<P> Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps and refugees: Allied forces began to discover the scale of the Holocaust . The advance into Germany uncovered numerous Nazi concentration camps and forced labor facilities . Up to 60,000 prisoners were at Bergen - Belsen when it was liberated on 15 April 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division . Four days later troops from the American 42nd Infantry Division found Dachau . Allied troops forced the remaining SS guards to gather up the corpses and place them in mass graves . Due to the prisoners' poor physical condition, thousands continued to die after liberation . Captured SS guards were subsequently tried at Allied war crimes tribunals where many were sentenced to death . However, up to 10,000 Nazi war criminals eventually fled Europe using ratlines such as ODESSA . </P> <P> German forces leave Finland: On 25 April 1945, the last German formations withdrew from Finnish Lapland into occupied Norway . On 27 April 1945, the Raising the Flag on the Three - Country Cairn photograph was taken . </P> <P> Mussolini's death: On 25 April 1945, Italian partisans liberated Milan and Turin . On 27 April 1945, as Allied forces closed in on Milan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans . It is disputed whether he was trying to flee from Italy to Switzerland (through the Splügen Pass), and was traveling with a German anti-aircraft battalion . 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 . The bodies were then taken to Milan and hung up on the Piazzale Loreto of the city . On 29 April, Rodolfo Graziani surrendered all Fascist Italian armed forces at Caserta . This included Army Group Liguria . Graziani was the Minister of Defence for Mussolini's Italian Social Republic . </P> <P> Hitler's death: On 30 April, 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 . 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 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). However, Goebbels committed suicide the following day, leaving Dönitz as the sole leader of Germany . </P>

When did ww2 end in europe and the pacific