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Today is September11, 2026 Friday.

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The World in 1945 the year the war ended

More than ten million people in Europe were far from home when the fighting stopped: freed prisoners, forced labourers and families who had run from the front. That is more people than lived in London at the time, all of them trying to get back.

Life back then

Sugar, meat, shoes and gasoline all came out of ration books, and drivers pasted a sticker on the windshield showing how much fuel they could buy. In Britain the blackout curtains came down in the spring and street lights went back on after nearly six years. Troop ships carried servicemen home for months afterwards, and plenty of families were still waiting the following spring. A coiled steel toy called the Slinky sold out at a Philadelphia department store in the weeks before Christmas.

The year in 8 events

• 🕯️Jan 27 Soviet troops reach the Auschwitz camp in Poland and free the prisoners still there.
• 🕯️Feb 13 British and American bombers set Dresden alight over two nights. Most of the old city burns.
• ⚔️Apr 1 American troops land on Okinawa. The battle for the island lasts nearly three months.
• 🕯️Apr 12 President Franklin Roosevelt dies in Georgia. Harry Truman is sworn in that evening.
• 🕊️May 8 Germany's surrender takes effect. Crowds fill the streets of London, Paris and New York.
• 📜Jun 26 Fifty countries sign the United Nations Charter at a conference in San Francisco.
• 🕯️Aug 6 An American plane drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A second falls on Nagasaki three days later.
• 🕊️Sep 2 Japan signs the surrender in Tokyo Bay. In Hanoi that same day, Ho Chi Minh declares Vietnam independent.

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