May 8, 1945.

President Truman announces the unconditional surrender of Germany.

The madness of National Socialism ends, save for the cleanup of war criminals.

I remember that day. I was in third grade. There was big-time celebration. We were hopeful that the War in the Pacific would soon be won; my uncle had been captured and was in a Japanese POW camp, from which he was freed not too long after VE Day.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
I remember that day. I was in third grade. There was big-time celebration.

My grandmother was in the crowd in Philadelphia. Not "New York" in scale, but a massive, continuing celebration. Servicemen/women, ordinary folks, workers, young, old, black, white, you name it.

I think about our country's reaction to Pearl Harbor, the four years that followed, the ultimate victory in two theaters, and wonder if we could ever hope to replicate those accomplishments today.

Philly on VE-Day:

Amazing what this country did in less than four years with the technology of the day.

I was only 7 years old. My parents were jubilant, though.

flashguy

I was listening to a historian talk yesterday about how Germany had hoped to negotiate or stalemate the US and Britain into peace so Hitler could focus military operations towards Russia.

One day I will tell my daughter about when I was in Afghanistan when bin laden was killed. Long story short, it was a great sigh of relief for us at that time.

I watched this fascinating video from Mark Felton yesterday. It explains why the USSR, and now Russia, have May 9 as "Victory Day"--Stalin demanded a do-over.
One of the major aspects previously unknown to me: the Germans used the time they gained by stalling on the surrender to evacuate a couple of million Germans from the Baltic states so they would not fall captive to the Soviets.

Through shear coincidence, I was in downtown Munich on May 8th, 1995. 50th anniversary of V.E. day. They were celebrating "50 Jahre Freiheit" (50 years of freedom).