APRIL 15
1885
Tadeusz Kutrzeba (dob) was a general of the Polish army during the Second Polish Republic and served as a major general in the Polish Army in World War II. During the invasion of Poland in 1939, General Kutrzeba was commander of the Poznań Army, composed of four infantry divisions (14, 17, 25, 26) and two cavalry brigades (Wielkopolska and Podolska). He planned the Polish counterattack of the Battle of Bzura and commanded the Poznań and Pomorze Armies. He fought his way to Warsaw and arrived in the capital on September 22, where he briefly became the deputy commander of the Warsaw Army. Upon the command of Major General Juliusz Rómmel (commander of the Warsaw Army), Kutreba capitulated and began negotiations with the German 8th Army. On September 28, he signed the official surrender documents. He was arrested, and imprisoned in several prisoner of war camps: Hohenstein, Königstein and Oflag VII-A Murnau. General Kutrzeba was a POW until April 1945 when the prison camp was liberated by American forces.
1945
The British 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp: The soldiers discovered about 60,000 prisoners inside, starved and emaciated, and seriously ill. Throughout the camp grounds there were 13,000 corpses which remained unburied. The horrors of the camp have been documented on film and in pictures, and have made the name "Belsen" synonymous with Nazi crimes of WW2. Today, there is a memorial with an exhibition hall at the site.
German submarines were sunk by Allied ships: U-285 was attacked and sunk by depth charges dropped from the British frigates HMS Grindall and Keats southwest of Ireland: U-1063 was sunk while on her first patrol in the English Channel east of Land's End, south of Bigbury, Devon, by squid depth charges from the British frigate HMS Loch Killin. 29 of the crew were killed, there were 17 survivors and U-1235 was sunk in the North Atlantic by hedgehogs from the destroyer escorts USS Stanton and Frost during Operation Teardrop.
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