1945

**1945** (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar.  It was known for the end of World War II and the founding of UNO and UNESCO.

## Events

- January 27 - The Red Army liberates Auschwitz concentration camp.
- April 30 - Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
- May 9 - Victory Day
- May 12 – Rev. W. V. Awdry's children's book _The Three Railway Engines_, first of The Railway Series, is published in England.
- July 17 - Start of the Potsdam Conference.
- August 6 and 9 - U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- August 18 - Death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as given by Habibur Rahman.
- September 2 - World War II ends
- October 24 - The United Nations is formed.

## Births

- January 3 – Stephen Stills (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), singer, songwriter
- January 9 – Levon Ter-Petrossian, first President of Armenia
- January 10 – Rod Stewart, singer
- January 19 – Maria Jespen, theologian
- January 26 – Jacqueline du Pré, cellist (d. 1987)
- January 28 – Marthe Keller, actress
- January 29 – Tom Selleck, actor (_Magnum, P.I._)
- January 30 – Michael Dorris, writer (d. 1997)
- February 3 – Bob Griese, Football Hall of Famer
- February 5 – Charlotte Rampling, actress
- February 6 – Bob Marley, Jamaican roots rock reggae singer and musician (d. 1981)
- February 7 – Pete Postlethwaite, actor
- February 9 – Mia Farrow, actress
- February 12 – Thilo Sarrazin, German politician and economist
- February 14 – Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein
- February 17 – Brenda Fricker, actress
- February 24 – Barry Bostwick, actor
- February 28 – Bubba Smith, Football Hall of Famer (d. 2011)
- March 7 – John Heard, actor
- March 8 – Micky Dolenz, actor, director, musician ("The Monkees")
- March 8 – Anselm Kiefer, painter
- March 19 – Cem Karaca, Turkish rock musician
- March 22 – Paul Schockemöhle, equestrian
- March 29 – Walt Frazier, basketball player
- March 30 – Eric Clapton, blues guitarist (Cream)
- April 2 – Linda Hunt, actress
- April 4 – Daniel Cohn-Bendit, political activist
- April 25 - Björn Ulvaeus, Swedish guitarist (ABBA)
- April 27 – August Wilson, playwright
- May 4 – Narasinham Ram, journalist
- May 6 – Bob Seger, rock music singer
- May 6 – Jimmie Dale Gilmore, musician
- May 8 – Keith Jarrett, jazz musician
- May 13 – Magic Dick, musician ("The J. Geils Band")
- May 14 – Yochanan Vollach, Israeli footballer, president of Maccabi Haifa
- May 15 – Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza presumptive heir to Portuguese crown
- May 19 – Pete Townshend, guitarist, lyricist (The Who)
- May 21 – Ernst Messerschmid, physicist and astronaut
- May 28 – John Fogerty, singer (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
- May 31 – Rainer Werner Fassbinder, director
- June 11 - Robert Munsch, American–Canadian children’s author
- June 15 – Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent
- June 17 – Art Bell – radio talk show host
- June 17 – Eddy Merckx, Belgian cycling champion
- June 17 – Anupam Kher, actor, India
- June 19 – Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar poet, politician and Nobel peace laureate
- June 25 – Carly Simon, singer, songwriter
- July 7 – Michael Ancram (Michael Kerr, Earl of Ancram), British politician
- July 8 – Micheline Calmy-Rey, member of the Swiss Federal Council
- July 15 – Jürgen Möllemann, German politician (d. 2003)
- July 23 - Matias Türk, folk music and Croatian politician
- July 28 – Jim Davis, cartoonist
- August 14 – Steve Martin, actor and comedian
- August 31 – Itzhak Perlman, violinist
- August 31 – Van Morrison, musician
- August 31 - Bob Welch, musician (Fleetwood Mac) (d. 2012)
- September 3 – Aldo Moro, Italian politician
- September 5 – Khaleda Zia, Bangladeshi politician
- September 8 – Jose Feliciano, singer
- October 12 – Aurore Clément, French actress
- October 15 – Jim Palmer, Baseball Hall of Famer
- October 27 – Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazilian President
- October 30 – Henry Winkler, actor (_Happy Days_)
- November 3 – J. D. Souther, country rock musician
- November 5 – Jacques Lanctôt, FLQ terrorist
- November 12 – Neil Young, (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), singer, songwriter
- November 15 - Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Swedish singer-songwriter and musician (ABBA)
- November 26 – Daniel Davis, actor (_The Nanny_)
- November 26 - John McVie, English bass guitarist (Fleetwood Mac)
- December 1 - Bette Midler, American actress and singer
- December 20 - Peter Criss, American singer-songwriter and musician (Kiss)
- December 30 - Davy Jones, English singer-songwriter and musician (The Monkees) (d. 2012)

## Deaths

- January 3 – Edgar Cayce, psychic, "exhaustion"
- January 22 – Else Lasker-Schuler, poet
- January 31 – Eddie Slovik, American soldier
- February 5 – Lilian Rolfe, SOE agent executed by the Nazis
- February 5 – Violette Szabo, SOE agent executed by the Nazis
- February 5 – Denise Bloch, SOE agent executed by the Nazis
- February 11 – Al Dubin, Swiss songwriter
- February 11 – J. S. H. Lokerman, Dutch resistance fighter
- February 17 – Gabrielle Weidner, Belgian heroine of World War II
- February 21 – Eric Liddell, Scottish runner
- March – Anne Frank, at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, typhus
- March 2 – Emily Carr, artist
- March 18 – William Grover-Williams, Grand Prix motor racing driver/war hero
- March 19 – Friedrich Fromm, Nazi official
- March 23 – Elisabeth de Rothschild, executed by the Nazis
- March 26 – David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- March 30 – Elise Rivet, Roman Catholic nun and war hero
- April 9 – Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German Abwehr, hanged for treason
- April 9 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian in Nazi Germany
- April 12 – United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, massive stroke
- April 18 – Ernie Pyle, American journalist, sniper fire
- April 28 – Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator, hanged
- April 30 – Adolf Hitler, German dictator and Nazi party leader, suicide
- May 1 – Cecily Lefort SOE agent, WW II heroine, executed by the Nazis
- May 1   – Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist, suicide
- May 2 – Martin Bormann, Nazi-German politician (b. 1900)
- May 15 – Charles Williams, British writer
- May 15 - Kenneth J. Alford, British composer
- May 23 – Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi Gestapo, suicide
- July 5 – John Curtin, fourteenth Prime Minister of Australia
- August 2 – Pietro Mascagni, Italian composer
- August 9 – Harry Hillman, American athlete
- August 10 – Robert Goddard, American rocket scientist
- August 31 – Stefan Banach, Polish mathematician
- September 15 – Anton Webern, Austrian composer
- September 24 – Johannes Hans Geiger, inventor of the Geiger counter
- September 26 – Béla Bartók, aged 64, Hungarian composer
- October 13 – Milton Hershey, chocolate tycoon
- October 15 – Pierre Laval, former Vichy French premier, firing squad
- October 19 – N.C. Wyeth, illustrator
- October 24 – Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian politician, famous traitor, executed
- November 11 – Jerome Kern, composer
- November 21 – Robert Benchley, _The New Yorker_, humorist, theatre critic, actor
- December 4 – Thomas Hunt Morgan, biologist
- December 20 – General George S. Patton, car accident
- December 28 – Theodore Dreiser, writer

## Nobel Prizes

- Nobel Prize in Physics – Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian-born physicist
- Chemistry – Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist
- Medicine – Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain, Sir Howard Walter Florey, shared for their work on penicillin
- Literature – Gabriela Mistral, Chilean poet
- Peace – Cordell Hull, American politician

## Movies released

- _Anchors Aweigh_ starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra
- _The Bells of St. Mary's_ starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman
- _Leave Her to Heaven_ starring Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde
- _Mildred Pierce_ featuring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, and Ann Blyth
- _Saratoga Trunk_ starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman
- _Spellbound_ starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck
- _Week-End at the Waldorf_ featuring Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, and Walter Pidgeon

## New Books

- _The Age of Jackson_ – Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
- _The Age of Reason_ – Jean-Paul Sartre
- _Animal Farm_ – George Orwell
- _Black Boy_ – Richard Wright
- _The Black Rose_ – Thomas B. Costain
- _Bonheur d'occasion_ (_The Tin Flute_) – Gabrielle Roy
- _The Bosnian Trilogy_ – Ivo Andric
- _Brideshead Revisited_ – Evelyn Waugh
- _By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept_ – Elizabeth Smart
- _Cannery Row_ – John Steinbeck
- _The Egyptian_ – Mika Waltari
- _Gigi_ – Colette
- _High Ground_ – Odella Phelps Wood
- _Loving_ – Henry Green
- _Night Has a Thousand Eyes_ – Cornell Woolrich
- _The Naked and the Dead_ – Norman Mailer
- _The Open Society and Its Enemies_ – Karl Popper
- _Pippi Longstocking_ – Astrid Lindgren
- _The Policy King_ – Lewis A. H. Caldwell
- _The Pursuit of Love_ – Nancy Mitford
- _Rabbit Hill_ – Robert Lawson
- _A Street in Bronzeville_ – Gwendolyn Brooks
- _Stuart Little_ – E.B. White
- _Surrender on Demand_ – Varian Fry
- _That Hideous Strength_ – C. S. Lewis
- _The Thurber Carnival_ (anthology) – James Thurber
- _Tootle_ – Gertrude Crampton
- _Two Solitudes_ – Hugh MacLennan
- _The Wide House_ – Taylor Caldwell