Significant Timeline of Events 09 May 1945 - Onwards
Timeline of Events #4 - 09 May 1947 onwards
Post-European War
09 May 1945: In a separate meeting, Field Marshal Keitel and the Soviet Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov sign Germany's unconditional surrender in Berlin. - Higher SS and Police Leader for the Rhenish Palatinate and Hesse-Nassau. -Jürgen Stroop gives himself up to the Americans. - Hermann Göring gives himself up to the Americans near the Austian town of Radstadt. -
10 May 1945: The Soviets capture some 208,000 German troops with the surrender of the Army Group Kurland. - The Red Army take control of Prague. - The Germans that had been holding out at Dunkirk finally surrender.
11 May 1945: The Channel Islands are finally liberated. - - The Czech government in exile returns to Prague.
11/12 May 1945: Higher SS and Police leader Hans-Adolf Prützmann is captured by British troops alongside other SS officers at Hohenlied near Eckernforde. He would later die in custody.
12 May 1945: The Serbian regiments that fought alongside the Germans surrender to the British 8th Army, but are handed over to the Yugoslavian Partisan forces. The Yugoslavs murder many of them and imprison the rest for collaborating with the Germans.
13 May 1945: Field Marshal Keitel is arrested by the Allies as a war criminal and Jodl takes over as Chief of the German High Command, or Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW).
14 May 1945: Some 150,000 Germans are taken prisoner by the Red Army in East Prussia as the German Army Group there surrenders.
Mid-May 1945: The British transfer Hans-Adolf Prützmann, Higher-SS and Police leader, to Field-Marshal Montgomery’s intelligence headquarters at Luneburg. The interrogators suggest to Prützmann that he will be handed over to the Soviets because of the war-crimes he had committed in the east, especially as part of his Einsatzgruppen activities. Prützmann commits suicide after biting on a cyanide capsule that he had managed to conceal on himself.
15 May 1945: Some 80,000 Croatian soldiers and about 30,000 civilians, mostly women and children are murdered by Tito’s Yugoslavian partisan forces.
17 May 1945: The Soviet press criticises the Dönitz government in Flensburg.
19 May 1945: The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally orders the arrest of Admiral Karl Dönitz's government in Flensburg.
23 May 1945: The entire Dönitz government, including Dr Karl Brandt and Albert speer are arrested by the Allies, thus signalling an end to the Third Reich. - in Luneburg, Himmler commits suicide under the very noses of his British guards.
25 May 1945: Under pressure from the Allies the Yugoslavian partisans which had been occupying parts of Carinthia in Austria, pull out of Klagenfurt.
29 May 1945: The British traitor and pro-Nazi propagandist William Joyce, aka Lord Haw Haw, is arrested in northern Germany for.
June 1945: US intelligence officers discover a hoard of papers belonging to Heinrich Himmler hidden alongside stolen art treasures and rare books within a salt mine in Hallain, near Salzburg. Some of these documents were used against leading Nazis at Nuremberg, especially Dr Karl Brandt.
05 June 1945: Two Hitler Youth members whom had been sentenced to death for Werewolf activities in and around Aachen are executed.
15 June 1945: Hitler's Foreign Minister, von Ribbentrop is captured by British troops.
17 July 1945: The Potsdam Conference begins just outside Berlin.
15 August 1945: In France, Field Marshal Pétain, leader of the Vichy government and Nazi collaborator is found guilty of high treason and is sentenced to death, however, General De Gaulle reprieves Pétain on the account of his age and past.
20 August 1945: In Oslo, Norway, the Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling goes on trial accused of high treason.
06 October 1945: Dr Leonardo Conti, Hitler's Reich Health Leader and active member of the T4 Euthanasia Programme commits suicide awaiting trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
10 October 1945: In France, Joseph Darnand, the pro-Nazi French militia leader is executed after being found guilty for high treason.
15 October 1945: Pierre Laval, the French Nazi collaborator and other members of the Vichy government are executed for high treason.
19 October 1945: In France, Joseph Darnand, the pro-Nazi leader and collaborator of creator of the hated French militia is executed for high treason.
24 October 1945: In Norway, pro-Nazi collaborator, Vidkun Quisling is executed for treason. The name Quisling is known synonymous with treason.
01 November 1945: The British Intelligence officer Hugh Trevor-Roper submits his report on the last days of Hitler. It concluded that Hitler, alongside his new bride, Eva Braun committed suicide within the bunker under the Reich's Chancellery.
20 November 1945-October 1946: The Nuremberg Trials begin. Twenty-two high-ranking officials from the Third Reich stand trial as war criminals. Hermann Goering is just one of these top officials to face the court.
13 December 1945: Irma Ida IIse Grese, a female guard at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen is hanged in Hemelin prison within Lower Saxony, Germany for her crimes. Also executed that day for her crimes at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Belsen were Oberaufseherin (Chief Senior Overseer) Elisabeth Volkenrath (née Mühlau) who had been known as the 'Witch of Auschwitz’.
1946
08 March 1946: Frau Hoess (Rudolf Hoess’s wife) is arrested and imprisoned and questioned about the whereabouts of her husband by British intelligence. The British trick her into revealing his whereabouts by telling her that her 3 sons would be deported to Siberia unless she informs on her husband. The bluff works and Frau Hoess tells the British what they want to know.
11 March 1946: At 11pm, Rudolf Hoess, the former commandant at the death camp of Auschwitz, is captured by the British whilst hiding on a farm at Gottruepel near Flensburg
20 June 1946: In Poznań, Poland Arthur Greiser, Hitler's plenipotentiary for the Polish Warthegau, is executed for crimes against the Polish people.
04 July 1946: In Kielce, Poland, some 42 Jews are murdered in a pogrom. This was a wake-up call for those Jews considering remaining in post-war Poland and it helped kick-start a Jewish exodus from Poland.
01 October 1946: Alfred Rosenberg is executed for War crimes committed during the war.
16 October 1946: Ernst Kaltenbrunner, is hanged after being found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials. Fritz Saukel Germany's plenipotentiary for labour (1942-1945) is also hanged after being found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Julius Streicher, founder and editor of the anti-Jewish paper 'Der Stürmer' is hanged after being found guilty of crimes against humanity. Alfred Jodl, Fritz Sauckel and Hans Frank are also executed for war Crimes.
09 December 1946: United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al (The Doctors Trial) begins within the Palace of Justice, Nuremberg begins.
1947
07 April 1947: Rudolf Hoss is hanged at Auschwitz for crimes committed during his time as the Commandant at Auschwitz.
20 August 1947: United States of America v. Karl Brandt (the Doctors Trial) ends.
1948
24 January 1948: The former deputy commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp and commandant of Vaivara concentration camp in Estonia, Hans Aumeier is executed after facing trial in a Polish court the previous year.
14 May 1948: The British mandate over Palestine ends at midnight and with that, the 'Jewish People's Council' approved the declaration which established the State of Israel as an independent country, and Israel became a safe haven for all Europe’s Jews who wished escape persecution by emigrating.
02 June 1948: Dr Karl Brandt, the first condemned prisoner in the Doctors Trial is taken to the gallows, wearing a red prison shirt (all war criminals condemned to death in Landsberg prison wore them prior to execution) and at 10.10a.m is executed. Then followed Joachim Mrugowsky who was Chief of Hygiene Institute of the Waffen-SS, who had carried out numerous experiments on concentration camp inmates at Sachsenhausen. SS-Gruppenführer Karl Franz Gerhard, Himmler's personal physician and head of the German Red Cross is hanged. Closely followed by Standartenführer (colonel) Wolfram Sievers; Oberführer (senior colonel) Viktor Brack; Hauptsturmführer Waldemar Given; and finally, Himmler's personal adjutant Rudolf Brandt is hanged.
1949
June 1949: Karl Wolf is sentenced to four years imprisonment for being a senior member of the SS. He is released two-weeks later because of the time he had already spent in prison awaiting trial.
1960
11 May 1960: Adolf Karl Eichmann is kidnapped by Israeli special forces (Mossad) whilst living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
01 June 1960: Paula Hitler (Hitler's sister, but had lived under the name 'Wolf' even when Hitler was Chancellor) dies aged 64 in Bavaria.
1961
11 April 1961: The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Israel.
15 December 1961: In Israel, Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people as well as crimes against humanity and is sentenced to death.
1962
18 January 1962: Karl Wolf is arrested after the discovery of a letter he had written to the German Minister of Transport Dr. Theodor Ganzenmüller implicating his involvement in the murder of some three hundred thousand Jews. After the trial he is sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment.
31 May 1962: Adolf Karl Eichmann is executed by the Israelis at Ramleh prison, Israel for his part in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. He is cremated and his ashes are scattered in international waters off the Mediterranean Sea.
1963
20 December 1963: Frankfurt Trials begin. (Also known as the Auschwitz Trials) These trials were held at Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. The role of the court was to try chief SS officers who served at the extermination camp of Auschwitz.
1966
30 September 1966: Baldur von Schirach, German Politician and leader of the Hitler Youth is released from Spandau prison in Berlin after serving a sentence for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg.
1970
22 December 1970: Franz Stangl, ex-commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka, and a member of the T4 Euthanasia Programme is sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Düsseldorf, West Germany.
1971
28 June 1971: Franz Stangl, ex-commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka, and a member of the T4 Euthanasia Programme dies of a heart attack whilst in prison in West Germany.
1973
09 August 1973: Dr Ernst Wentzler, one of the three men who decided the fate of Nazi Germany's handicapped children during the T4 Euthanasia Programme dies.
1974
23 April 1974: Hans Biebow, the former commandant of the Lodz Ghetto is sentenced to death by a Polish court and hanged.
1981
30 April 1981: Ex-Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Leipzig, Werner Catel, one of the three men who decided the fate of Nazi Germany's handicapped children during the T4 Euthanasia Programme dies.
1983
04 February 1983: The psychiatrist Hans Heinze, one of the three men who decided the fate of Nazi Germany's handicapped children dies.
1985
06 June 1985: In Embu, Brazil, the authorities exhume the corpse of Peter Gerhard after evidence had pointed to the fact that Gerhard was actually Joseph Mengele, aka the Angel of Death of Auschwitz. Gerhard had drowned whilst swimming due to a heart attack at a beach at Bertioga, Brazil a few years earlier. Later the skeletal remains were positively identified as that of Joseph Mengele.
1998
04 July 1998: Kurt Hubert Franz, ex-commandant of Treblinka dies in Germany.
2000
06 July 2000: The Polish pianist, Władysław Szpilman dies. Szpilman, a Jew who survived the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto, and after escaping from the ghetto was hidden by friends and later narrowly avoided being killed during the Warsaw Uprising, and finally, with the help of a German officer, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (who was himself later captured by the advancing Soviets and died in captivity in 1952) he managed to hide out until the Red Army and their Polish contingent liberated Warsaw. In 1952, Szpilman finally discovered the name of the officer who helped hide him and gave him food, but tried in vain to save Hosenfeld in return. In January 2003, the film about Szpilman [The Pianist] was released in the UK, highlighting his struggles during the Holocaust, with Adrien Brody playing Szpilman and Thomas Kretschmann played Hosenfeld.
2005
01 November 2005: the General Assembly of the United Nations officially adopts the 27th January as International Holocaust Memorial Day.
2007
06 December 2007: In Germany, the Public Prosecutor General at the Federal Court Monika Harms, overturned the 1933 verdict imposed by the court that tried Marinus van der Lubbe for arson (The Reichstag Fire) and granted him a posthumously pardon.
2009
March 2009: A retired auto worker, John Demjanjuk, living in the USA is charged by a German court of being involved in the murder of some 29,000 people whilst serving as a camp guard at the death camp at Sobibor in Poland.
April 2009: In the USA, Federal agents removed John Demjanjuk, a suspected war criminal from his home after a deportation order had been granted against him but was allowed to return home after another court granted a stay of deportation after his family claimed that he was too ill.
May 2009: The US Court of Appeals in Ohio rules that John Demjanjuk. An alleged war criminal could be deported to Germany to stand trial or his part in the murder of Jews within the Sobibor death camp in Poland. He is deported to Munich, Germany where the German authorities take him into custody.
30 November 2009: An 89-year-old John Demjanjuk stands trial accused of being complicit in the murder of more than 27,000 Jews whilst he was a Sobibor death camp guard. The trial takes place in Munich, Germany after being deported from the USA 6 months previously. Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian born car worker from Cleveland, Ohio had already faced trial in Israel in 1986 accused of being ‘Ivan the Terrible, the notorious camp guard at Treblinka. He was convicted and sentenced to death but his conviction was later overturned when new evidence proved that he was not ‘Ivan the Terrible, and he was released. Demjanjuk was born in the Ukrainian Village of Ukrainian village of Dubovi Makharintsi in 1920. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he joined the Red Army but was taken prisoner in eastern Crimea in 1942. During his trial in Israel, he claimed that he had been held by the Germans in the Chelmo until 1944 where he was later transported to another camp in Austria where he ended up joining an Anti-Soviet military unit organised by the Germans. He was trained within the Trawniki SS Training Camp with the aim to help run concentration camps in eastern Europe. When he immigrated to the USA in 1952, he kept his past secret when applying for US citizenship.
2015
15 July 2015: An ex-SS guard, Oskar Groening, aka the ‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ is convicted in a German court of being an accessory to the murder of some 300,000 people within the compounds of Auschwitz, he argued that morally he was guilty but not legally guilty. He chose to appeal the conviction after he was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment. Groening was only 17 years old when he arrived in Auschwitz and given the role as a clerk, counting the money stolen from the victims. When holocaust deniers began to speak out, Groening spoke out against them by confirming that Auschwitz and other camps like it where in fact ‘factories of death’, designed like a human abattoir, a place to slaughter defenceless human beings, regardless of age or sex. Groening wouldn’t see one day behind bars.
2018
09 March 2018: Oskar Gröning, aka The Book-keeper of Auschwitz, dies in a Lower Saxony hospital.
2022
20 December 2022: In Germany, a 97-yearold woman, Irmgard Furchner, is found guilty of being complicit in the murder of some 10,000 inmates of the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland where she worked as a secretary to the camp commander, SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Paul Werner Hoppe (Hoppe would later become an SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lt Col)) and where her husband was also an SS-officer within the camp. The court however, was extremely lenient as she only received a year suspended sentence.