Events relating to europe

A new constitution strengthens Tito's hold on Yugoslavia, and is soon followed by repressive measures

Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill meet at Yalta to discuss Allied post-war plans

Stalin agrees at Yalta to declare war on Japan after the end of the European war

The Germans surrender Budapest to the Soviets after a costly siege

The Soviets instal a puppet government in Romania while the fight continues against Germany

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is executed in a Nazi concentration camp just a month before the end of the war in Europe

Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by partisans and their bodies are hung from a gibbet in Milan

British general Bernard Montgomery receives the surrender of German forces in the north and west of Europe

The British electorate dismisses Winston Churchill, giving the Labour party and Clement Attlee a landslide victory

Winston Churchill, losing the postwar general election in Britain, has to yield his seat at Potsdam in mid-conference to Clement Attlee

TheAllies celebrate V-J Day – victory over Japan and the end of the war

A death sentence for the 89-year-old Vichy leader Philippe Pétain is commuted by de Gaulle to life imprisonment

Ho Chi Minh proclaims the democratic republic of Vietnam, independent of the colonial power, France

Vichy leader Pierre Laval, sentenced in a French court as a collaborator, is executed

Vidkun Quisling, Fascist president of occupied Norway from 1942, is tried and executed for treason

Evelyn Waugh publishes Brideshead Revisited, a novel about a rich Catholic family in England between the wars

In George Orwell's fable Animal Farm a ruthless pig, Napoleon, controls the farmyard using the techniques of Stalin

Sergei Eisenstein completes Part 2 of his intended epic film trilogy Ivan the Terrible

Sadler's Wells Ballet moves to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden (and is known from 1956 as the Royal Ballet)

The takeover of the Bank of England launches an extensive programme of nationalization by the Attlee government

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