Americans suffer terrible losses on Okinawa as they continue their advance. It’s the last stepping stone on the way to mainland Japan.

The Pacific island’s capture is deemed absolutely vital by the Allied High Command. The region is hit by torrential rain, the battlefield becomes a quagmire. Meanwhile, U.S. bombers continue to pound mainland Japan. Submarines have isolated the country from the outside world.

In the Philippines, Japanese troops are now desperately trying to hold the Wawa Dam on the Marikina River, following the successful U.S. assault on the Ipo Dam on Luzon a few days earlier.

In Europe, several high ranking Nazi officials are arrested, including Heinrich Himmler, one of Hitler’s most notorious and brutal henchmen. Soon after, Himmler commits suicide.

German collapse came after a meeting on April 25th between the Western and Russian armies at Torgau in Saxony. It was undoubtedly aided by Hitler's death amid the ruins of Berlin. The unconditional surrender of Germany was signed at Reims on May 7 and ratified at Berlin on May 8

Nazi threat is all but gone as the 'Big 3' nations begin to tackle the problem of restructuring the shattered continent.

In the Pacific, the situation in Okinawa has turned into a bloody stalemate between the Americans and Japanese.

Meanwhile, significant progress is being made in overcoming the enemy in the Philippines. The U.S. also continues to soften the enemy’s defenses on mainland Japan.

In the US, shocking evidence of a Japanese/German bomb making alliance ends up on the shores of New Hampshire. A timely and valuable discovery for the United States government and its atomic bomb project.

After the completion of the campaigns in the Solomon Islands ib late 1943 and New Guinea (1944), the Allied advance moved inexorably, in two lines that converged on Japan, through scattered island groups—the Philippines, the Mariana Islands, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima.

Japan, with most of its navy sunk, staggered beneath these blows. At the Yalta Conference, the USSR secretly promised its aid against Japan, which still refused to surrender even after the Allied appeal made at the Potsdam Conference.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States first used the atomic bomb and devastated Hiroshima; on Aug. 9, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The USSR had already invaded Manchuria. On Aug. 14, Japan announced its surrender, formally signed aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2.