End of World War II in Europe

The final battles of the European Theatre of World War II as well as the German surrender to the Soviet Union and the Western Allies took place in late April and early May 1945.

Allied forces begin to take large numbers of Axis prisoners: The total number of prisoners taken on the Western Front in April 1945 by the Western Allies was 1,500,000. April also witnessed the capture of at least 120,000 German troops by the Western Allies in the last campaign of the war in Italy. In the three or four months up to the end of April, over 800,000 German soldiers surrendered on the Eastern Front. In early April, the first Allied-governed Rheinwiesenlagers were established in western Germany to hold hundreds of thousands of captured or surrendered Axis Forces personnel. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) reclassified all prisoners as Disarmed Enemy Forces, not POWs (prisoners of war). The legal fiction circumvented provisions under the Geneva Convention of 1929 on the treatment of former combatants. By October, thousands had died in the camps from starvation, exposure and disease.

Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps and refugees: Allied forces begin to discover the scale of The Holocaust. The advance into Germany uncovers numerous Nazi concentration camps and forced labor facilities. Up to 60,000 prisoners were at Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division. Four days later troops from the American 42nd (Rainbow) Infantry Division found Dachau. Allied troops force the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves. Due to the prisoners' poor physical condition, thousands continue to die after liberation. Captured SS guards are subsequently tried at Allied war crimes tribunals where many are sentenced to death. However, up to 10,000 Nazi war criminals will eventually flee Europe using ratlines such as ODESSA.

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