ly people killed in enemy action on the US mainland during World War Two.
25/4/1945, US and Soviet forces met on the Elbe near Torgau.
24/4/1945, Himmler offered to surrender the German Reich to the governments of Great Britain and the USA.
19/4/1945, US forces took Leipzig; the city was later handed to the Soviet sector, East Germany.
18/4/1945, US troops under General Patton entered Czechoslovakia.
17/4/1945. US troops captured the Buchenwald concentration camp.
1/4/1945, The Battle of Okinawa began as US troops landed on the island. US victory came 83 days later.
23/3/1945. The US 2nd Army crossed the Rhine. By 20/4/1945 British troops had advanced 200 miles into Germany.
16/3/1945, Iwo Jima was totally occupied by US forces; 4,590 US soldiers were killed, out of a force of 30,000 attacking 23,000 Japanese who were heavily dug in with underground bunkers. See 19/2/1945. Iwo Jima, just 750 miles from Tokyo, could now be used as a base to bomb some 66 Japanese cities in an attempt to force a Japanese surrender.
4/3/1945, US General McArthur returned to the Philippines, fulfilling a promise that ‘we shall return’ he made in 1942 when advancing Japanese troops forced him to flee on a torpedo boat.
19/2/1945, US forces began the invasion of Iwo Jima, see 16/3/1945.
16/2/1945. (1) US Air Force began heavy raids on Tokyo.
(2) The US took Bataan, Philippines.
4/2/1945. The Yalta Conference between the Allied leaders Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill opened in the Crimea. This conference concluded on 11/2/1945. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin all had very different aims. Roosevelt wanted to disengage US troops from Europe to defeat Japan. Stalin wanted to extend Soviet influence as far west into Europe as possible. Stalin got to occupy eastern Poland, as agreed in Tehran on 28/11/1943. Churchill wanted to build a democracy from the ruins of Germany. The ailing Roosevelt trusted Stalin’s assurance that he would work to build a ‘peaceful and democratic world’. The West insisted that Greece be given a western-style democracy, but otherwise all of eastern Europe fell under the Soviet sphere. Stalin also gained Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands in return for a war effort against Japan that was never made. Yalta set the world order for the next 45 years.
3/2/1945. (-94) The US recaptured Manila, which had fallen to the Japanese on 2/1/1942. Manila was not totally cleared of Japanese soldiers till 24/2/1945.
9/1/1945. Luzon in the Philippines was taken by the US from the Japanese.
4/1/1945, Severe Kamikaze attacks on US ships.
3/1/1945, The Dies Committee (see 26/5/1938), formed to monitor activities by Nazis and Communists within the USA, was given permanent status as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
See also China/Japan/Korea for World War Two in Pacific
22/12/1944, An American unit was surrounded at Bastogne by the German advance in the Battle of the Bulge. The unit held out until relieved on 26/12/1944. Inside Bastogne, General Anthony C McAuliffe received a message from the besieging Germans inviting him to surrender; his reply, scrawled on the surrender invite, was one word -“NUTS”.
25/11/1944, The first Kamikaze (divine wind) suicidal attacks were made by Japanese pilots on US ships.
24/11/1944. US planes bombed Tokyo, for the first time since 18/4/1942.
27/10/1944, The Japanese fleet suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, effectively ending its role as a fighting force. This was the world’s largest naval battle, which began on 22/10/1944, involving a total of 231 ships and 1996 aircraft.
20/10/1944. General Mac Arthur returned to the Philippines as liberator with 250,000 troops, fulfilling a promise ha made when his forces retreated from the Japanese.
7/10/1944, The Dumbarton Oaks Conference ended.
21/8/1944, Meetings began at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC, on starting the Charter of the United Nations. These meetings ended on 7/10/1944.
21/7/1944, Guam, in the western Pacific, was liberated by US Marines. It had been under Japanese occupation since December 1941.
20/7/1944. Tbe USA began to re