Date in year · 1945 · The 1940s

February 23, 1945

On February 23, 1945, world War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. Bernard Arcand, Eddy Baldewijns, Gopalkrishna Gandhi would arrive in the same year.

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1945

1940s

Around 1945

The year in brief

1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1945th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 945th year of the 2nd millennium, the 45th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1940s decade.

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What happened

On February 23, 1945

  1. 1945 World War II: During the Battle of Iwo Jima, a group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag.

    Major World War II battle in the Pacific Theater

    The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and United States Navy (USN) landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during World War II. The American invasion, designated Operation Detachment, had the goal of capturing the island with its two airfields: South Field and Central Field.

  2. 1945 World War II: The 11th Airborne Division, with Filipino guerrillas, free all 2,147 captives of the Los Baños internment camp, in what General Colin Powell later would refer to as "the textbook airborne operation for all ages and all armies".

    Airborne division of the United States Army

    The 11th Airborne Division is a United States Army multirole infantry division made up of specialized light infantry and airborne infantry based in Alaska.

  3. 1945 World War II: The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by combined Filipino and American forces.

    Archipelagic country in Southeast Asia

    The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of about 7,641 islands, with a total area of about 300,000 square kilometers, which are broadly categorized in three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. With a population of over 114 million, it is the world's twelfth-most-populous country.

  4. 1945 World War II: Capitulation of German garrison in Poznań. The city is liberated by Soviet and Polish forces.

    German state from 1933 to 1945

    Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.

  5. 1945 World War II: The German town of Pforzheim is annihilated in a raid by 379 British bombers.

    City in Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Pforzheim is a city of over 135,000 inhabitants in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany.

  6. 1945 American Airlines Flight 009 crashes near Rural Retreat, Virginia, killing 17.

    February 1945 plane crash in Rural Retreat, Virginia

    American Airlines Flight 009 was a flight from New York City to Los Angeles. On the morning of February 23, 1945, while flying over Rural Retreat, Virginia, on the Washington-Nashville leg, the Douglas DC-3 struck the wooded summit of Glade Mountain in the Appalachian Mountains, killing 17 of the 22 occupants on board.

Elsewhere that year

Other moments from 1945

The class of 1945

Others born in 1945

Bernard Arcand 1945– Canadian anthropologist and author (died 2009)
Eddy Baldewijns 1945– Belgian politician
Gopalkrishna Gandhi 1945– Indian civil servant and politician, 22nd Governor of West Bengal
Demetrio Stratos 1945– Greek-Egyptian singer-songwriter (died 1979)
Jim Gordon 1945– American rock drummer and convicted murderer (died 2023)
Wolfgang Schüssel 1945– Austrian lawyer and politician, 26th Chancellor of Austria

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