World War II History
for April 29
1945 – The German Army in Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
1945 – In a bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were married. Hitler designated Admiral Karl Doenitz his successor.
Eva Braun met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler’s
official photographer. Of a middle-class Catholic background, Braun
spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by
skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler’s
political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the
dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker
buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in. The couple
was married only hours before they both committed suicide.
1945 – The Nazi death camp, Dachau, was liberated.
Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp and served as a model for
others that followed. Over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30
countries were housed there, and records indicate that at least 35,000
inmates died in the camp, many from a typhus epidemic in 1945. Dachau
was liberated by the 42nd Infantry Division of the US Seventh Army.
There were 33,000 survivors of the camp, 2,539 of them Jewish. Dachau,
about 12 miles north of Munich, was the first concentration camp
established by the Nazi regime, only five weeks after Hitler came to
power. At least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp and
another 90,000 through its 150 branches scattered throughout southern
Germany and Austria. Medical experiments, ranging from studying the
effects of freezing on warm-blooded creatures to treating intentionally
inflicted malaria, were carried out on prisoners. At least 32,000
prisoners died of malnutrition and mistreatment at the camp itself;
innumerable more were transported to the Auschwitz gas chambers. A
memorial was established at the campsite on September 11, 1956.
1946 – Twenty-eight former Japanese leaders were indicted in Tokyo as war criminals.
Tojo Hideki, wartime premier of Japan, is indicted by the International
Military Tribunal for the Far East of war crimes. In September 1945, he
tried to commit suicide by shooting himself but was saved by an
American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He was
eventually hanged by the Americans in 1948 after having been found
guilty of war crimes.
