This day in the war in Europe 65 years ago

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GERMANY: Hamburg: In a message broadcast by Hamburg radio this evening, Field Marshal Montgomery says that the German people must learn their lesson "once and for all", not only that they have been defeated, but that they were guilty of beginning the war, as they had been guilty in 1914. "If that is not made clear to you and your children," he says, "you may again allow yourselves to be deceived by your rulers and led into another war." Montgomery says that parents should read the message to their children and ensure that they understand it.
Frankfurt: Marshal Zhukov confers the Order of Victory - made of platinum encrusted with rubies and diamonds - on Eisenhower and Montgomery.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Prague: The Czechs, so recently freed from Nazi rule, are becoming increasingly restive over what they see as Russian determination to impose "voluntary Sovietization" on them. The Russians have a stranglehold on the Czech economy and are using it to apply political pressure on the new Czech government. This is backed by the presence of three Russian divisions in the outskirts of the capital. "They are treating us", grumbled one Czech "as if we were bad children in need of political education."
 
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: The Soviet authorities start the forcible expulsion of ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland to the west.

U.S.S.R.: Stalin writes to US President Truman "During the war the strategic materials and foodstuffs shipped to the U.S.S.R. under Lend-Lease played an important role and to a significant degree contributed to the successful outcome of the war against the common enemy, Hiterlite Germany"
 
GERMANY: Hamburg: British troops capture the former foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.

GREAT BRITAIN: London: King George VI officially dissolves a parliament that has lasted for nine and a half years.
 
UNITED KINGDOM: William Joyce is put on trial in London. The charge is treason. He will be convicted and executed for broadcasting propaganda from Germany during the war as "Lord Haw Haw". He will be hung in January 1946.

USA: General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower receives a tumultuous welcome in Washington, D.C., where he addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
 
USSR: Moscow: The Swastika standard of the 1st SS Panzer Adolf Hitler Division - once Hitler's personal bodyguard - was thrown to the ground before Lenin's tomb in Red Square today. The Soviet leaders watched from the top of the tomb as 200 captured flags were carried into the rain-soaked square by soldiers who threw them down to the rumble of hundreds of drums. Marshal Georgi Zhukov led the parade, riding a white horse, the traditional Russian mount for a conquering hero. Speaking later to the huge crowd, Zhukov said that the Red Army was the most powerful in the world, but Russia must not become "conceited or complacent."
 
USA: The Charter for the UN is signed by representatives of 50 Allied countries.
The United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) was held in San Francisco, California. Officials gathered to draft a UN Charter, and 50 countries signed the Charter on this date at what is now the Herbst Theater. This signifies the birth of the UN.
 
FRANCE: French Marshal Henri Petain, who headed the Vichy government during the war, goes on trial, charged with treason. He is condemned to death, but his sentence is commuted.
 
UK: The results of the British Election are announced. The Conservative Party of Winston Churchill loses to the Labour Party. Clement Attlee becomes Prime Minister.
 
Pierre Laval surrenders to US forces in Austria. The French will try and execute him.
Pierre Laval, the puppet leader of German-occupied Vichy France, surrenders to U.S. forces in Austria; he is then extradited to France to stand trial. Laval had served as minister of state under Henri Petain after the French surrender in June 1940 but was dismissed by Petain in December 1940 for negotiating privately with Germany. By 1942, Laval had won Hitler's confidence and became premier of Vichy France and Petain was relegated to a figurehead. Laval collaborated with Hitler's programs of oppression and genocide and was forced to flee east after the Allied liberation of France. After VE Day, he fled to Spain but was expelled and then went into hiding in Austria. After his extradition, he was tried by the French High Court of Justice, sentenced to death, attempted suicide by poison and then executed on 15 October 1945.
 
GERMANY: Hermann Goring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and 22 others former Nazi government officials are indicted as war criminals. Hermann Goring heads the list of 24. Rudolf Hess, formerly deputy to Hitler, who has been a prisoner in Britain since May 1941, is next on the list, followed by Martin Bormann, the secretary of the NSDAP, who disappeared from the Berlin bunker. Others include Konstantin von Neurath, the first foreign minister to Hitler; Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, the industrialist; Franz von Papen, the vice-chancellor in 1933-34; and, Hjalmar Schacht, who served as the minister of finance in the Nazi government until falling out of favor with Hitler.
 
NORWAY: Vidkun Quisling is sentenced to death for collaborating with the Germans during the occupation. During a visit to Adolf Hitler in Berlin in the winter of 1939-40, Quisling, the leader of the national socialist Nasjonal Samling Party, points out how valuable it would be for Germany to occupy Norway. Immediately after the invasion, on the morning of 9 April 1940, he proclaims himself the new head of the government and orders the Norwegian armed forces to stop battling the Germans but he is ignored. Realizing that Quisling did not serve their purposes, the Germans chose to base their administration of the country on a certain degree of give-and-take with the existing civilian authorities. Eventually, the Nasjonal Samling Party is declared the only legal party and Quisling is installed as Norwegian Prime Minister in 1942 and throughout the war he collaborates with the Germans. He is executed on 24 October 1945.
 
GERMANY: A meeting of 72 Jews takes place at No. 38 Rothenbaumchaussee with the intention of rebuilding the Jewish community in Hamburg by founding the "Jüdische Gemeinde in Hamburg"
 
25 Feb 1944:- U-601' sunk in the Arctic Ocean NW of Narvik, Norway by depth charges from an RAF 210 Sqn Catalina aircraft. 51 dead (all hands lost).

Pilot was my grandfather, Sqn Ldr F J French, a very proud grandson I am.
 
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