The British reach Belsen and reveal appalling Nazi atrocities, worse even than at Buchenwald

American and Soviet troops join up at Torgau, 70 miles south of Berlin

Soviet armies form a complete circle around Berlin to isolate the city

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

Against Hitler's specific orders, the commander of the German army in Italy surrenders to the Allies

Adolf Hitler marries Eva Braun in his bunker, and holds a champagne reception with Goebbels as the principal guest

Hitler chooses Admiral Dönitz as his successor and appoints his cabinet

Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun retire to their marital quarters in the Berlin bunker and commit suicide

Soviet troops storm the Reichstag in the centre of Berlin on the day when Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker below them

Anglo-US Fascist William Joyce ('Lord Haw Haw') makes his final English broadcast from Hamburg

In the Berlin bunker, on the day after Hitler's death, Goebbels arranges for his six children to be lethally injected, and himself and his wife to be shot

The German general commanding Berlin, Helmuth Weidling, surrenders the city to the Allies

The citizens of Prague, and other cities in Czechoslovakia, rise against the Germans as the Red Army approaches from the east

The unconditional surrender of all German forces is accepted at Eisenhower's headquarters

Heinrich Himmler, escaping in disguise, takes poison when he is identified

The Sudetenland is restored to Czechoslovakia, seven years after its transfer to Germany under the Munich Agreement

The four Allied powers (USA, UK, France, USSR) provide occupation forces for separate zones of Austria, Germany and Berlin

Truman, Stalin and Churchill meet for a summit conference in Potsdam

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

The USSR declares war on Japan, two days after an atom bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima

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

[1939-1945] - in addition to 6 million Jews, the Nazi death camps have killed some 400,000 Gypsies and 100,000 'useless defectives'

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