V-E Day celebration photo: Soldiers hold up the Stars and Stripes newspaper in celebration of the end of WWII in Europe May 8, 1945. (Photo by Spc. Tyrell Boyd)
This week marks the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, when Nazi Germany formally surrendered to Allied forces on May 8, 1945, bringing an end to World War II in Europe. While it signaled the collapse of Hitler’s regime and a hard-won victory across the European continent, it did not mark the end of the war globally—fighting in the Pacific would continue for several more months.
Still, V-E Day was a moment of profound relief, reflection and celebration, and it laid the foundation for the post-war world order.
To better understand the meaning and legacy of V-E Day, Professor Alan Allport, the Dr. Walter Montgomery and Marian Gruber Professor of History in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, offers his insight on what the day represented then, why it still matters today and how its impact continues to shape modern global affairs.
For any media who wish to schedule an interview with Allport, please reach out to Vanessa Marquette, media relations specialist, at vrmarque@syr.edu.
How people experienced V-E Day, May 8, 1945, depended enormously on where they were and what they were doing at that moment. For civilians on the home fronts in the United States and Great Britain, for instance, it was a moment of relief and celebration after years of worry and sacrifice, expressed through street parties and festivities.
For those in countries that had recently been occupied by the Axis powers, like France and Poland, there was of course also a sense of satisfaction and gratitude that family members and friends had survived, but this was tempered by knowledge of the enormous challenges that lay ahead in rebuilding such shattered societies.
For soldiers, sailors and airmen in Europe, relief was qualified by the knowledge that they might soon have to go to fight in the Pacific War against Japan, which (so far as anyone knew) might continue for one or two more years—and for those actually in the Pacific at that moment, the news from far-off Europe meant very little indeed!
The defeat of Nazi Germany and its fascist allies marked a watershed in modern world history. 1945 is the conventional starting point for thinking about the contemporary world. Many of the global institutions that govern our lives today—the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the International Criminal Court, NATO—were created either in 1945 or shortly afterwards.
The end of the Second World War marked the beginning of the end of European colonialism and the global dominance of European powers and ideas. It marked the beginning of the Cold War and the primacy of politicians in Washington, D.C., and Moscow over the statesmen of London, Paris and Berlin who had once governed the world.
Europe was shattered by the physical and human destruction of World War II. On V-E Day, many of its great cities lay in ruins and its scattered and hungry people seemed to face a grim future.
Yet within a few years Europe west of the Iron Curtain had already enjoyed a resurgence in wealth and security thanks to a massive reconstruction effort aided in part by the United States, which had as much to gain from a stable and democratic Europe as the Europeans themselves.
Germany, in particular, went through a political transformation to become the peaceful and prosperous heart of a new continent linked by pan-national institutions like the European Union.
Victory in World War II was above all an allied coalition effort. No single power had a monopoly on valor or military effectiveness. Operations like the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944, which helped to seal the fate of Hitler’s Third Reich, would not have been possible without the combined contributions of dozens of countries.
The fatal flaw of the so-called “Axis Alliance” was that it was an alliance in name only, with no effective cooperation between its different members. The Allied Alliance was a true alliance of partners that trusted one another and worked together effectively in a common cause. The United States benefited enormously from its cooperation with its wartime partners and remains most prosperous and powerful when it has international colleagues it can rely on and whom in turn can rely on it.
