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Millions of people took to the streets of Britain on 8 May 1945 to celebrate VE Day – the day when the German armed forces signed an unconditional surrender, and the Second World War in Europe finally came to an end. Hanging bunting, waving flags, drinking and dancing, the streets were crammed with joyous revellers...
At 2.41am on 7 May 1945, at a schoolhouse near Reims in northern France, General Alfred Jodl, the German chief of staff, signed the unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces wherever they might be fighting. General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, rang General Sir ‘Pug’ Ismay, Churchill’s chief of staff. “The war is over,” he said. “But no official announcement could be made” said Juliet Gardiner, writing for BBC History Magazine in 2005. “Stalin insisted that victory should not be proclaimed until German troops on the eastern front had surrendered to the Soviet general Zukhov in Berlin and the long-awaited news could be proclaimed simultaneously in London, Moscow and Washington.” Yet rumours that the war had finally ended soon began to filter through to the British public. “The newspapers are full of rumours of surrender… feeling almost excited… everyone is speculating,” wrote Lyn Murphy, who worked for the director of an electrical manufacturer engaged in war production, in her diary for 7 May 1945. “They shouldn’t keep people hanging about waiting like this. The government needn’t be afraid of people going mad, everybody’s very sober about it,” complained a middle-aged man to a member of Mass-Observation, the organisation that compiled reports on British wartime attitudes and morale, which was out in force now that victory was in the air. On the afternoon of 8 May 1945, the British prime minister Winston Churchill made the radio announcement that the world had long been waiting for. He announced that hostilities with Germany would cease at one minute past midnight, and that “our dear Channel Islands”, the only part of British territory to have been occupied, “are to be freed today”. After nearly six long years, the war in Europe was finally over. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/05/GettyImages-3432929-4d9bca8-scaled-e1746607596456.jpg" width="619" height="413" alt="Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes his VE Day broadcast to the world, 8 May 1945. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" title="Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes his VE Day broadcast to the world, 8 May 1945. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)" /> Time to party The celebrations began almost immediately. But there were no official plans for VE Day – notice of the public holiday had been so short that most weren’t sure how to celebrate. Gardiner, who later interviewed people who experienced VE Day firsthand, said: “A London window cleaner probably spoke for many when he declared ‘the holiday is the main issue… very few have any definite plans, and these almost exclusively consist of getting drunk.’” Most people had expected the church bells to be rung: “I thought they’d be clanging all day long,” reported a Surrey woman, “but there was no signal. Just hanging around… No All Clears, no bells. Nothing to start people off.” The weather looked set to be fair – though the papers forecast possible rain later. But even that was a novelty, said Gardiner. Throughout the war it had been forbidden to publish the weather forecast in the newspapers or broadcast it on the wireless, for fear of giving the Germans information that might be useful in planning bombing raids. Some people went to church to give thanks for the peace at hastily arranged services, while others strolled around their local streets admiring the flags and streamers that had been hung out. Children set to work making Union Jack flags with cardboard and crayons. Although VE Day was strictly speaking a continental European event, it was celebrated all over the world. In London, more than a million people took to the streets and huge crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace to see Churchill standing on the balcony alongside King George VI. The king's daughters, Princess Elizabeth – the future Queen Elizabeth II (pictured far left) – and Princess Margaret, appeared alongside them. In Paris and New York, similar crowds gathered along the Champs Elysée and in Times Square. Michael Mason, 13, who had been evacuated from his home in central London to a village in Hertfordshire in 1939 and was still there on VE Day, said: “I caught the early bus… to London. I wanted to spend the day with my mum and dad. The scenes in the capital were incredible. It was one huge celebration. A tremendous wave of pent-up feelings had broken loose. The streets were crammed with joyful revellers.” The partying went on into the night: “Crowds surged back to Buckingham Palace to call for the king and queen again, lines of conga dancers wove along Piccadilly, revellers jumped into the fountains in Trafalgar Square,” wrote Gardiner. “The police were tolerant, instructed to intervene only when there was danger to life or limb, to let a war weary people go a little wild just for one night. In fact, there was remarkably little trouble or drunken behaviour – partly because most pubs had already run dry by eight o’clock.” Majorie Cantwell, who was nine in 1945 and living in Ealing, west London, thought that “VE Day was the best day of my life. All morning we had been collecting things for the bonfire (including an old piano full of woodworm!)… when darkness finally fell we lit our bonfire and placed a Hitler “guy” on the top. It was in the middle of the road so we were all able to dance around it. “Later two radios were placed side by side in the window of a nearby house and BBC dance music was relayed into the street. All the grown-ups danced and sang until they were exhausted. When the dance music went off the air, my dad entertained everyone with his banjo and people sang and danced some more. We all went to bed that night tired and happy and I felt that nothing could ever harm us again.” Look back at the 8 May 1945 celebrations in pictures… <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/05/GettyImages-3276265-040cd5d-scaled-e1746607806479.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Canadian troops entertain the crowds in Leicester Square while waiting for the broadcast of the King's VE Day speech, 8 May 1945. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)" title="Canadian troops entertain the crowds in Leicester Square while waiting for the broadcast of the King's VE Day speech, 8 May 1945. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)" /> <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/05/GettyImages-3312682-7950150-e1746608155941.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The residents of Tilloch Street, Islington, London, who organised a tea party in the street for their children at Whitsun. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)" title="The residents of Tilloch Street, Islington, London, who organised a tea party in the street for their children at Whitsun. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)" />
John Willis tells the inside story of the day that Britain toasted victory over Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany had finally been defeated. And, for 24 hours, Britons could let their hair down and celebrate. But not everyone was in the mood to party. As 2025 marks the 80th anniversary, John Willis tells the story of VE Day via the experiences of ordinary Britons who lived through it. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, he discusses what these testimonies reveal about the state of mind of a nation after six long years of war. John Willis is the author of The People’s War: Unheard Voices: Life on the Battlefront and at Home in World War II (BBC Books, 2025) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
In 1942, British and Commonwealth forces in the east were divided, dispirited and defeated by the Japanese at every turn. Two years later, they were on an unstoppable surge to victory. On the 75th anniversary of Japan’s surrender, Jonathan Fennell chronicles one of the great transformations of the Second World War
Listen to this article: On 6 August 1945, a US plane dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima; three days later, a second bomb was released over Nagasaki. With Soviet tanks rolling across the border of Japanese-controlled Manchuria (in northern China), it was clear to Japan’s emperor, Hirohito, that his country now faced the prospect of total annihilation. Japan surrendered on 15 August; the Second World War, the most destructive conflict in human history, was over. For the British and Commonwealth troops strung out across the Asian subcontinent, the sudden end of hostilities evoked a mix of complex emotions. With Burma having been reconquered in May, some were preparing for new campaigns to retake Britain’s lost colonies to the south and east. Some were involved in reconstruction and repair operations, while others awaited leave, or even repatriation. The west African troops in Allied Land Forces South East Asia (whose main subordinate formation was the famous 14th Army) greeted the news with joy. According to the quarterly morale reports compiled in theatre, they were so enthused that spirits continued to be “very high” well into September. And Indian troops, who had been at the forefront of the final great campaign in Burma against the Japanese, responded to the news “enthusiastically”. But positive sentiments about the prospects of a return to civilian life soon turned to anxiety, as soldiers reflected on the possibility of unemployment. For British soldiers, who by the fall of Rangoon (the Burmese capital) made up only 13 per cent of the 14th Army, the announcement was met “first with reserve and then with great satisfaction”. This was a more positive response than that elicited by the news of victory in Europe in May, which had been “received without enthusiasm”. But “news of strikes and shortages at home” soon began to “provoke bitter and impatient comment”. The sudden cessation of the American Lend Lease programme, the materiel lifeline that had sustained Britain during the long and arduous conflict, caused some “ill-feeling towards America”. Britain was now faced with a new “Dunkirk”, one of a financial character; its only option would be to ask the Americans for an immediate loan. Disenchantment in the ranks Among the Askari of the 11th East African Division, “the news of Japan’s defeat produced a general feeling of relief but also an impatience with the rigours of military life and discipline”. VE Day had been celebrated in a “hearty manner”, on the understanding that it meant more troops for Asia and a speedier return to Africa. By August, however, the soldiers’ letters betrayed “war weariness” and a general “disinclination to engage in another campaign”. As the British morale report put it, in a comment that could easily apply to the whole of the 14th Army, “relief at the news of victory soon gave way to an almost overwhelming desire to go home”. It is a little disconcerting, perhaps, given the foundational status of the Second World War in British culture, to read of disenchantment at the end of the conflict. But, in many ways, these comments point to one of the key characteristics of the British and Commonwealth war effort: the war was fought by citizen armies, citizen navies and citizen air forces. The war was won by individuals for whom the conflict had always been more centred on personal and local issues than strategic concerns. Home would always trump geopolitics. In this sense, the story of the British and Commonwealth forces in south-east Asia was about more than just battles. It was also about hearts and minds, hopes and fears. Generals and politicians had to make the grand ideological and geo-strategic underpinnings of the war make sense for the ‘poor bloody infantry’. When they managed to do so, the British and Commonwealth Armies fought with determination. When they failed, defeat and disaster often ensued. In Britain, the war had begun with political disunity – with the same being true of many countries in the British empire. It was only with Winston Churchill’s accession to power in May 1940 and the formation of a new, broader coalition government, which included Labour, that a semblance of political accord was achieved in the United Kingdom. In India, the commencement of international hostilities sparked nothing short of a major political crisis. The Indian National Congress insisted that support for the war could only be given if the London government renounced imperialism and promised independence. When the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, offered no more than a meagre postwar review of the 1935 constitution, which had offered political reforms to India but crucially did not award it dominion status, the Congress ministries followed the Congress High Command’s instructions and resigned as a body. The difficulty of uniting people, so evident among political elites (especially in India), was matched also by citizens’ attitudes to mobilisation. The weight of available evidence points to a far less fervent and less deferential population than that which mythically went ‘willingly’ to war in 1914. Conscription was introduced in the United Kingdom, except Northern Ireland, from the outset of the war. But, in the highly charged political climate of the subcontinent, conscription was simply out of the question. The Indian Army would have to be expanded by volunteerism alone. At face value, the Raj was extremely successful in this endeavour: the Indian army of 2.25 million was to become the largest volunteer army in history. However, it represented only about 3 per cent of the entire adult male population of the region in this period; by comparison, 45 per cent of the eligible male population in Britain served in the armed forces. In the main, it was the poor, the destitute and the needy (those who had little other option) who joined up. The Indian army was a force of economic conscripts; it was a volunteer army in name only. Slumping morale All this mattered, because soldiers’ morale was dependent, to an extent far greater than expected, on social factors and a desire for change. The war, at this stage, was not viewed as a crusade, but as a bad business that would have to be endured while it lasted. In the absence of concrete promises for socio-political change in Britain and India, many men wondered what they were fighting for. A struggle fought to maintain the status quo aroused little enthusiasm among the troops. As a consequence, morale and fighting effectiveness suffered. Defeat followed defeat, from the first Japanese attack on Malaya, on 8 December 1941, to the final desperate retreat from Burma, in May 1942. Commanders and politicians despaired at the performance of the troops. This sentiment was reflected in Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival’s warning, issued on 11 February 1942, before the climactic – and catastrophic – conclusion of the battle for Singapore: “In some units the troops have not shown the fighting spirit which is to be expected of men of the British empire. It will be a lasting disgrace if we are defeated by an army of clever gangsters, many times inferior in numbers to our own. The spirit of aggression and determination to stick it out must be inculcated in all ranks. There must be no further thought of withdrawal without orders.” Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Stewart, the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, despaired that one of the key factors limiting the performance of the British and Commonwealth armies was ideology. “The cultivation of ideals for which we fight so as to make them real and alive to individuals” had, in his view, simply not been “practised” by politicians and commanders in Malaya. This, he said, should have been one of the “first duties” of military and national leaders in a time of emergency. The consequences of these oversights were immense. Losing only 5,500 men, outnumbered Japanese forces had seized the greater part of Britain’s empire in the far east. It is of lasting credit to those who fought that this dire situation was turned around, and, as General Sir William Slim, the Commander of 14th Army, put it, defeat turned into victory. The dynamics of morale, training and doctrine were central to this story. An uncertain future First up, the issue of morale had to be addressed. The failure of the Cripps mission, in March 1942, to find a new constitutional settlement for India, and the violence sparked by a new revolutionary movement, ‘Quit India’, that August, demonstrated the extent to which the British government in India had failed to fully mobilise the people for total war. It was clear from morale reports that “one of the chief anxieties” among soldiers was the “feeling of uncertainty as to what will happen when the war is over”. The situation was little better for British soldiers. After a visit to the far east in April 1943, Sir Ronald Adam, the Adjutant General of the British Army, reported that the average British soldier felt that he “was fighting for a country that did not want us”. The solution Adam proposed was Army Education. Every unit of the Indian Army was ordered to create groups to discuss current affairs and the rationale for the war. Any antipathy soldiers had towards the war, or the empire, was supposed to pale in comparison to the hatred that would be fanned for the Japanese. An image of the Japanese soldier as ruthless, fanatical and cruel – but beatable – was deliberately cultivated. By the end of 1943, it was clear that Army Education was “having a good effect – in some cases considerable – in promoting knowledge of the purpose and implications of the war against the Japanese”. The Indian Army, in the absence of the mass mobilisation of the subcontinent, had to make the most of the resources and powers directly at its disposal; Army Education was one of the many vehicles it successfully employed to achieve this end. Another was the provision of more enlightened welfare amenities for the citizen soldier. The authorities in India gradually realised that morale could be nurtured by ensuring that day-to-day interactions between the army, the citizen soldier and his family were carried out in the most positive manner possible. Morale reports pointed out that a sizeable number of troops in the Indian Army had not enlisted out of any desire to serve the military, “but in order to provide for [their] families”. Naturally, therefore, there was “great concern” among soldiers about conditions in the villages, and the importance of village welfare markedly increased as the war wore on, especially with regards to “high prices and [the] scarcity of essentials”. It was perhaps fortunate for the army that, as the morale reports put it, “very few soldiers” were “recruited from famine areas” (up to 4 million people had died in a famine that struck Bengal in 1943). District Soldiers Boards were set up on an all-India basis to look after the domestic interests of fighting men, and the Directorate of Welfare and Amenities (India) introduced women’s welfare centres at training depots across the subcontinent. Racial reforms The last piece of the morale puzzle related to the racialised policies that had for so long discriminated against Asian members of the British and Commonwealth forces in India. Indian officers were second-class citizens in their own army. At the beginning of the war, there had been only 577 Indian officers in an army nearly 200,000 strong; by the end of the war, there were more than 15,000, with 220 lieutenant colonels and four temporary or acting brigadiers. Whereas in 1939 there had been 10 British officers to every Indian officer in the army, by 1945, the ratio had fallen to four to one. By early 1942, equal pay had been introduced. In June 1943, it was announced that Indian officers were to have powers of punishment over British army personnel. By the second half of 1943, it was clear that a spirit of reform had begun to take root in the Indian Army. But improvements in morale meant little if the army could not master the technical challenges of confronting the Japanese in the jungle. Central to this process of tactical transformation was the work of the Infantry Committee, India, which convened in May 1943. It was apparent to the committee that the close character of the fighting in the jungle required soldiers to make rapid decisions when they came into contact with the enemy; acting without delay could be the difference between success and failure, life and death. Accordingly, vast, centrally controlled, tactical training programmes were set up to better prepare soldiers for the challenge of jungle warfare. New recruits and veterans alike were taught how to live, move and fight in the jungle. The Infantry Committee also pointed to the need for a simple, consistent and recognised jungle warfare technique. There were, it noted, numerous jungle warfare doctrines in circulation, some of them fundamentally different from others. The committee now recommended that trained soldiers should follow one, and only one, approach. This new operational method was set out in the fourth edition of ‘Military Training Pamphlet No. 9 (India): Jungle Warfare’, more commonly known as the ‘Jungle Book’. Published in September 1943, the ‘Jungle Book’ effectively became the tactical bible of the Indian Army in Burma. To improve matters further, reinforcements started to pour in from other parts of the empire. The presence of all these new troops, and increasingly well-prepared formations in Burma, offered an opportunity to decisively retake the initiative in south-east Asia. At Imphal and Kohima, between March and June 1944, the 14th Army inflicted a crushing defeat on Japanese forces. Then, in November 1944, it launched its famous ‘Capital’ offensive. By May 1945, it had captured Rangoon, in the process outmanoeuvring and outfighting a much larger Japanese force than was ever encountered by the Americans in the Pacific. A disparate army without ideological conviction had been superseded by a flexible, confident, highly motivated, innovative, increasingly culturally representative and highly trained force. The transformation of the British and Commonwealth armies in the far east was complete. The winds of change There was much to be proud of, therefore, on 15 August 1945. But there was a caveat: victory had taken far longer than anyone might have anticipated in 1941. As a consequence, the war let loose powerful agents of change. In Britain, it resulted in the political earthquake of Labour’s landslide victory in the July 1945 general election, an outcome that evoked “mainly favourable comments” among British soldiers who were anxious for social change back home. Indian soldiers also “welcomed… the advent of a Labour government”, as they believed it augured “hope for India’s future”. Accordingly, there was much interest in the forthcoming Indian elections and “in the future of Congress”. Reports on west African troops noted the creation of “associations and brotherhoods” of a “semi-political nature” in 82nd (West African) Division and indications of a more general politicisation across the division, as illustrated by sympathies with strikers in Nigeria and “annoyance at the suppression of certain Nigerian newspapers”. Meanwhile, the censors worried about anti-Indian feelings among east African troops, amid concerns that veterans might provoke trouble for the Indian community in east Africa on their return. But, more generally, the letters of east African troops captured the hopes of all the soldiers in the far east: there was a “marked interest in postwar affairs”, as writers sought to make personal sense of the seismic changes that had accompanied the war. These would lead eventually to the reorientation of the political economy of Britain and the dissolution of empire. Victory was great, but more than anything else, citizens and subjects of the empire wanted to “see more and better schools and hospitals”; they wanted payback for their many years of sacrifice. To succeed, ‘big ideas’ had, from start to finish, to take account of the ‘little stories’ of ordinary people. The war had not been an end in itself for the soldiers of the British Commonwealth. It was a step on the road towards a greater aspiration, political and social reform and, above all, a better life. Jonathan Fennell is a reader in modern history at King’s College London. His multi-award winning book Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War was published by Cambridge in 2019 This article was first published in the September 2020 edition of BBC History Magazine
On 8 May 1945, millions of people rejoiced in the news that Germany had surrendered: after nearly six years, the war in Europe was finally over. Second World War historian Keith Lowe brings you the facts about this momentous day in history…
What does VE Day stand for? VE Day – which stands for ‘Victory in Europe’ Day – is the day in 1945 when the German armed forces signed an unconditional surrender, and the Second World War in Europe finally came to an end. When is VE Day? On the afternoon of 8 May 1945, the British prime minister Winston Churchill made the radio announcement that the world had long been waiting for. “Yesterday morning,” he declared, “at 2.41 a.m., at General Eisenhower’s headquarters, General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command, and Grand Admiral Dönitz, the designated head of the German State, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe.” After nearly six years, the war in Europe was finally over. The celebrations began almost immediately. However, there was still one last technical detail to be taken care of. Since the Soviet authorities had not yet given their approval to the surrender document, a second, definitive document was signed in Berlin. The official time when this final document was signed was 23.01, Central European Time (although in reality it was not signed until almost a quarter to one the next morning). By Moscow time, however, the official time of signing was already after midnight. As a consequence, America and western Europe consider VE Day to have taken place on 8 May, while Russia and some eastern European countries celebrate it on 9 May. Countdown to VE Day: the week the Second World War ended in Europe Where did VE Day take place and how was it celebrated? Although VE Day was strictly speaking a continental European event, it was celebrated all over the world. In London, more than a million people took to the streets and huge crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace to see Churchill standing on the balcony alongside King George VI. In Paris and New York, similar crowds gathered along the Champs Elysée and in Times Square. According to Alexander Werth, the Moscow correspondent for the BBC and the Sunday Times, the fireworks display over the Kremlin on 9 May “was the most spectacular I have ever seen”. Not all of the celebrations went exactly as planned. In the Canadian city of Halifax, for example, riots broke out when thousands of soldiers and sailors began looting liquor stores. In Australia and New Zealand, the celebrations were a little more sober: such countries were glad to know that their soldiers would soon be coming home from Europe, but were more concerned about the war in the Pacific, which was still going on. “The war without an end”: what happened in Europe after VE Day? What events led to VE Day? The final collapse of Nazi Germany began in January 1945, when the Soviet Red Army launched a series of offensives across a front that ran all the way from the Baltic Sea to the borders of Yugoslavia. By the end of March they had reached the River Oder, just 60km from the German capital. At around the same time, British and American armies also began crossing the Rhine. By the end of April Berlin was encircled, and the situation looked hopeless for Germany. In Italy, Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini was captured and executed, and his body put on display before jeering crowds. In order to avoid the same fate, Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945 in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, along with his wife, Eva Braun, whom he had married the day before. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, whom Hitler had nominated as his successor, began negotiations with the Allies just a few days later. A series of partial surrenders took place at Lüneberg Heath in northern Germany, and at Haar in southern Germany – but in the east, the fighting would continue right up until VE Day itself. Indeed, in some places – for example in Prague, and in parts of northern Yugoslavia – German troops would continue fighting even after the final surrender had been signed. Did Britain really 'stand alone' during WW2? What is the difference between VE Day and VJ Day? While VE Day marked the end of the Second World War in Europe, fighting in the far east would continue for another three-and-a-half months. As a consequence, there was always a slightly solemn undercurrent to the celebrations of VE Day. “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,” said Churchill during his VE Day broadcast, “but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued.” Japan was not finally defeated until after the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. On 15 August 1945, the Japanese emperor announced his unconditional surrender – and this date is remembered in the UK as VJ [Victory in Japan] Day. However, the official surrender documents were not signed until 2 September, which is considered VJ Day in the USA. Did the young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret attend VE Day celebrations? King George VI and his queen, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, made a total of eight appearances on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on VE Day. Their daughters, Princess Elizabeth – the future Queen Elizabeth II – and Princess Margaret, appeared alongside them. That evening, however, in an unprecedented and spontaneous breach of protocol, the two young women slipped out of the palace in order to join the revellers. They were accompanied by two Guards officers, but in the darkness easily blended in with the crowds. Princess Elizabeth was a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and like many others on the streets that night was dressed in uniform. Later, she recalled: “We stood outside and shouted ‘We want the King’… I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.” In pictures: jubilant VE Day celebrations Is VE Day still celebrated today and why? How do the different countries celebrate? Most nations in Europe still celebrate the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in one way or another. The war was probably the most destructive event in European history. It involved the devastation of hundreds of cities, and the deaths of at least 35 million people, most of them civilians. The end of this conflict, and the dawn of a new era of peace, are universally considered events worth celebrating. Different countries mark the anniversary in different ways, and on different days. In Italy, for example, ‘Liberation Day’ is celebrated on 25 April – the day in 1945 when Italian partisans proclaimed a general uprising against the German occupiers of their country. In the Netherlands, Liberation Day falls on 5 May, because this is when the German forces capitulated there. But VE Day on 8 May is generally recognised as the single day that unites the vast majority of countries in Europe. What is the significance of VE Day? VE Day signified several things at once. First and foremost, it brought a symbolic end to organised violence across the continent. Europe remained in turmoil for many years after May 1945, but at least the era of pitched battles between huge armies was over. In Britain it meant the end of bombing, and the return of hundreds of thousands of servicemen to their loved ones. Secondly, it marked the liberation of several countries from foreign occupation. Although France had already been liberated many months earlier, most of Europe was not finally freed from Nazi rule until the spring of 1945. Many countries, including Norway, Denmark, and parts of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, were occupied right up until VE Day itself. Finally, in western Europe at least, VE Day marked the end of totalitarianism, and the beginning of a new era of democracy. With the Nazis gone, European countries were free once more to choose their own governments. In eastern Europe, which fell under communist rule after 1945, the people would have to wait a further four decades before democracy was restored. “Hooray! The war is ended”: 5 people’s recollections of VE Day Does Germany recognise or celebrate VE Day? For many years after the war, VE Day was regarded by many in Germany as a day of shame rather than one of celebration. In East Germany, which became communist after 1945, ‘Liberation Day’ was a public holiday for many years, but it was not generally celebrated with much enthusiasm. Today, however, VE Day is remembered in a much more favourable light. Germans suffered terribly during the war, not only beneath Allied bombs, but also at the hands of their own rulers. Tens of thousands of Germans were imprisoned or executed by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, often for the most insignificant misdemeanours. As a consequence, the defeat of the Nazis is now universally regarded as a blessing. In Germany, VE Day is not a day of celebration as it is in other countries. Rather it is regarded as a day of sombre commemoration, when the dead are remembered, and the promise is renewed never to allow such terrible events to repeat themselves. Keith Lowe is the author of the international bestseller, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize in 2013 and Italy’s Cherasco History Prize in 2015. His latest book is Prisoners of History (HarperCollins, 2020) This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2020
On the 75th anniversary of VE Day we speak to Dan Todman about Britain’s role in defeating the Nazis and the challenges of the postwar years
On the 75th anniversary of VE Day we speak to historian Dan Todman, author of Britain's War: A New World, 1942–1947, about Britain’s role in defeating the Nazis and the challenges of adjusting to the postwar years.
"Hooray! The war is ended": 5 people's recollections of VE Day
From the homesick Jewish refugee to the over-exuberant sailor who landed himself in jail, Peter Hart compiles five people’s recollections of VE Day
Vera Schaufield One of Vera Schaufield’s most vivid memories of VE Day was of getting into trouble with her schoolteacher. Six years earlier, Vera had bid her parents goodbye and become one of the 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia evacuated to England on the Kindertransport, organised by the British humanitarian Nicholas Winton. She was now a refugee suffering from homesickness. She had more reason than most to look forward to the end of the war. “We were sitting in the classroom and the teacher was reading,” she recalled. “Someone came into the room and spoke to her and she said: ‘I have something to tell you: the war is ended!’ I said: ‘Hooray!’ She sent me out for causing a disturbance. I stood outside the classroom with all these mixed thoughts. My parents were going to be cross, because I couldn’t speak to them in Czech or German. Would I be able to take my school certificate? I just wanted to see my parents again. I just wanted to go home.” Sadly, it was not to be. Schaufield’s parents had been transported to Auschwitz and were already dead. David Elliot One of the greatest days of David Elliot’s young life was almost the last. For David, it had been a long war. Despite some pacifist inclination, he had joined up as a stretcher-bearer and served in France until he was evacuated from Dunkirk in June 1940. He then served with the South Notts Hussars in north Africa, Sicily and north-west Europe. On VE Day, they had come to a halt near the town of Coesfeld in Germany. David decided that the best way to celebrate would be to build a massive bonfire with an effigy of Hitler. “We were all mixed up, the officers and the ranks, all terrifically friendly and all very inebriated! I was very worried because it had been raining and everything was wet. It was 8 to 10-feet high and fairly large with this dummy of Hitler on the top. I’d kept a can of petrol to make sure the bonfire went well.” He then managed to put himself in great danger on that day of peace. In pictures: jubilant VE Day celebrations “I climbed up on top of this bonfire, the men were all surrounding it – and I noticed a lot of them had got lighted brands [flaming torches]. I started pouring this petrol down from the top, a good 10 or 12 feet up in the air.” It was at this point that Elliott realised how stupid he had been. “To get right through to the end of the war to go and incinerate myself on VE Day was the height of stupidity.” Luckily, the men heard his desperate shouts to “Wait!” while he climbed down. “Then with a great cheer they threw the lighted brands on the fire and it went up in a great whoosh! Everyone was madly cheering.” Major Alan Hay When Major Alan Hay’s men found out that the war was over, most had only one thing on their minds: “It was, ‘Get your hands on any vino!’” Alan, a company commander with the 16th Durham Light Infantry, had had a tough war, serving with the Durhams in Italy and Greece since December 1943. They had been called back to Italy, where they were in reserve. The Germans were on the retreat, but Alan feared they might be planning a bloody last stand in the Alps. Little wonder, then, that when the good news arrived on 8 May 1945, the battalion was jubilant. “We had a party, first of all firing off all the Very Lights [a type of flare], flashes and signal flares. I suppose some live ammunition went off – but not officially! All the lights were up in the air and we had quite a party.” They organised a best-dressed jeep competition. “First of all, camouflage netting, but anything that would give a bit of colour. They got balloons from somewhere, went round the Italians and got some dresses from them. Two of the officers dressed up as women wearing frocks, with wigs and make-up to match. One of the jeeps was disguised as a gondola. It was just a huge laugh, drinking and absolutely relaxing. Anything that was stupid we were very good at – and I was right in the thick of it.” Major Alan Hay Born in London in 1928, Stan Suffling had been evacuated to St Albans and then Harpenden in 1939. As a pupil at the London Regent Street School, he was evacuated again with the school on its relocation to Minehead. Stan returned to London in 1944, just in time to experience the stresses of the German V1 and V2 raids. On VE Day, he and a small group of friends went into the centre of London to revel in the celebrations: “We made our way down the Mall to Buckingham Palace. We saw members of the royal family; it was the first time I’d ever seen them. At that time, they used to appear heavily made-up with powder and rouge – they looked like waxworks. That amazed me.” They walked back to Piccadilly Circus and stood together on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Great Windmill Street. “It was an amazing scene. It was absolutely milling with people – it was an impossibility to move. We enjoyed the festivities; everybody was talking to everybody. There were members of the forces, a lot of Americans being feted. There were people climbing up the top of lampposts, right up and sitting on the top. Many were drunk. We were not among that crowd – we were just school kids. Those that weren’t drunk with alcohol were drunk with excitement. It was the most exciting day of my life up to then!” Harold Fine “As you can imagine we were highly delighted. We’d survived!” That was Harold Fine’s overriding memory of VE Day. Fine was a wireless telegraphist who had served aboard HMS Calder since its commission in 1943. The ship had been busy on convoy escort duties in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, before carrying out anti-submarine patrols off Ireland and Scotland. That night Harold went ashore with a bunch of his shipmates. They got drunk and returned to the ship the worse for wear. But that wasn't the end of their evening. “Somebody said: ‘Why waste the night?’ About six of us decided to go ashore again. I don’t think there was any jetty sentry, things were very relaxed to say the least!” They forced a pub landlord to serve them – even though it was by then getting late – then moved further into town clutching various bottles. “Somebody dared us to climb up Queen Victoria’s statue outside the City Hall in Belfast. A dare in those days was like red rag to a bull. Up we went! We were knocking the heads of these bottles and drinking. It was decided – very stupidly – to drop these on the crowd gathered underneath. I’m glad to say we didn’t hit anybody. “It didn’t take very long before two RUC men clambered up behind us and said: ‘Come on Jack, you’re causing trouble, you’d better come down.’ We went down very quietly and peacefully. As our feet hit the deck we were physically thrown into the back of a Black Maria and whipped off to Crumlin Road Jail!” Come the dawn, they were woken up with a cup of tea and released without charge. “The state of my head!” Their VE Day was over. Peter Hart was the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum. His new book, At Close Range: Life and Death in an Artillery Regiment, 1939–45, is due to be published by Profile in May This article was first published in the May 2020 edition of BBC History Magazine
"The war without an end": what happened in Europe after VE Day?
On 8 May 1945, Allied nations celebrated VE Day with elation – but, as Keith Lowe reveals, in much of Europe conflict was far from over...
In the summer of 1945, a train carrying refugees pulled out of a station in what’s now Slovakia, heading for Germany. Its passengers were German speakers being expelled from the country – in the wake of the Second World War, Czechoslovakians no longer wanted such people living in their midst. When the train passed through the town of Přerov in Moravia it was brought to a halt. The head of the local militia, a man named Karol Pazúr, forced everyone to disembark, claiming he wanted to carry out a search for former Nazis hiding among the passengers. When they stepped down from the train, Pazúr and his men lined them up and shot them all. The dead included 71 men, 120 women and 74 children. The youngest victim was just eight months old. The slaughter at Přerov was just one example of the many mass killings perpetrated all over Czechoslovakia in the wake of the war. According to Czech historians, during the summer of 1945 between 25,000 and 40,000 German speakers were killed in acts of revenge (though many German historians claim a considerably larger number). Perhaps the most notable fact about the Přerov massacre is that its protagonist was one of the very few Czechs ever to be arrested for such crimes. At his trial, Pazúr was asked how he could possibly justify the killing of the children. He is reported to have answered: “Well, what was I supposed to do with them after we’d killed their parents?” Nevertheless, after a brief spell in prison, Pazúr was pardoned. He promptly began a new career as a member of the communist secret police. Watch: Are we in denial about our role in WW2? Keith Lowe explains – in 60 seconds View oEmbed on the source website When we now look back to the end of the Second World War, we seldom give much thought to what happened next. In our collective memory, VE Day was a moment of pure celebration, when crowds across the world gathered to rejoice the end of violence. But for many in Europe, VE Day did not bring peace. For German communities all over the continent it merely marked the beginning of a new nightmare in which vengeful populations sought personal retribution for the wrongs that had been inflicted on them by the Nazis. Hundreds of thousands of German-speaking civilians were snatched from their families and made to work as slave labourers in eastern European farms and factories. Some were even put to work clearing minefields until strong complaints from the Red Cross put an end to the practice. Hundreds of thousands more were interned in prison camps – in some cases the same camps from which Jews and political prisoners had only recently been liberated – before being expelled from their countries of residence forever. Between them, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia expelled some 12 million German speakers in the three years following the war. It was probably the greatest forced migration in history. At least 500,000 of these migrants are now believed to have died during their long and arduous journey. Germans were not the only people who were subject to such revenge. Anyone who had fought for the ‘wrong’ side, or who was thought to have been a little too friendly with the enemy during the war, was also targeted. In northern Italy, some 20,000 people were summarily executed by their own countrymen because of their support for the Fascist regime. In Holland and Denmark, women accused of sleeping with German soldiers were stripped, shaved and paraded naked through their towns. In clandestine prisons set up in France by former members of the Resistance, suspected collaborators were subjected to various forms of sadism, including mutilation, rape, enforced prostitution and every kind of torture imaginable. French doctors at Drancy detention camp, for example, complained that former collaborators were being subjected to beatings, burns to the soles of the feet and prolonged electric shocks to their genitals. One French newspaper lamented the fact that members of the Resistance were repeating some of the most heinous crimes of the Gestapo. “What was the point in triumphing over the Barbarians,” it asked, “if only to imitate them and become like them?” WW2: When Britain stood (not quite) alone Ethnic violence Some of the worst violence that flared in the aftermath of the war occurred in those areas of Europe where the Nazis had deliberately pitted one ethnic group against another. In Yugoslavia, for example, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists had installed a puppet government run by Croatian ultra-nationalists. This government, the Ustasha regime, spent much of the war persecuting and murdering ethnic Serbs. Naturally, the Serb resistance repaid them in kind; once the war was over, Croatian soldiers and officials were mercilessly hunted down. In the town of Maribor, in Slovenia, tens of thousands of Ustashas were captured while attempting to flee into neighbouring Austria. They were slaughtered on an industrial scale and piled into anti-tank ditches, or thrown into deep ravines and left to rot. Even the most conservative estimates claim that 50,000 to 60,000 Croatian nationalists were killed in this locality alone, and tens of thousands more were killed in other massacres all over Slovenia and northern Croatia. The Second World War opened up a Pandora’s box of ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia that was impossible to close once the war was over. According to Yugoslav intelligence reports in July 1945, “chauvinistic hatred” between different ethnic groups was universal. Serbs who returned to one village after the war are reported to have asked their fellow villagers: “Why don’t you kill all Croats? What are you waiting for?” Similar sentiments were expressed by Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims. Tragically, these hatreds would be revived almost 50 years later when the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s sparked similar attempts at genocide. Britain in 1945: Life in the shadow of victory Another ethnic conflict opened up along the borderlands of Poland and Ukraine at around the same time. When the Nazis arrived here in 1941 they enlisted Ukrainian ultra-nationalists to help them carry out the Holocaust. Having eradicated the nation’s Jews, however, these ultra-nationalists then took it upon themselves to start eradicating the nation’s Poles. Using methods they had learned from the Nazis, they torched villages and rounded up whole populations before shooting them. Once again, Poles reacted in kind, and a war raged between these two ethnic populations until the end of 1947. “While I never saw one of our men pick up a baby or a small child with the point of a bayonet and toss it onto a fire,” remembered one Polish partisan, “I saw the charred corpses of Polish babies who had died that way. If none of our number did that, then it was the only atrocity that we did not commit.” To their credit, today’s Polish administration has had the courage to face up to what happened 70 years ago. In 2002 Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Polish president at that time, publicly apologised for some of the worst excesses that were carried out on the Polish side. However, tensions between the two communities linger to this day. Civil war It was not only ethnic differences that pitted people against each other in 1945. Political differences could be just as deadly. Poles not only killed Germans and Ukrainians during and after the war, they also killed fellow Poles whose political beliefs differed from their own. In the same way, Greeks killed Greeks, Danes killed Danes, and Italians killed Italians. Our popular image of the French Resistance battling valiantly against the Nazi occupier ignores the uncomfortable fact that the vast majority of Resistance activity during the war was not directed at Germans at all but at fellow French people. This political unrest continued long after the liberation: as late as 1948, French communists were still blowing up trains – not in the pursuit of liberation, but in the name of revolution. At the heart of such violence was a battle for the political soul of Europe. The defeat of the Nazis had left a political vacuum in many countries, which extremists of all kinds rushed forward to fill. So vicious were their skirmishes that the American officials who came to Europe at the end of the Second World War worried openly that the entire continent was about to descend into a new Europe-wide civil war. Liberated peoples, wrote the US assistant secretary of state Dean Acheson towards the end of the war, “are the most combustible material in the world”. If political stability were not restored throughout Europe as soon as the war was over, all that would follow would be “frustration”, “agitation and unrest”, and eventually “the overthrow of governments”. One of the most tragic episodes of postwar politics in Europe was beginning to unfold as Acheson wrote. In Athens, which owed its liberation as much to communist partisans as to British troops, a quarrel had broken out over who was going to govern Greece after the war. The British appeared to want to reinstall the king, and dragged their heels over punishing even the most openly fascist collaborators. The communists, meanwhile, refused to lay down their weapons until they saw concrete evidence of a comprehensive purge. The stand-off came to a head during a demonstration in Athens at the very end of 1944. As a crowd gathered in Syntagma Square, shots were fired – it has never become clear by whom – and around a dozen demonstrators were killed. In indignation, the communists once again took up their arms and the whole country quickly descended into chaos. So began a civil war that would last, on and off, for another five years. When the violence was finally brought to an end in 1949, more than a million people had been displaced, and perhaps 150,000 killed. The political polarisation fomented during this time would last for decades, and is still evident in Greece today. The war without end Some of these events are better known than others, but what is very rarely appreciated is how widespread the continuing violence was after 1945. Almost every country in Europe suffered some kind of bloodshed, and in some places the fighting was worse than it had been during the Second World War itself. Our ignorance of this violent and chaotic time stems partly from our desire to believe in the myth of VE Day. It is much more comfortable to imagine that the war came to a neat conclusion than it is to acknowledge the messy and morally ambiguous events that followed. The Cold War also has a role to play: after all, for almost 50 years western Europe was cut off from most of the regions in which these events took place. Hence, stories that Poles and Czechs still remember as if they were yesterday do not always spring readily to western minds. But the problem runs much deeper. Over the decades we have adopted a fairly unsophisticated view of the Second World War – one that does not always have room for the many local complexities that characterised it. We tend to regard the war simply as a clash between the Allies and the Axis, without giving a thought to the many other conflicts that were raging at the same time. Because British and American troops stopped fighting on 8 May 1945, we imagine that everyone else did likewise. Europe in 1945 was a much more complicated place than that. The New York Times journalist Cyrus Sulzberger summed up the situation in an article written at the end of the war. “Europe,” he explained, “is in a condition which no American can hope to comprehend. Virtually every ancient hatred has been revived with new intensity. Frenchman, Italian, Russian, Pole, Czech, Serb, Greek, Belgian, Netherlander, Rumanian – each in his own way hates the German with a personal frenzy. “But worse, and not to be ignored, is that hatred, renewed by the present war, of Greek for Bulgar, Serb for Croat, Rumanian for Hungarian, Frenchman for Italian, Pole for Russian, which has developed among many population groups basically and broadly united in the final effort to crush their common German enemy. And worst of all is that fratricidal hatred of Greek for Greek, Frenchman for Frenchman, Serb for Serb and Pole for Pole, based on differing social and political conceptions fostered and encouraged by chaos and unleashed by the war.” These people killed one another irrespective of what was going on between the Allies and Nazi Germany. And when the Germans surrendered in May 1945 they saw no reason to stop. Many of the tensions that exist around Europe today owe as much to this postwar period as they do to the war itself. When Serbs and Croatians clash at football matches, their fans call one another ‘Chetniks’ or ‘Ustashas’ – the names of the opposing political groups that massacred one another in 1945. When the Czech government refused to sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty in 2009, it was for fear that German expellees might mount legal claims for wrongs done to them in the aftermath of the war. And in the 2015 Greek elections, communists and ultra-nationalists were once again painted as bogeymen, even while anti-debt demonstrators were burning effigies of Swastikas. The Second World War certainly did not come to an end in May 1945. It took many more years for the remnants of violence to fizzle out. But its memory – and the effects of the events that followed it – still haunts us today. Postwar savagery The political and ethnic tensions and urge for revenge that smouldered during the Second World War erupted after German surrender Germany: fatal revenge At the end of the war, 6–8 million foreign forced labourers were set free within Germany. Over the following months they ran amok, looting shops and taking revenge on civilians, causing a crisis of law and order across the country. Meanwhile, some 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from other parts of Europe and forced to travel to Germany. The cruelty and hardship they suffered during their odyssey claimed half a million lives. France and Italy: Resistance is volatile After the liberation of both countries, 10,000 collaborators in France and 20,000 Fascists in Italy were summarily executed. Resistance movements refused to give up their weapons, and in 1948 continuing violence by communists led to a state of emergency being declared in both countries. Law and order was restored only by employing draconian measures such as mass arrests. The Baltic states: The price of liberation By the end of the war the Red Army ‘liberated’ Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and subsumed those countries into the Soviet Union. The populations regarded this action as a new occupation, and hundreds of thousands took to the forests from where they waged a guerrilla campaign against Soviet troops that lasted until the mid-1950s, claiming tens of thousands of lives. They were finally defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign that saw the guerrilla army infiltrated and entire communities deported to Siberia or Kazakhstan. Ukraine and Poland: Brutality at the border Between 1944 and 1947 Poles and Ukrainians waged a savage war across their borderlands in which more than 100,000 civilians were slaughtered. A series of population exchanges in 1946, during which more than 2 million people were forced from their homes, failed to bring the violence to an end. Eventually the Polish government resorted to the mass deportation of all Ukrainian speakers from their south-eastern borderlands and their dispersal throughout other parts of the country. Though brutal, ‘Operation Vistula’ was a success, and by 1948 the conflict was over. Yugoslavia: Mass executions For over a week after the official ceasefire was signed in May 1945, soldiers of the German army continued fighting in Yugoslavia. They were captured in mid-May and slaughtered en masse by Yugoslav Partisans over the following weeks. Croatian and Slovenian troops were also captured, with around 100,000 killed in a series of mass executions. Political and ethnic violence continued in many parts of the country until the communists established total control in 1946. Greece: Descent into civil war Through 1944 into 1945 a breakdown in relations between the British Army and communist partisans resulted in several months of violence. A ceasefire was called in February 1945, and the communists agreed to lay down their arms in return for a comprehensive purge of collaborators from the Greek security forces. However, rightwing militias refused to disband, instead continuing to hunt down communists all over the country. By 1946 Greece had descended into civil war. It has been estimated that over the next three years around 700,000 people were displaced and up to 150,000 killed. Keith Lowe is the author of Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (Viking, 2012). This article was first published in the August 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine
Countdown to VE Day: the week World War 2 ended in Europe
As we mark 75 years since the end of World War II, Gavin Mortimer recalls the momentous week that led to wild celebrations on Victory in Europe Day
On 8 May 1945, millions of people took to the streets rejoicing following the news that Germany had surrendered, bringing an end to World War II in Europe – but not everywhere. Find out more in our ultimate guide to VE Day, and read on below for a closer look at events leading up to this momentous milestone. 30 April “The amazing news is that Mussolini is dead,” wrote Vere Hodgson in her diary. The charity worker from war-torn London also noted that it was snowing in the capital. The Italian dictator had in fact been hanged by partisans two days earlier and, on 29 April, Italians had received more good news with the unconditional surrender of German armies in their country. His dream of a 1,000-year Reich in ruins, Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, killed themselves in the bunker under the Chancellery in Berlin as Soviet troops closed in. In his last will and testament, the Nazi leader appointed Admiral Karl Dönitz as head of state. 1 May The Allies first heard of Hitler’s death when a Hamburg radio station announced that he died “fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism”. Dönitz addressed the nation and described the Führer’s death as “heroic”. He added: “I am taking over the leadership of the German people in this grave hour of destiny. My first task is to save the German people from annihilation.” To this end, Dönitz would surrender northwest Germany to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commanding 21st Army Group, and instructed the Reichskommissars (Reich Commissioners) in Czechoslovakia, Holland, Denmark and Norway to bring hostilities to a peaceful conclusion. The realisation that the war was lost led Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, to kill himself and his six children. 2 May The British press had no inkling of Dönitz's intentions and the front-page headline of The Daily Record for 2 May suggested that the war was far from over: "Death of Hitler, Dönitz says he'll fight on". In reality, there was no fight left in the Third Reich and the Russians accepted the German surrender in Berlin, sending messages to all enemy troops to lay down their arms: "We promise honourable treatment. Each officer can keep his side arms. Each officer and man can take his luggage with him." Further west, Montgomery receives a message from General Günther Blumentritt, commanding all German land forces that remain between the Baltic and the Weser river, in which he offers to surrender. Elsewhere, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was naturally in good spirits during dinner with celebrated playwright, actor and composer Noël Coward, as well as the society hostess Lady Juliet Duff. “A lovely evening,” Coward wrote in his diary. “There he was, gossiping away with us, the man who had carried England through the black years, and he looked so well and cheerful and unrestrained.” Churchill: The ‘cry-baby’ war hero 3 May At 9.25am, Lieutenant William Knowlton of the 87th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, in the US Army, encountered elements of the Russian 191st Infantry Division, some 85 miles north of Berlin. Knowlton and his Russian counterpart embraced, and then to mark the meeting of their two nations the officers drank toasts to Soviet premier Stalin and US President Roosevelt with a bottle of Knowlton’s cognac. One hundred miles to the west, Montgomery was beginning surrender negotiations with a delegation of Germans sent by Dönitz. “I kept them waiting for a few minutes, and then came out of my caravan and walked towards them,” recalled the Field Marshal. “They all saluted, under the Union Jack. It was a great moment.” Montgomery demanded the unconditional surrender of all German forces. “If you refuse,” he warned, “I shall go on with the battle.” WW2: When Britain stood (not quite) alone 4 May Dönitz accepted the terms laid out by Montgomery, who assembled the press corps and read the Instrument of Surrender applicable to all German forces in Holland, northwest Germany and Denmark. The ceasefire is set to take effect at 8am the next day. Montgomery then drafted his final message to his armies: “Let us embark on what lies ahead full of joy and optimism. We have won the German war. Let us now win the peace.” The first challenge of the peace is how to manage one and a half million German prisoners of war, and another million of their wounded comrades. “Germany surrendering in all directions,” wrote Noël Coward. “VE Day imminent.” 5 May At 8am, the ceasefire came into effect. “I’d been sitting in a ditch watching a farmhouse where Germans soldiers were walking around and we could have done them quite easily,” recalled Bob Francis, an SAS soldier. “But I didn’t want to hurt anybody and I certainly didn’t want to get hurt. The war all sort of fizzled out.” Not so in Czechoslovakia, where the Nazis showed no inclination to surrender. At midday, Radio Prague called on citizens to rise up against the German occupiers, but it would be another four days before liberation. 6 May In Reims, in northeastern France, a German delegation led by General Alfred Jodl arrived in the late afternoon to begin negotiations with General Dwight Eisenhower’s senior commanders in Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force about the terms of an unconditional surrender. 7 May After taking instructions from Dönitz, Jodl signed the terms of surrender at 2.41am: it would take effect at one minute past midnight the next day. A beaming Eisenhower and his staff posed for the cameras, with the commander-in-chief holding two gold pens in a ‘V for Victory’ salute. The Russians angrily demanded that a second surrender document be signed in their presence in Berlin. Churchill, however, seemed strangely underwhelmed. “The PM does not seem at all excited about the end of the war,” wrote his personal physician, Lord Moran, in his diary. 8 May “Thunderstorm in the night,” wrote Vere Hodgson in her diary. “No one slept much for excitement.” Dawn brought a change in the weather and Noël Coward “went wandering through the crowds in the hot sunshine. Everyone is good-humoured and cheerful”. Yet on his way to the House of Lords, Lord Moran noted “bread queues everywhere” – a reminder that while war in Europe had ended, rationing had not. Churchill lunched at Buckingham Palace while crowds gather outside, among them a correspondent from The Times: "Every other woman seemed to be wearing a rosette or a ribbon in her hair, and seen from above they by no means corroborated the gloomy report that London had become a place of tired-looking people wearing tired-looking clothes." In pictures: jubilant VE Day celebrations <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/GettyImages-615312612-d774b85.jpg" width="1024" height="432" alt="Winston Churchill appears on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on VE Day, together with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)" title="Winston Churchill with King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and the princesses on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day" /> The PM returned to Downing Street and, at 3pm, addressed the nation. Neither Lord Moran nor the peer next to him thought much of the speech, describing it as “tinny”, but Coward, listening on one of the loud speakers in London, branded it “a magnificent speech, simple and without boastfulness”. At 3.30pm, Churchill was given a rousing reception on entering the House of Commons and he in turn praised Parliament, calling it, “the strongest foundation for waging war that has ever been seen in the whole of our long history”. Why did the Second World War happen? There were similar scenes of jubilation in Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast, but it was London that hosted the biggest party. So vast were the crowds that it was impossible to enter Underground stations, so people walked, cycled or improvised. “Cars passed us with people riding on the hoods and the bonnets,” wrote Hodgson of her walk down Pall Mall. “Everyone was just letting themselves go!” By the time Churchill returned to the palace with his War Cabinet, the crowd was enormous. The king and queen, having already made one appearance – alongside the two princesses with the future Elizabeth II in her army uniform – reappeared, this time with a cigar-waving Churchill, prompting “a great outburst of cheering, which continued for at least five minutes... afterwards the crowd began community singing.” The PM’s next stop was Whitehall and, from the Ministry of Health balcony, he told the crowd below: “My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole.” The Royal Family, still on their balcony, were “looking enchanting” when Coward arrived in early evening. “We all roared ourselves hoarse,” he reported. “This is the greatest day in our history.” In Vere's flat, as in many homes, the party continued. She turned on the radio just as Churchill took a final bow at Whitehall. "Mr Churchill came out in his siren suit and conducted Land of Hope and Glory," she wrote. "What a lad! He was cheered to the echo. God bless him!" The ecstasy of the Allies: what happened on VE Day? On 8 May, the scenes of celebration witnessed in London were repeated around the world, even as the war continued against Japan In Paris, occupied during the war, there were salvoes of artillery and an address by General Charles de Gaulle. The correspondent for The Times described "beflagged streets filled with cheering people" and said that the partial blackout had finally been lifted. "All public monuments are floodlit, Paris is the City of Light again." The bells in Vatican City pealed, while in Brussels a final all-clear of the air raid sirens sounded. In Moscow, reported the Associated Press, "Russians swarmed through Red Square shouting 'Long Live Stalin' and 'Hurrah for Victory'." Across the Atlantic, New Yorkers gathered en masse in Times Square, dancing, singing and throwing torn up newspapers as a storm of celebratory confetti. Yet the mayor, Fiorello La Guardia – in a more sombre mood – asked people to return to work, saying: “Remain on the job as a token of respect and support for the men dying at this very moment in the Pacific.” Australians similarly felt the burden of the ongoing war, but still celebrated. The country heard of Germany’s surrender on the evening of 7 May, and, reported one newspaper, “those still in the city night clubs and theatres took up the revelry, cheering and yelling”. Even neutral countries saw scenes of jubilation, including in Sweden. Stockholm had a “carnival night” as exiled Danes and Norwegians danced on taxis, while in Iraq – the scene of heavy fighting in 1941 – parliament proclaimed five days of holiday to celebrate war’s end. What happened next... When US Marines fighting on the Pacific island of Okinawa were told of the German surrender, the response could be summed up as ‘so what?’ One of them, Eugene Sledge, remarked: “We were resigned only to the fact that the Japanese would fight to total extinction... Nazi Germany might as well have been on the Moon.” The British 14th Army, engaged in a similarly brutal campaign in Myanmar (Burma), echoed that sentiment in a terse communiqué on 8 May: "The war is over. Let us get on with the war." But the war in Europe was over, and the most urgent challenge was how to manage the estimated 11 million people displaced by six years of conflict. America and WW2: when, how and why did the US get involved, and why they didn’t enter sooner? It was a daunting task – made all the more difficult by the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the Soviet Union and their Western allies. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) had been formed to oversee the refugee crisis. With millions of ‘displaced persons’ needing to be resettled, a new type of battle was now underway in Europe. This content first appeared in the May 2020 edition of BBC History Revealed
Richard Overy describes the end of the Second World War, while Steve Humphries exhorts the wartime generation
Historian Richard Overy describes the situation in Britain and Europe as the Second World War came to an end. Meanwhile, we’re joined by TV producer Steve Humphries to talk about his new series Britain’s Greatest Generation, which contains interviews with surviving veterans of the conflict. A brief guide to VE Day