V-E Day: 70 Years Ago Today

Soldiers raise the Soviet flag near the Brandenburg Gate
upon Berlin's surrender on May 2. Photo obtained from Wikipedia.

There are seminal dates that are forever associated with events in World War II. December 7 will always be, in Franklin Roosevelt's words, "a day that will live in infamy", as it was the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into the war in 1941. June 6, the day General Dwight D. Eisenhower told his troops to "embark on the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months" on the beaches of Normandy, France.

May 8 may not be as well-known in the minds of popular American culture, but is an important day nonetheless: Victory in Europe Day, the day that Germany surrendered and World War II ended in Europe.

Of course, this day is somewhat deceptive. There were several steps that led up to the surrender. By the middle of April 1945 the Red Army had completely surrounded Berlin, Germany's capital. Within two weeks of heavy bombardment and bloody street to street fighting Berlin was in ruins, and on April 30, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, along with many of the Nazi Party's highest officials including Joseph Goebbels.

Hitler had bequeathed the leadership of what remained of Germany to Admiral Karl Doenitz, the head of the German Navy, slighting Hermann Goering, head of the German Luftwaffe and Hitler's next in line whom Hitler had practically disowned in the war's final months.

Fighting would continue in pockets around Germany for another week, as many of the remaining combat units were SS fanatics clinging to Hitler's last order to not surrender. On May 2 Berlin officially surrendered to the Soviets, leading to surrenders in other small pockets of resistance. By May 5 Soviet troops had reached the outskirts of Prague, capital of then-Czechoslovakia and the last pocket of organized German resistance.

The formal declaration of surrender was signed on May 7 in Reims, France on behalf of the German Army. General Alfred Jodl, head of the German High Command, signed for the Germans. This was repeated in Berlin on May 8 for a very important reason.

The Big Three, the US, Great Britain and Soviet Union, had agreed to only accept Germany's unconditional surrender as one unified power, and had agreed to a draft of the surrender. However, the copy signed in Reims was slightly different than the agreed-upon draft, and the Soviet representative, General Susloparov, was apparently not authorized to accept the surrender on behalf of the Soviet Union, hence two ceremonies and why May 8, not the day before, is considered the official V-E Day.

However, fighting continued in Prague until May 11, which would seem to indicate that May 11 is the 'real' end to the war in Europe. Whatever the real date may be, V-E Day should be remembered as the day that the greatest conflict Europe has ever seen came to an end.

Thank you for reading, and have a pleasant day.

(Events and dates sourced from "Campaigns of World War II Day By Day" by Chris Bishop and Chris McNab)