Skip to content
WW2 Theatres Theatres of the Second World War
Home

World War II calendar

WWII On This Day: April 1

What happened on April 1 during World War II? This date brings together 7 events from 1942, 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
A destitute mother and child on a Calcutta pavement during the Bengal famine of 1943-44.
Kalyani Bhattacharyee and Manoj Sarbadhikar / Bengal Speaks, Servants of Bengal Society · Public domain
World War II Famines

The boat-denial policy

Fearing a Japanese advance into eastern India, colonial authorities imposed denial measures in vulnerable coastal districts. Country boats were essential freight infrastructure in Bengal's river delta, moving rice, fish, fuel and people between local markets. The scale is often simplified. A 1944 parliamentary accounting recorded 26,000 boats removed from the denial area and another 40,000 registered under the March 1942 order; some were requisitioned, destroyed, dismantled or later returned. The policy was not the sole cause of famine, but it weakened transport and livelihoods before the peak mortality of 1943.

Continue in World War II Famines →
1944
American troops landing on a beach in England during Exercise Tiger in April 1944.
U.S. Signal Corps · Library of Congress cph.3c32795 · Public domain · Source
Exercise Tiger

VII Corps begins planning Tiger

Bradley directed J. Lawton Collins and VII Corps to prepare another full-scale rehearsal for the Utah Beach force during the last week of April. The exercise would use the same basic task organisation intended for Normandy, including the 4th Infantry Division and the 1st Engineer Special Brigade.

Continue in Exercise Tiger →
Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment wading ashore from a landing craft at Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944.
“Into the Jaws of Death” · CPhoM Robert F. Sargent, US Coast Guard · NARA 26-G-2343 · Public domain · Source
Omaha Beach

Rommel drives the obstacle programme

During the spring, Rommel pushed coastal commands to thicken beach obstacles, mines and anti-landing defences before the expected invasion. Omaha's obstacle belt reflected that doctrine: stop craft and armour at the waterline and keep assault troops exposed under fixed fire. The period Rommel photograph in Command & Decision comes from a separate Atlantic Wall inspection in April.

Continue in Omaha Beach →
1945
Yevgeny Khaldei's photograph of Soviet soldiers raising a Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin on 2 May 1945.
Yevgeny Khaldei / TASS · 2 May 1945 · CC BY 4.0 via the Russian Ministry of Defence · Source
The Battle of Berlin

Berlin becomes the primary Soviet objective

On 1 April Stalin replied to Eisenhower that Berlin had lost much of its former strategic importance and that Soviet main operations would resume later. The message did not describe what Soviet headquarters was actually doing. At the same time, the fronts were being redeployed for an operation centred on Berlin and the Soviet occupation zone east of the Elbe. 1st Belorussian Front held the direct Küstrin–Berlin axis; 1st Ukrainian Front shifted weight toward the Neisse; 2nd Belorussian Front was marching from the Baltic toward the lower Oder. The deception…

Continue in The Battle of Berlin →
World War II Famines

The Vietnamese famine reaches its deadliest phase

By March and April 1945, starvation and associated disease were killing people across Tonkin and northern Annam at the famine's highest rate. Refugees moved toward towns and Hanoi while local reserves and household assets were exhausted. The death toll remains unusually uncertain. Published estimates range from roughly 600,000 to 2 million; recent scholarship commonly places the disaster above one million while emphasizing that wartime registration was too weak for a precise total.

Continue in World War II Famines →
Men of the 95th Division, US Ninth Army, patrolling Soest after its capture, 7 April 1945.
Men of the 95th Division patrolling Soest, 7 April 1945 · US Army Signal Corps SC 336817 · NARA · Public domain · Source
The Ruhr Pocket

The first breakout attempt fails at Medebach

About 150 panzer grenadiers with four tanks attacked Medebach. A battalion of the 415th Infantry held the town. A 57 mm antitank gun destroyed one tank and a bazooka destroyed another. The surviving tanks and infantry withdrew, leaving the supply road behind the American spearhead open.

Continue in The Ruhr Pocket →
The Ruhr Pocket

The ring closes

Columns from the 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions met on the eastern edge of Lippstadt. The junction enclosed Army Group B in a pocket about thirty miles by seventy-five miles. Inside were the headquarters of Army Group B, all of Fifth Panzer Army, most of Fifteenth Army and two corps from First Parachute Army: seven corps and nineteen divisions in the US Army official history's initial order of battle.

Continue in The Ruhr Pocket →