One of the bloodiest battles of the war begins at Iwo Jima; in the Philippines, U.S. forces completely surround the center of Manila as the tempo of the Japanese atrocities increases.
On the Eastern Front, Allied leaders - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin - meet at Yalta to begin dividing up post-war Europe.
U.S. General Bradley's Operation Lumberjack is in full swing; Patton's lead armored division takes 5,000 German prisoners; in the Pacific, U.S. firestorms torch Japan's capital city.
American bombers continue their assault on mainland Japan; in Europe, the Allies are closing in; Hitler leaves the Reich Chancellery for the last time.
German-occupied territories are collapsing under the Red Army in the race toward Berlin; in occupied Denmark, Mosquito fighter-bombers from the RAF's Number 140 Wing head for the Danish Gestapo headquarters.
Allied troops continue Operation Plunder, their thrust across the Rhine into Germany's heartland; as U.S. Marines close in around them, 200 Japanese soldiers make a last desperate charge.
