A introduction to the state of the world in May 1945. 

• FDR is dead.
• Truman is President, only three months after he became vice-president.
• The Battle of Okinawa is ongoing - it had started on April 1st.
• USS Indianapolis is in San Francisco for repairs from a kamikaze attack in the waters around Okinawa, just before the invasion began.
• The USSR has just ended its non-agression pact with the Empire of Japan.
• Mussoline is dead, killed on April 28
• Hitler is dead by suicide on April 30.
• Nazi Germany is defeated on May 8.
• The long-term coalition government in the UK ends with the victory over Germany.
• Churchill has requested that elections be held, around the beginning of July.
• In Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project team awaits deliveries of uranium and plutonium to use in their Little Boy and Fat Man designs. 
• And although nobody realizes it for certain, the war is nearly over.