German forces in Italy surrender: On 29 April, the day before Hitler died, Oberstleutnant Schweinitz and Sturmbannführer Wenner, plenipotentiaries for Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff and SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, signed a surrender document at Caserta after prolonged unauthorised secret negotiations with the Western Allies, which were viewed with great suspicion by the Soviet Union as trying to reach a separate peace. However, Goebbels committed suicide the following day, leaving Dönitz as the sole leader of Germany. Hitler appointed his successors as follows Großadmiral Karl Dönitz as the new Reichspräsident ("President of Germany") and Joseph Goebbels as the new Reichskanzler (Chancellor of Germany). In his will, Hitler dismissed Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, his second-in-command and Interior minister Heinrich Himmler after each of them separately tried to seize control of the crumbling Third Reich. Hitler commits suicide: On 30 April 1945, as the Battle of Nuremberg and the Battle of Hamburg ended with American and British occupation, in addition to the Battle of Berlin raging above him with the Soviets surrounding the city, along with his escape route cut off by the Americans, realizing that all was lost and not wishing to suffer Mussolini's fate, German dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Führerbunker along with Eva Braun, his long-term partner whom he had married less than 40 hours before their joint suicide. Graziani was the Minister of Defence for Mussolini's Italian Social Republic. On 29 April, Rodolfo Graziani surrendered all Fascist Italian armed forces at Caserta.
The bodies were then taken to Milan and hung up on the Piazzale Loreto of the city. On 28 April, Mussolini was executed in Giulino (a civil parish of Mezzegra) the other fascists captured with him were taken to Dongo and executed there. It is disputed whether he was trying to flee from Italy to Switzerland (through the Splügen Pass), and was travelling with a German anti-aircraft battalion. On 27 April 1945, as Allied forces closed in on Milan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans. Mussolini is executed: On 25 April 1945, Italian partisans liberated Milan and Turin. On 27 April 1945, the Raising the Flag on the Three-Country Cairn photograph was taken. German forces leave Finland: On 25 April 1945, the last German troops withdrew from Finnish Lapland and made their way into occupied Norway. However, up to 10,000 Nazi war criminals eventually fled Europe using ratlines such as ODESSA. Some Nazi guards and personnel were murdered outright upon the discovery of their crimes. Captured SS guards were subsequently tried at Allied war crimes tribunals where many were sentenced to death. Due to the prisoners' poor physical condition, thousands continued to die after liberation. Allied troops forced the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves. Four days later troops from the American 42nd Infantry Division found Dachau. Up to 60,000 prisoners were at Bergen-Belsen when it was liberated on 15 April 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division. The advance into Germany uncovered numerous Nazi concentration camps and forced labour facilities. Liberation of Nazi concentration camps and refugees: Allied forces began to discover the scale of the Holocaust, confirming the findings of 1943 Pilecki's Report.
The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty railcars containing the bodies of between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners who were evacuated from Buchenwald on 7 April 1945. By October, thousands had died in the camps from starvation, exposure and disease. The legal fiction circumvented provisions under the Geneva Convention of 1929 on the treatment of former combatants. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) reclassified all prisoners as Disarmed Enemy Forces, not POWs (prisoners of war). In early April, the first Allied-governed Rheinwiesenlagers were established in western Germany to hold hundreds of thousands of captured or surrendered Axis Forces personnel. In the three to four months up to the end of April, over 800,000 German soldiers surrendered on the Eastern Front. April also witnessed the capture of at least 120,000 German troops by the Western Allies in the last campaign of the war in Italy. Main article: Timeline of Axis surrenders in World War IIĪllied forces begin to take large numbers of Axis prisoners: The total number of prisoners taken on the Western Front in April 1945 by the Western Allies was 1,500,000.
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