This photo collection offers a rare glimpse into that transformative year. Through 45 powerful candid images, we see moments of sorrow and celebration, uncertainty and hope. Whether it’s a soldier’s embrace, children playing in bombed-out streets, or workers shaping a new future, each frame captures the raw emotion and reality of life in 1945. Let’s dive into 44 photos from 1945.
1. A photograph showing what you could buy for $1.34 in 1918 vs what you could buy in 1945
2. American soldiers on their way home from World War II
3. The men of Easy Company after capturing Germany’s Eagle’s Nest, 1945
4. When the Soviet troops approached Berlin in 1945, citizens did their best to take care of Berlin’s zoo animals
5. Shirley Temple posing next to a painting of her younger self, 1945
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6. Female students in Brooklyn protesting the “no pants to school” rule
7. Navy musician Graham Jackson playing a song as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral train passes by, 1945
8. Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich kissing American soldier Carus Olcott, who was returning home to New York after WWII
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9. Judy Garland with her baby, Liza Minelli, 1945
10. Winston Churchill sitting in the charred remains of the German leader’s armchair, symbolizing the end of WWII
11. This photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt was taken the day he passed
12. Norma Jeane, before she became the famous Marilyn Monroe, 1945
13. Two sailors, exhausted from celebrating the end of WWII, 1945
14. Four Dutch boys who were recently liberated from a German camp ride the freedom train home, 1945
15. “My grandpa and grandma when my grandpa came home from WWII in 1945.”
16. The real Hacksaw Ridge hero, Desmond Thomas Doss, and his wife Dorothy, 1945
17. The 92nd Infantry “Buffalo Soldiers” in Italy, 1945
18. Discovering the Mona Lisa, after WWII, 1945
19. Betty White, 1945
20. Captain Lewis Nixon of Easy Company, the morning after V-E Day, 1945
21. Marilyn Monroe in the pumpkin patch, 1945
22. Eighteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during WWII
23. Jimmy Stewart, on the phone at his father’s hardware store, 1945
24. Grocery shopping in 1945
25. Edward Shames, Last Surviving Band of Brothers Officer, in 1945
26. There’s nothing as beautiful as a soldier returning home to his children, 1945
27. U.S. sailors aboard the Ticonderoga celebrate the surrender of the Imperial Forces, 1945
28. A young Ella Fitzgerald in 1945
29. Cyd Charisse, one of Hollywood’s greatest dancers, poses on the beach in Santa Monica, 1945
30. That look we all give for cotton candy, Pittsburgh, 1945
31. An unsung American hero gets the most rewarding kiss, 1945
32. Girls pose by a jail that recalls the witch trials of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts
33. A British soldier with his 8-month-old as he arrives at the docks from overseas, 1945
34. The Miss America contestants of 1945
35. “My Dad and Grandpa at Miami Beach, 1945.”
36. Officers of the 101st Airborne after liberating Herman Görings Mercedes, 1945
37. Lighting a pipe next to a flamethrower doesn’t seem like the smartest idea, 1945
38. Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, 1945
39. A U.S. soldier trying on the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, 1945
40. Riding in a personal helicopter, 1945
41. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones with his mother Doris, 1945
42. U.S. Army nurses sunbathing next to a 40mm gun on a Coast Guard ship, 1945
43. U.S. Navy sailors kept cats on their ships to control the rodent population, 1945
44. The USS Franklin, after getting bombed and battered, begins its 12,000-mile journey home looking like this, 1945
Want to see more content from the 1940s?
Take a look at 35 Vintage Photos From World War 2, or take a look at 18 of the Last Known Photos of Famous Historical Figures from the 1940s. Finally, if you want to see college life in the 1940s, check out 15 Vintage Photos of College Life in the 1940s.
