How April 1945 Proved to Be ‘Hinge of History’

A single month determined the course of the 20th century.

That’s what historian Craig Shirley writes about in his newest book, “April 1945: The Hinge of History.”

It’s Shirley’s follow-up to “December 1941,” in which the author and political consultant recounted stories from the lives of leaders and everyday Americans during the attack on Pearl Harbor and the days that followed.

The events of April 1945 are the bookend to the greatest war in human history, as Shirley outlines on this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast.”

President Franklin Roosevelt died, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured and executed by his angry countrymen, and Adolf Hitler shot himself in a Berlin bunker alongside his mistress, Eva Braun, as the Red Army and Western armies closed in. Discovery of Nazi death camps at Dachau and Auschwitz revealed the depth of evil committed by the Nazi regime.

“What’s really interesting,” Shirley says, “is that The New York Times and The Washington Post rarely if ever reported that it was Jews who were primarily being exterminated by the Nazis.”

What followed was a world wholly changed. As the German Reich crumbled and the war drew down to its last days, the United States found itself in a new position as the unquestioned leader of the free world.

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