15 April – BBC correspondent Richard Dimbleby accompanies the British 11th Armoured Division to the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, making one of the first reports from there.[1] His description of what he sees ("the world of a nightmare") is so graphic, the BBC declines to broadcast his dispatch for 4 days, relenting only when he threatens to resign.
30 April – William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") records his final (rambling and audibly drunk) English-language propaganda broadcast for Nazi German radio.[2]
4 May – Radio Hamburg begins broadcasting from the British occupied zone of Germany, with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas speaking from "Lord Haw-Haw"'s studio for the BBC. On 22 September, the station becomes Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), the zone's official broadcasting organisation, set up by Hugh Greene.[5]
7 May – The last German communication to be decoded at Bletchley Park is from a military radio station at Cuxhaven closing down.[6] This evening the BBC in the UK announces that the following day will be a holiday, Victory in Europe Day.
28 May – U.S.-born Irish-raised Nazi propagandist William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") is captured by British forces on the German border. He later stands trial in London for high treason for his earlier wartime broadcasts, is convicted, and hanged in January 1946.
June
4 June – Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in a broadcast speech during the 1945 United Kingdom general election campaign, claims that a future socialist government "would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo". His eventually successful opponent Clement Attlee responds the next night by ironically thanking the prime minister for demonstrating to people the difference between Churchill the great wartime leader and Churchill the peacetime politician.[8]
July
1 July – For the 50th season the BBC Proms return from their wartime retreat in Bedford back to the Royal Albert Hall in London. The First Night concert includes William Walton’s Memorial Fanfare for Henry Wood, as well as a performance of Elgar’s Cockaigne (In London Town).
1 August – Family Favourites is the successor to the wartime radio show Forces Favourites, broadcast at Sunday lunchtimes on the Light Programme in the UK and the British Forces Broadcasting Service in Europe; it runs until 1980.
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