On this day

May 31, 1945

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from May 31, 1945

GROUP TO RULE REICH CALLED; FIGHTING SPREADS IN SYRIA; U.S. FLAG IS HOISTED IN SHURI; PLAN FOR GERMANY 4-Power Board Meets in Few Days--Zhukoff Is Soviet Member COMMUNISM A QUESTION Differences with Russia Likely to Be Settled--Truman Speeds Davies Mission Differences May Be Cleared BODY TO RULE REICH IS CALLED TO MEET

By Drew Middleton By Wireless To the New York Times

Allied Control Comm to meet; USSR to be represented by Marshal Zhukoff, US by Eisenhower, GB by Montgomery and France by Lt Gen Koenig; site of meeting not announced

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Notable Births

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

1945Rainer Werner Fassbinder, German actor, director, and screenwriter (died 1982)[†]

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker, dramatist and actor. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement. He directed over 40 films that span a variety of genres; frequently his work blends elements of Hollywood melodrama with social criticism and avant-garde techniques. His films, according to him, explored "the exploitability of feelings". His work was deeply rooted in post-war German culture: the aftermath of Nazism, the German economic miracle and the Red Army Faction. He worked with a company of actors and technicians who frequently appeared in his projects.

Laurent Gbagbo

1945Laurent Gbagbo, Ivorian academic and politician, 4th President of Côte d'Ivoire[†]

Koudou Laurent Gbagbo is an Ivorian politician who was the president of CĂ´te d'Ivoire from 2000 until his arrest in April 2011. He was the first president in the history of the country that was a centre-left politician. A historian, Gbagbo was imprisoned in the early 1970s and again in the early 1990s, and he lived in exile in France during much of the 1980s as a result of his union activism. Gbagbo founded the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) in 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for president against FĂŠlix HouphouĂŤt-Boigny at the start of multi-party politics in 1990. He won a seat in the National Assembly of CĂ´te d'Ivoire in 1990.

Bernard Goldberg

1945Bernard Goldberg, American journalist and author[†]

Bernard Richard Goldberg is an American author, journalist, and political pundit. Goldberg has won fourteen Emmy Awards and was a producer, reporter and correspondent for CBS News for twenty-eight years (1972–2000) and a paid contributor for Fox News for ten years (2009–2018). He is best-known for his on-going critiques of journalism practices in the United States—as described in his first book published in 2001, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News. He was a correspondent for Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO for 22 years until January 2021.

Notable Deaths

Odilo Globocnik

1945Odilo Globocnik, Italian-Austrian SS officer (born 1904)[†]

Odilo Lothar Ludwig Globočnik was a Nazi Party official from Austria and a perpetrator of the Holocaust. A high-ranking member of the SS, Globočnik was the leader of Operation Reinhard, the organized murder of around one and a half million Jews, mostly of Polish origin, during the Holocaust in the Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec extermination camps. Historian Michael Allen described him as "the vilest individual in the vilest organization ever known". Globočnik killed himself shortly after his capture and detention by British soldiers.