Nazi Germany surrenders in Europe

The French 2nd Armored Division entered Paris as German forces withdrew. The liberation narrative often centers metropolitan French resistance and overlooks African soldiers and other colonial...

U.S. and Filipino forces landed at Leyte, beginning a campaign to retake the Philippines from Japan. Filipino guerrillas had gathered intelligence, rescued Allied personnel, and resisted occupation...

Soviet forces entered Auschwitz-Birkenau and Monowitz, finding thousands of prisoners left behind after the SS forced many others on death marches. Survivors faced illness, grief, and uncertain...

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed on plans for Germany’s occupation, a new United Nations, and postwar arrangements in Europe. The conference also left millions in territories whose political...

Aung San’s Burma National Army turned against Japan, the power it had once joined to fight British rule. The uprising was coordinated with the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League and other resistance...

On the day France celebrated victory over Nazism, Algerian demonstrators in Sétif and nearby towns called for political rights and independence. Police shootings were followed by attacks on European...

Delegates from 50 states signed the UN Charter, creating an institution that declared sovereign equality and self-determination as principles. Yet most colonized peoples were not represented as...

The United States, Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding Japan’s surrender and setting out terms for postwar occupation and disarmament. The Soviet Union joined the declaration...

A U.S. aircraft dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing tens of thousands immediately and many more through burns and radiation. Survivors, hibakusha, lived with long-term illness and stigma. The...

A second U.S. atomic bomb devastated Nagasaki. The attack killed civilians and added another population of hibakusha facing radiation illness, bereavement, and reconstruction. Japan’s surrender...