World War II in Photographs
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1945
ABOVE
The newly-formed British Pacific
Fleet joined the Americans in March.
This photograph show wreckage being
cleared off the carrier HMS Formidable
after a kamikaze attack, May 4.
LEFT
This aerial view of the industrial
area of Tokyo, taken after the war,
shows the effect of American bombing.
381
1945
BURMA AND THE FAR EAST
In Burma, 14th Army crossed the Chindwin in December 1944
and advanced on the Irrawaddy. In a deft flanking manoeuvre
Slim crossed the river south of Mandalay and took the
communication centre of Meitktila, beating off a fierce
counterattack: Mandalay itself fell on March 20. The way to
Rangoon was now open, and the city was taken by an amphibious
attack, Operation Dracula. Encircled Japanese from the Arakan
tried to break out south-eastwards without success, and sporadic
fighting east of the Sittang ended after the Japanese surrender.
ABOVE
A British 3-inch mortar in action
during the fighting for Meiktila.
382
1945
LEFT
The battle of the last ten yards:
Sikhs rush a Japanese position still
smoking from phosphorous grenades.
BELOW
During the advance down the Arakan a
Garhwali (an Indian soldier often confused
with a Gurkha), covered by a rifleman on
his left, throws a phosphorous grenade.
383
1945
ABOVE
British and Indian paratroops were dropped
near Rangoon on May 1 and an amphibious
force moved up the Rangoon river to
take the Burmese capital on the May 3.
RIGHT
A Japanese private carrying a white
flag at Abya on the Sittang during
mopping-up operations, August 30
384
ABOVE
The price of victory: men of 4th
Battalion, The Royal West Kents, visit
the graves of their comrades at Kohima.
RIGHT
Far East prisoners of war, given the bare
minimum of food and shelter, were often
worked hard and were subject to frequent
brutal assault, in part because of the Japanese
conviction that surrender was disgraceful.
These prisoners were liberated in Rangoon.
385
1945
LEFT
James M. Kim, a Chinese member of the
Hong Kong Defence Force, left this poignant
last testament on the wall of his cell in
Stanley Prison before his execution in 1943.
RIGHT
A month after her liberation, British internee
Wendy Rossini shows the daily ration of rice
and stew given to all five occupants of
her room in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong.
386
1945
YALTA AND POTSDAM
Allied strategy evolved at twelve major conferences, beginning
at Placentia Bay before US entry into the war and going on
to Potsdam, after the end of the European war. Churchill,
Roosevelt and Stalin held their summit at Yalta in February 1945,
where the organization of the postwar world was the major topic
of discussion. It was the last time the "big three" met, for by
the time of the Potsdam conference in July and August
Roosevelt was dead. Churchill, who lost that summer's general
election, handed over to Clement Attlee during the conference.
ABOVE
The big three at Yalta. They agreed
that Germany should be divided,
and that the borders of Poland
should be moved westwards.
387
1945
LEFT
Winston Churchill and new US
President Harry Truman at Potsdam.
BELOW
Truman is flanked at Potsdam by Stalin
and a smiling Clement Attlee, the
new British Labour Prime Minister.
The conference marked the break-up
of the wartime alliance and the start of the
nuclear age, for it was there that Truman
told Stalin of the atomic bomb's existence.
DRESDEN
During 1944 the Americans established growing air superiority
over Germany as the Luftwaffe's fighters lost ever more heavily
in battles against the fighters escorting US bomber formations.
This in turn helped take pressure off the RAF's increasingly accurate
night attacks, and by 1945 the combined bomber offensive rolled
on with unprecedented destructive power. Bombing devastated
the German transport system, produced severe fuel shortages,
and levelled most major towns. It eventually crippled the German
economy, although this task proved far more difficult and costly
than most advocates of strategic bombing had ever imagined.
BELOW
The USAAF followed up with a daylight
raid. Much of Dresden was razed, and
perhaps 50,000 people were killed.
Churchill felt that the raid "remains a
serious query against the conduct of Allied
bombing." Harris, however, declared that
the remaining cities of Germany were "not
worth the bones of one British Grenadier."
ABOVE
The beautiful city of Dresden, capital
of Saxony, was not seriously bombed till
February 1945, when the Allies attacked
it as part of a plan to add to chaos in
Germany and demonstrate, at the imminent
Yalta conference, that they were supporting
the Russian offensive. Here a firestorm
rages during the RAF's night attack.
RIGHT
Troops of the British 6th Airborne
Division (including, third from right,
Private R.C. Sutherland of 1st Canadian
Parachute Battalion) meet Russians near
Wismar, on the Baltic coast, on May 3.
ALLIED-SOVIET LINK UP
Given the rapidity with which the iron curtain was to descend across
Europe it was easy to forget how great was the popular regard
for the Russians in much of the West. Although these photographs
of the meetings between the Russians and the Western Allies
deliver a propaganda message, they also reflect genuine emotions.
BELOW
Russians and Americans meet at
Torgau on the Elbe on the afternoon
on April 25. Here a Russian major
enjoys a cigarette with his allies.