The Allied amphibious and airborne crossing of the Rhine River in Western Germany, was launched by the 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as part of the broader Rhineland Offensive.  

The first Soviet troops entered Berlin after the Western Allies stopped their air attacks on 16 April 1945; Berlin surrender on May 2, 1945.  

Mussolini, the former Italian dictator, was captured by Italian partisans and summarily executed in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra, near Lake Como after attempting to flee to Switzerland.  

Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Nazi Germany, committed suicide via a gunshot to the head in the Führerbunker in Berlin after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin.

The unconditional surrender of Germany at Reims, France, and ratified in Berlin on May 8/9, meant the German armed forces would cease all hostilities, effectively ending World War II in Europe.  

Victory in Europe Day marks the formal acceptance of Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on and the end of all German military operations.

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan, fulfilling a promise made at the Yalta Conference to join the war against Japan after the defeat of Nazi Germany; they invaded Manchuria the following day.  

The United States dropped an atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, on the Hiroshima, Japan.  The bomb, a uranium gun-type fission bomb was dropped from a B-29 Superfortress “Enola Gay”, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets. The US dropped a second atomic bomb “Fat Man” on Nagasaki, Japan. This bomb was a plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon, the second and largest of the two nuclear weapons used in world war II and was dropped from the B-29 Superfortress “Bockscar”, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.  

The unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan  was announced by Emperor Hirohito which fulfilled the requirements put forward by the United Kingdom, China and the United States  in the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945.

The Japanese signed the Instrument of Surrender on  board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay which marked the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan to the Allied Powers; thereby ending World War II in the Pacific.