April [1943]
1st: Finland signs an armistice with the Soviet Union.
2nd: British forces capture Kolberg.
3rd: Patton’s Third Army liberates Lodz.
7th: Having completed the occupation of Hungary and the liberation of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Allied troops invade Rumania.
9th: German occupation forces surrender Warsaw to General Patton.
10th: A bloody coup in Bucharest removes the Antonescu regime.
British and American troops land in Norway, accepting the pre-arranged surrender of the German occupation forces there, including the light cruiser Köln.
11th: The new government in Rumania surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. Most Germans in Rumania follow suit.
...
14th: Army Group South begins withdrawing from the Ukraine toward Romania, hoping to surrender to the Western Allies.
15th: German occupation forces in Albania and Greece surrender unconditionally to the Allies.
...
16th: British forces capture Danzig and halt, East Prussia having been designated the Soviet occupation zone - even if the Soviets are not there yet.
20th: Two squadrons of Allied bombers, one of RAF Lancasters and one of USAAF Superfortresses, take off from their bases in England. They are armed with a new weapon: a 12,000-lb earth-penetrating bomb called Tallboy.
Over Berlin, the bombers drop two dozen Tallboys, one at a time, on their target: the bunker complex behind the Reich Chancellery in which Hitler and the Nazi inner circle are hiding. The “earthquake bombs” live up to their advertised accuracy and power. The bunker complex is completely destroyed. Hitler, Göring, Himmler, Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Bormann, and all the rest are killed.
It is Hitler’s 54th birthday.
23rd: Patton’s Third Army reaches Grodno on the Niemen and continues toward Vilna, slowed only by mass German surrenders as Army Group North escapes the Soviets.
25th: American troops reach the mouth of the Danube at the Black Sea.
27th: General Alfred Jodl, who has taken over the government of the Third Reich by virtue of being the senior surviving Nazi in Berlin, signs the unconditional surrender of Germany.
The surrender does not immediately end the fighting. Army Group Center holds out near the Pripyet Marshes for another three days before giving up. Army Group North and a stream of refugees continue to flood through the Allied lines, as do the remnants of Army Group South. But by the end of May it is all over as Soviet forces clear out the last German holdouts in the Ukraine and occupy the Baltic states, East Prussia, and parts of Rumania.