
- March 12 - Anne Frank, author of The Diary of Anne Frank, at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
- April 9 - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian in Nazi Germany
- April 12 - United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, post-polio complications
- April 18 - Ernie Pyle, American journalist, sniper fire
- April 28 - Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator, hanged
- April 30 - Adolf Hitler, Nazi party leader, suicide
- May 1 - Josef Goebbels, Nazi propagandist, suicide
- May 23 - Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi Gestapo, suicide
- July 5 - John Curtin, Australian prime minister
- August 14 - Robert Goddard, American rocket scientist
- September 15 - Anton Webern, Austrian composer
- September 24 - Johannes Hans Geiger, inventor of the Geiger counter
- September 26 - Béla Bartók, aged 64, Hungarian composer
- October 13 - Milton Hershey, chocolate tycoon
- October 15 - Pierre Laval, former Vichy French premier, firing squad
- October 19 - N.C. Wyeth, illustrator
- October 24 - Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian politician and famous traitor, firing squad
- November 11 - Jerome Kern, composer
- November 21 - Robert Benchley, The New Yorker, humorist, theatre critic and actor
- December 20 - General George S. Patton, car accident
- December 28 - Theodore Dreiser, author
- Stefan Banach, Polish mathematician
- Charles Williams, British author
- Thomas Hunt Morgan, biologist
- David Lloyd George, British statesman