Potsdam Declaration calls on Japan to surrender

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...

Germany’s unconditional surrender took effect, ending the war in Europe. The victory was made possible by a global coalition that included millions of soldiers, workers, and resistance fighters from...

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...

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...

Japan announced its surrender, ending its formal colonial rule in Korea. Koreans organized committees and prepared for self-government, but U.S. and Soviet forces soon occupied separate zones and...

Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed Indonesian independence after Japan’s surrender. Youth organizers had pressed for an immediate declaration, and Indonesians began building republican...

At a mass gathering in Hanoi, Hồ Chí Minh declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam independent, invoking anticolonial struggle and universal rights. The declaration followed the August Revolution...