January 23rd, 1945 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Destroyers HMCS Sioux and Algonquin arrived Clyde with Convoy RA-63.
FRANCE: Strasbourg: The French First Army has halted the German offensive, North Wind, at the last bridge before Strasbourg. General Eisenhower was willing to give up the city, liberated on 23 November, in order to allow the US Seventh Army to withdraw, but General de Gaulle threatened to remove his forces from the Allied command if Strasbourg was sacrificed. Eisenhower gave way, but said that the French must defend the city.
NETHERLANDS: NETHERLANDS: L/Cpl Henry Eric Harden (b.1912), Royal Army Medical Corps, went, under fire, to aid three men. He rescued one, but was killed on a third trip. (Victoria Cross)
GERMANY: Berlin: Hitler belatedly agrees to a major new shipbuilding programme and orders the extension of the slave-labour system in the northern dockyards.
Berlin: Count Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, the leader of the "Kreisau Circle" resistance movement, is executed. (Tim Lanzendörfer)
Berlin: Hitler appoints Himmler, who has no experience of operational command, C-in-C Army Group Vistula.
The Second Division of the Russian Liberation Army is formed under General Zverev. It will fight with the German army and is composed of former Soviet Prisoners of War.
Königsberg: The German cruiser Emden transports the bodies of Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg and his wife Gertrude back to Germany, in the face of the advancing Soviet forces. They had been buried, against their wishes, at Tannenburg, the site of his greatest WWI victory against the Russians. After the war they will be reburied at Elisabeth Church in Marburg, near Frederick Wilhelm I and Frederick II. (John Nicholas)
WAR AT SEA: PACIFIC: The USS Extractor, H.M. Babcock in command, a Navy salvage vessel is torpedoed by the USS Guardfish, Douglas Hammond in command. The Guardfish has mistaken the USN vessel for a Japanese I Class submarine in the early morning light. Both commanders share the blame in a Board of Inquiry hearing. (John Nicholas)
Destroyer escort USS Corbesier sank HIJMS I-48 off Yap.
CANADA: The first of Canada's conscripted soldiers leave Halifax for overseas duty. (Dave Hornford)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: SS Vigsnes sunk by U-1172 at 53.33N, 04.17W.