Pod Insights Short History Of... VE Day About this episode Victory in Europe Day brought the curtain down on a horrific conflict that decimated a continent and upended the world. But the price of victory over fascism was impossibly high. Many millions had been killed, and vast areas of Europe had been all but destroyed. VE Day signalled the end of Nazi Germany, and yet the war on the Pacific Front was still raging, and Stalin was already tightening his grip on what would become the Eastern Bloc. Meanwhile, many of the countries that had joined the fight against Hitler were left broken, bankrupt, and lawless.
So, what did it take for the war to finally end? How was news of Germany’s surrender spread and received? And amid the devastation, how do the continent’s citizens celebrate and look forward with optimism?
This is a Short History Of VE Day.
A Noiser production, written by Martin McNamara. With thanks to Keith Lowe, a British historian and writer specialising in the Second World War.
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If you want to know more about how the Allies turned the tide on the war in Europe and began the final push towards victory, check out D-Day: The Tide Turns - another podcast from the Noiser network. Search ‘D-Day: The Tide Turns’ in your podcast app and hit follow.
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1:05 Speaker 02 It's early morning, Tuesday the 8th of May 1945.
1:11 Speaker 02 In a modest home in a suburb of South London, a young man is finishing a mug of tea in the kitchen, where his mother is humming along to a breezy tune on the wireless.
1:21 Speaker 02 She brings out another batch of scones from the oven.
1:25 Speaker 02 Every surface is covered with plates of sandwiches, cakes and trifles, made from the ration coupons she has been saving. He's getting under her feet, so she shoes him at the door.
1:41 Speaker 02 There, a neighbour waves him over to help him bring his dining room furniture into position, extending the long line of tables and chairs that's already snaking down the middle of the road.
1:56 Speaker 02 The community have been creative with their decorations, repurposing every red, white, and blue item for the day.
2:04 Speaker 02 The elderly are brought out to sit on deck chairs, and children tear around between them, wearing party hats made of old newspapers. It feels like the whole street is out here. All, except the poor lady at number fifty-one, who lost her husband and both sons to the fighting. She hasn't even opened her curtains, but everyone knows better than to invite her to today's VE Day celebrations.
2:32 Speaker 02 Soon, the preparations are complete. The young man finds a seat with his mates and tucks into Spam sandwiches and a hearty slab of Victoria's sponge, washing it all down with a tin mug of lemonade.
2:47 Speaker 02 After an hour, he and the boys take the bus into town.
2:52 Speaker 02 Looking down from the top deck, he passes whole streets reduced to rubble by waves of aerial bombings, before eventually arriving in the West End.
3:04 Speaker 02 Piccadilly is crowded with civilians and uniformed men and women. And when he disembarks at the Mall, the party is in full swing. Here, a young woman is playing the accordion, while dancing couples spin around joyfully.
3:21 Speaker 02 Closer to Buckingham Palace, the crowd is so thick it's hard to move.
3:27 Speaker 02 Now, the jubilation is interrupted by crackling from loudspeakers attached to lampposts. Winston Churchill is about to make a broadcast.
3:42 Speaker 02 An extraordinary hush descends across the crowd.
3:47 Speaker 02 The Prime Minister talks to a nation exhausted by six long years of war, telling them to take this brief moment to rejoice before the toil and effort that lies ahead.
4:00 Speaker 02 When the speech ends, the cheers around him are deafening.
4:05 Speaker 02 But a little later, a rumor goes around, and everyone presses towards the palace. People cling precariously to the stately monument to Queen Victoria, and the royal balcony of the palace itself has been draped with burgundy and gold.
4:21 Speaker 02 Lines of police watch with benign tolerance as a rowdy demand goes up: "We want the King."
4:30 Speaker 02 The young man joins in.
4:33 Speaker 02 Like many Londoners, it means something to him that the royals stayed in the city for the duration of the war, sharing the dangers of the Blitz with the rest of them. And now, here they are.
4:46 Speaker 02 Led by King George VI, the family step out onto the balcony. There is an almighty roar from the crowd, followed by a spontaneous heartfelt rendition of the National Anthem.
5:01 Speaker 02 After nearly six terrifying years, the war in Europe is finally over.
5:20 Speaker 02 Victory in Europe Day brought the curtain down on an horrific conflict that decimated a continent and upended the world.
5:29 Speaker 02 Hitler's vision of a Third Reich that would last for a thousand years now lay in ruins, buried under the rubble of Berlin.
5:39 Speaker 02 But the price of victory over fascism was impossibly high. Many millions had been killed, and vast areas of Europe had been all but destroyed. And though VE Day signaled the end of Nazi Germany, the war on the Pacific Front was still raging. Stalin was already tightening his grip on what would become the Eastern Bloc, and many of the countries which had joined the fight against Hitler were left broken, bankrupt, and lawless.
6:10 Speaker 02 But what did it take for the end to finally come? How was the news of Germany's surrender spread and received? And amid the devastation left behind, how do the continent's citizens celebrate and look forward with optimism? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is A Short History of VE Day.
6:42 Speaker 02 In the early hours of Monday, the 5th of June, 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower is facing the hardest decision of his life.
6:53 Speaker 02 The war has been raging since 1939. It's four years since the British were forced to make a humiliating retreat from mainland Europe at Dunkirk. And now Eisenhower is the supreme commander of the mission to finally return to Western Europe and liberate it from the Nazis.
7:12 Speaker 02 For the past year, he and his command team have painstakingly planned Operation Overlord, secretly amassing an army of 1 million men along England's southern coastline. It's the largest combined air, sea, and land invasion force ever created.
7:32 Speaker 02 At his headquarters in Southwark House, just north of Portsmouth, Eisenhower has been working around the clock towards this moment, the planned launch date of the operation.
7:43 Speaker 02 Keith Lowe is a British historian and writer specializing in the Second World War.
7:49 Speaker 03 It was a really huge operation. The sheer number of ships involved, hundreds of ships involved, thousands of troops landing on the first day. It was a logistical enterprise to get this going. I mean, it took months and months of planning.
8:11 Speaker 02 As part of Overlord, the Allies have devised elaborate false invasion plans, and deliberately leaked them to the Nazis, using bogus radio signals and double agents. Dummy landing crafts, inflatable tanks, and fake divisions have also been amassed to support the hoax that the invasion will occur at Pas de Calais, the narrowest point between Britain and France.
8:36 Speaker 03 It took loss of deception, they were building up a sort of pretend tank parks in Kent to pretend that they were going across to Calais instead of to Normandy. And it had to be thought through to the very last detail because anything could go wrong, and if it had gone wrong, that would have been it. They wouldn't have been able to attempt to do it again for months and months and months afterwards.
9:01 Speaker 02 However, what's causing Eisenhower such a headache is that right now, there are strong winds and rough seas across the English Channel.
9:10 Speaker 02 It's one thing to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers out to land on the fiercely defended beaches of Normandy, but making them do it in six-foot waves and near horizontal rain is entirely another. So, with a heavy heart, he postpones the operation.
9:29 Speaker 02 But there's still no time to waste. The longer they delay, the more likely it is that the Germans will learn about the real offensive. And when they do that, the inevitable redeployment of their forces could cost the lives of countless soldiers.
9:46 Speaker 02 Meeting now with his chief meteorologist, Eisenhower learns that there should be a small window of good weather over the English Channel tomorrow.
9:56 Speaker 03 So they're pinning all their hopes on a weather report saying it's going to be a bit better on the 6th. But it's a leap of faith, in some ways, that it is going to be better.
10:07 Speaker 02 If the forecast is right, the Allies have an opportunity to carry out the first crucial stage of their mission: landing a major military force on the beaches of Normandy and securing a foothold in Nazi-occupied Europe.
10:21 Speaker 02 Eisenhower makes his decision. They will launch the invasion tomorrow, Tuesday, the 6th of June.
10:33 Speaker 02 "The order is signed and distributed to the soldiers, sailors and airmen from the Allied Nations Expeditionary Force, numbering nearly one hundred and sixty thousand men. In it, the Supreme Commander expresses his confidence in their devotion to duty and skill in battle, telling them: 'We will accept nothing less than full victory.' Privately, though, he is less confident. In his pocket is a speech he has prepared, in which he accepts full responsibility if the operation is a failure. After all, he knows better than anyone what they're up against."
11:13 Speaker 02 The Nazis have created what they label "The Atlantic Wall", a strategic network of defenses that runs along the coastline of occupied Western Europe, from Norway down to the border with Spain.
11:26 Speaker 02 Deemed to be largely impenetrable, it includes gun emplacements, concrete bunkers manned with machine gun units and mortars, as well as beaches lined with minefields and barbed wire.
11:45 Speaker 02 In the early hours of Tuesday, tons of military equipment and thousands of men are dropped behind the enemy lines.
11:54 Speaker 02 Though the darkness means that many of the paratroopers land in the wrong locations, those who arrive successfully set about their task of disrupting the German army's transport links.
12:06 Speaker 02 A few hours later, the first wave of Eisenhower's massive armada approaches five beaches along the Normandy coastline. As the troops, tanks and artillery approach in more than four thousand destroyers, cruisers, barges and landing craft, the early morning skies above them darken with an equally staggering number of aircraft. The bombers and fighter planes set about the aerial bombardment of the gun emplacements and concrete defenses of the Nazi-held beaches.
12:39 Speaker 02 The prediction of better weather proves correct. But even with calmer seas, it's no pleasure cruise. The men crowded on the landing crafts huddle down to escape the spray as the vessels power over the waves. The combination of terror and nauseating motion causes many of them to vomit. But as the beaches come into view, that is the least of their concerns.
13:08 Speaker 02 As soon as they're within range, the Germans open fire with artillery and mortar attacks. And with the deafening chaos unfolding, the Allies now face a fresh dilemma.
13:22 Speaker 02 Having misjudged the tides, some vessels are unable to get as close to the shore as planned. The unlucky men have no choice but to jump into the freezing water and wade the last yards to the shoreline.
13:37 Speaker 02 Waterproof tanks and machinery specially designed to deal with minefields and barbed wire are also in the water, struggling toward dry land.
13:47 Speaker 03 Even in good weather, landing on a beach with defences ranged against you is extremely dangerous because you're coming out of the sea, so you're moving really slowly, you're sort of sitting ducks for the defences to aim at. And the defences are formidable, so you've got artillery ranged along the beach, you've got machine gun nests everywhere, and there are often several layers of these defences. So it's not just getting onto the beach, it's also getting off the beach afterwards.
14:18 Speaker 02 The German bullets come thick and fast, as do the shells and mortars. Many of the boats take direct hits, while some of the precious tanks sink in the shallow water and have to be abandoned, leaving some troops without the mechanized support they so desperately need.
14:39 Speaker 02 As well as viciously confronting the waterborne assault, the Germans put up stiff resistance against the aerial bombardment from Allied planes. But though the first wave of troops suffer enormous casualties on D-Day, their determination to secure crucial footholds on the beaches means that subsequent waves experience fewer losses. The invading force keeps coming, and more and more men and machinery now make it to land. The elaborate deception to convince the enemy that the invasion is happening elsewhere has paid off. The Germans are wrong-footed.
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15:34 Speaker 05 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
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16:07 Speaker 02 The celebrated Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is in overall charge of the Atlantic War. At the time of the invasion, he is at home in a small town outside Stuttgart celebrating his wife's 50th birthday. By the time the party is over, Hitler's coastal defenses have been decisively breached, and 150,000 Allied soldiers have landed in Normandy.
16:33 Speaker 02 And though 4,000 Allied troops lay dead and 6,000 are wounded, the price of the invasion is considerably lower than Eisenhower had feared. For the moment, at least, the worst-case-scenario speech can stay in his pocket.
16:51 Speaker 02 Una semana después de D-Day, el líder francés Charles de Gaulle, quien había pasado la guerra exiliado en Londres, se encuentra en Normandia. Antes de terminar el mes, los Aliados toman el cruce del puerto de Cherbourg. Pero, a pesar de lo terribles que fueron, los Aliados en la pared atlántica solo estaban enfrentando un cuarto de la máquina militar alemana. El resto había sido desplazado a la frontera del este.
17:21 Speaker 02 Habiendo coordinado con los Aliados sobre su timing, en el otro lado de Europa, Stalin y sus generalistas están preparando su propio ataque contra los nazis. Los combates de resistencia respaldados por el Soviético en los países ocupados por los nazis han llevado a miles de ataques de sabotaje en los límites de transporte. El 22 de junio de 1944, menos de dos semanas después de D-Day, las fuerzas soviéticas lanzaron su propia ofensiva importante en la frontera del este. La operación Begration, como se conoce, empuja a los alemanes hacia atrás desde Belarus y otros puntos clave.
18:00 Speaker 02 En 1941, las fuerzas alemanas y del Axis invadiendo la Unión Soviética se encontraron con un ejército rojo que no estaba preparado y no estaba equipado. En los tres años desde entonces, los generalistas rusos han aprendido cómo estrategizar y efectivamente movilizar la vasta fuerza militar a su disposición. Ahora, en solo tres semanas, los rusos aplastan la línea de frente alemana e inciden en asesinatos asombrosos.
18:27 Speaker 02 De los 800.000 hombres armados alemanes atacados, aproximadamente la mitad están muertos, heridos o llevados a la cárcel.
18:37 Speaker 03 Los rusos, los soviéticos, lanzaron una cosa llamada operación Begration, que, para ser honesto, pone D-Day en la sombra. Quiero decir, hace que D-Day parezca una pinprick de un ataque en comparación con lo que estaban haciendo. Tenían más de dos millones de soldados soviéticos atacando a lo largo de una frontera de aproximadamente 2.000 kilómetros. Así que, no importa cuán importante fue D-Day, y fue importante crear esta segunda frontera en Europa, no es nada en comparación con la escala de la guerra que está sucediendo en Ucrania y Belarus y los estados balticos. Allí fue donde la guerra realmente fue ganada o perdida.
19:19 Speaker 02 By the summer of 1944, most rational Germans know the war is lost, including many of its military leaders. But Hitler will not tolerate any talk of surrender. He surrounds himself with loyal Nazis and sycophants, who play along with his fantasies of final victory. So, a group of generals decide to take matters into their own hands. If they can eliminate Hitler from the equation, they believe they can form a new government and make an honorable peace with the Allies. On the 20th of July 1944, Hitler is at Wolf's Lair, his headquarters for the eastern front of the war, in what is now Poland.
20:04 Speaker 02 An officer by the name of Count Claus Stauffenberg enters the conference room to join a meeting between the Nazi leader and some military aides. He sets down his briefcase and takes a seat. But once the meeting is in full swing, he slips out of the room. What those left behind don't know is that Stauffenberg has been tasked with Hitler's assassination, and that the briefcase he has left behind contains a bomb. By the time the explosion occurs, the case has been moved to the other end of the room. So although the explosion kills three officers and a stenographer, Hitler himself escapes with minor injuries. But though he survives,
20:48 Speaker 02 the lack of faith in him is only growing.
20:53 Speaker 03 I think the feeling amongst Germany generally was that they knew that the war was coming to an end. It's a real tragedy that they didn't do what they should have done, which was surrender. In the last three months of the war, over a million German soldiers were killed, just in the last three months. So those people could have been saved if they had had somebody sensible in charge who saw the writing on the wall and stopped it. But you know, Hitler had this kind of death wish. He was determined to act as this sort of romantic hero and go down fighting, he thought. But he wanted to take the whole country down with him.
21:35 Speaker 02 Back on the western front, while Allied forces are pushing out from their Normandy stronghold, Eisenhower has no plans to retake occupied Paris at this time. If the planned recapture of Nazi-held France is to succeed, he knows he can't currently afford to get bogged down, potentially for months, with street-to-street fighting to clear the French capital.
21:59 Speaker 03 Taking a city is really, it's a massive undertaking and involves a lot of violence, a lot of destruction, and more importantly, it's slow. And what the Allies want to do is they just want to keep the Germans on the back foot, drive them all the way back into Belgium. So going into Paris doesn't really make sense.
22:18 Speaker 02 However, French Communist resistance fighters have other ideas. As do some of the French generals who have returned to France with their divisions after four years of exile.
22:31 Speaker 03 The local Communist resistance in Paris announce an immediate uprising, so the people of Paris rise up, but unfortunately they just don't have the resources to take on the Germans properly. So it could have, it could have ended up being a bloodbath. So some of the French generals who were alongside Eisenhower in the Allies were really worried about this and didn't want to leave Paris to its fate.
23:02 Speaker 02 Now Eisenhower feels he has no choice but to divert armored and infantry divisions into the city.
23:09 Speaker 02 The way Hitler sees it, if he can't keep Paris, then no one can. He orders his commander on the ground there, General Dietrich von Koltitz, to destroy the city, rather than let it fall into Allied hands.
23:22 Speaker 02 But recognizing the futility of the order, Koltitz disobeys and agrees a truce. Within a week, the Allies are in control of the city.
23:34 Speaker 02 In late August, despite fears that German snipers are still operating from the surrounding buildings, de Gaulle leads a victory-prayed down the Champs-Elysees.
23:45 Speaker 02 Beyond the city's borders, the Allies are forcing the Germans back with relentless air and land assaults. In December 1944, Hitler orders the launch of what will become the Nazis' final major offensive: The Battle of the Bulge, in the Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg.
24:05 Speaker 02 A quarter of a million German troops push through the Allied lines, creating a bulge in the front. Bold, but desperate, the offensive ultimately fails by January 1945, as the Allies regroup and push the Germans back.
24:27 Speaker 02 And as the Allies and Soviets advance towards Berlin, they discover evidence of the full horror of what Hitler called "his final solution".
24:38 Speaker 02 In the last days of January, the soldiers from the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front arrive at the gates of Auschwitz in southern Poland.
24:48 Speaker 02 The Nazi officers in charge of the camp have fled, after sending an estimated 60,000 prisoners on forced marches to other locations. Unfathomable numbers of corpses are found in mass graves. But thousands more have been left behind, alive.
25:08 Speaker 02 Many of them dying and all of them horribly emaciated. Those found in the concentration camps are treated by the liberating armies to the best of their abilities, though ultimately, many are too weak to survive.
25:28 Speaker 02 By the end of the war, millions of Jews and other specific ethnic, political, and social groups have been systematically murdered in the camps. Twenty major sites, like Auschwitz, will eventually be liberated, along with hundreds of sub-camps, including those reserved just for women and children. But much of that is still to come.
25:53 Speaker 02 By February 1945, German forces on the Western Front are now in retreat, back into their homeland, as US troops cross the Rhine. Meanwhile, Soviet forces are pushing further in from the east. They have Berlin in their sights.
26:11 Speaker 02 American air force bombers and fighters target the German capital throughout the spring.
26:17 Speaker 02 Starving and traumatized, the city's inhabitants are struggling to survive among the ruins of this once beautiful city. But they also know that with the imminent arrival of the Red Army, the worst is yet to come.
26:32 Speaker 02 It's only been a few years since the German forces invaded Russian soil, slaughtering millions of men, women, and children, and wiping out entire villages. These atrocities, the Germans know, will not be forgotten.
26:51 Speaker 02 A slogan starts appearing on walls around Berlin. "Enjoy the war," it reads, "because the peace will be terrible."
27:01 Speaker 02 While his enemies close in, the man who brought about all of this horror is holed up in a bomb-proof bunker fifteen meters under the Reich Chancellery.
27:11 Speaker 02 On Wednesday the 25th of April, the first Red Army soldiers arrive in the city. And though they wreak a revenge every bit as terrible as the Berliners feared, as they move through the capital, each of them is on the hunt for the biggest prize.
27:34 Speaker 02 It is Monday the 30th of April 1945, and Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler's private secretary, is staggering around the bunker's extensive wine cellar. It's only the morning, but Bormann has been living in a kind of twilight zone, with no distinction between day and night.
27:53 Speaker 02 Drunk and bleary-eyed, he selects a wine at random, squints at the label, then pulls the cork, and drinks straight from the bottle, as he makes his way through the narrow corridors back towards his office.
28:07 Speaker 02 Turning a corner, he bumps into a jittery junior officer who informs him that the Soviets have now reached nearby Potstammerplatz. Bormann merely shrugs at the news.
28:19 Speaker 02 But as he does so, the younger man startles at the sound of another muffled explosion above their heads. Even the layers of concrete can't silence the artillery and machine gun exchanges outside.
28:33 Speaker 02 Carrying on his weaving journey, Bormann passes the open door of a meeting room, where a gramophone plays decadent American jazz to a motley assembly of half-dressed officers and secretaries.
28:45 Speaker 02 Like Bormann, they're surviving on little more than drugs and alcohol, numbing themselves to the final and terrible fate coming for them.
28:55 Speaker 02 Further down the corridor, in the war room, he finds Hitler is with his generals. For once, he is not ranting or drawing up deluded battle plans, directing the movements of units that no longer exist.
29:08 Speaker 02 Yesterday, Bormann and Joseph Goebbels were witnesses, as Hitler married his lover, Eva Braun. And now it seems Hitler is finally accepting the truth. The war is lost.
29:24 Speaker 02 Bormann now trails Hitler, as he goes from room to room, saying goodbye to staff. He is in a terrible state, mentally and physically, but he tries to appear calm and smiling for his devotees, many of whom are crying.
29:40 Speaker 02 He frees them from their oath of service, meaning they can try to escape if they choose to.
29:47 Speaker 02 Now Hitler addresses some final administrative tasks, like naming his successors. While Goebbels is named chancellor, Bormann is to lead the Nazi Party. But it's a hollow prize. There's little of the Nazi Party left to lead.
30:06 Speaker 02 Around 3:00 in the afternoon, Hitler retreats into his inner sanctum with his new wife, a handgun, and some cyanide.
30:19 Speaker 02 The door closes, and Borman and other staff stand quietly outside, waiting for the gunshot.
30:28 Speaker 02 When it comes, Borman enters.
30:34 Speaker 02 The newlyweds have both used the deadly pills, but Hitler has made doubly sure with a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
30:43 Speaker 02 Overseeing the grisly job of bringing the corpses to the surface falls to Borman and Goebbels. Emerging into daylight, and with the tanks of the Red Army just streets away, Borman helps drag the bodies to a shallow bomb crater. There, they are doused in petrol and cremated.
31:03 Speaker 02 As the smoke billows, Borman nods in grim approval. The Russians will not have the satisfaction of parading or defiling the corpse of their leader.
31:23 Speaker 02 The next day, after a futile attempt to reach out to the Russians, Goebbels and his wife take their own lives, although not before they have murdered their six children with cyanide.
31:36 Speaker 02 Borman, disguised as a low-ranking soldier, flees the bunker with some of the officers and secretaries.
31:45 Speaker 02 For decades, Nazi hunters believe that he escaped to start a new life, probably in South America. But years later, DNA testing will prove that a corpse found in a shallow grave in the city is his.
32:00 Speaker 02 When news of Hitler's death is announced, the Nazi propaganda machine has one last lie to inflict on the German people: that Hitler died bravely fighting the Bolsheviks.
32:13 Speaker 02 Some of Hitler's more fervent Nazi officers urge Admiral Dönitz, named by Hitler as the new head of state, to open a new offensive. But Dönitz knows that it's much too late for that. He orders his negotiator, General Alfred Yodel, to open talks with Eisenhower on the complete and total surrender of Germany to the Allies.
32:36 Speaker 03 There were a whole series of different surrenders. So the Germans in Italy surrendered on the 2nd of May at Casserta. And then in North-West Europe, there was another surrender at Lunenburgheath in the North-West. And then in the South-West, the following day, on the 5th, there was a surrender to the Americans. And what all these separate little, sort of mini-surrenders have in common is that they're all surrenders to the Western Allies. Because the Germans don't mind surrendering to the West, but the last thing they want to do is have any kind of surrender in place with the Soviets, because they're terrified of them.
33:16 Speaker 02 Though the German generals believe that the Allies will treat them, their soldiers and citizens, respectfully and in accordance with the accepted rules of war, they have no such expectations of the vengeful Soviets. As such, the Germans tried to persuade the Allies to accept their surrender while allowing them to continue fighting the Russians.
33:38 Speaker 03 Eisenhower recognized that this was a deliberate attempt to try and drive a wedge between the West and the Soviets. So he wasn't going to have any of it. He told them in no uncertain terms that they had to surrender to everybody, all at the same time, west and east. And if they didn't, then the whole deal was off and we'd start bombing them again.
33:59 Speaker 02 In the early hours of May the 7th, the negotiator Yodel receives a message from Dönitz. These to accept Eisenhower's conditions.
34:09 Speaker 02 A small, German contingent led by Yodel drives the short distance from their hotel to the Supreme Commander's HQ.
34:18 Speaker 02 In front of the world's media, the historic moment takes place in a temporary war room in a converted school in Reims, northeastern France. Every aspect is meticulously planned.
34:32 Speaker 02 The three German generals sit opposite Allied representatives at a large conference table. But it's decided in advance that as Eisenhower is a higher rank than Yodel, it is more appropriate for him to wait in the next room.
34:49 Speaker 02 In the early hours of the morning, a document confirming the total surrender of Germany is signed. Three further declarations of surrender are then ratified, one each for Great Britain, Russia, and France.
35:06 Speaker 02 When it's all done, Eisenhower sends a message to the combined chiefs of staff. "The mission of this Allied force, is said simply, was fulfilled at 02:41 local time, May 7, 1945."
35:22 Speaker 02 And with that, victory in Europe has been achieved for the Allies.
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35:46 Speaker 05 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
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36:20 Speaker 02 Somewhat curiously, the Allies now make a hash of telling the world the good news.
36:26 Speaker 02 Eisenhower's press people are eager to relay this momentous story to all media outlets immediately. However, there is a diplomatic fly in the ointment.
36:37 Speaker 02 Stalin doesn't trust his Western allies any more than they trust him. The Reims surrender includes all of Germany's war efforts, including the conflict against the Red Army. But Stalin insists on another surrender document for Russia, signed symbolically by German officers in Berlin. Then, and only then, will he allow the announcement of surrender. In the meantime, though war in Europe has officially ceased, there are still soldiers out there who haven't got the message.
37:17 Speaker 02 It is close to midday, on Monday the 7th of May, in a family apartment in the center of Amsterdam.
37:25 Speaker 02 A teenage girl is rifling through the near-empty cupboards in the kitchen, while her younger sisters sob at her feet, crying from hunger.
37:34 Speaker 02 But there's nothing here. All she can give her little sisters are the same promises as before. There will be food, very soon, even cakes and sweets and fruit. She is certain of it. Because change is on the way.
37:50 Speaker 02 A few days earlier, Nazi forces in the Netherlands surrendered. But in Amsterdam, there are still German soldiers everywhere. Needing some fresh air on this warm day, she opens the fourth-floor window and looks onto Damme Square. But her breath catches in her throat. A joyous, heaving crowd of citizens is gathering outside, throwing flowers and hugging each other.
38:20 Speaker 02 The teenager runs to ask her father what's going on, but just then, a neighbor rushes in. Frenzied, he explains that he's been monitoring German radio. Berlin has announced the total cessation of war in Europe.
38:35 Speaker 02 The young woman reels. She has lived her entire adolescence under the boot heel of the Third Reich, once watching helplessly as other neighbors were dragged from their homes and thrown into the backs of trucks, never to be seen again.
38:50 Speaker 02 She remembers the Nazis stealing their crops to feed German homes, thousands starved to death while others resorted to eating tulip bulbs. If it truly is all over, she wants to celebrate.
39:08 Speaker 02 While the adults talk, she sneaks out. Moments later, she's found her friends in the crowd, joining in as they sing, embrace, and share bottles of wine.
39:19 Speaker 02 What no one notices is that, standing at the open windows of the Grued Club on the corner of the square, are German soldiers, training their guns on the crowd.
39:30 Speaker 02 Either they haven't got the message about the total surrender yet, or they just don't care. When they open fire, the war-hardened revelers recognize the deadly rattle immediately and run for their lives.
39:45 Speaker 02 As the young woman sprints for cover, one couple, who had been dancing just a yard away, are caught in the hail of bullets and fall.
39:54 Speaker 02 The teenager makes it to an alleyway that's now packed with others seeking refuge, looking out in horror at the square, just as returning fire breaks out from the direction of the royal palace.
40:05 Speaker 02 The square is deserted now, except for the dead and injured.
40:12 Speaker 02 Eventually, Dutch police and resistance fighters negotiate a compromise. The German soldiers are disarmed, then escorted out of the building and transported away. As soon as it's safe, the young woman runs back to her flat. Breathless and traumatized, she collapses into the arms of her frantic parents, knowing just how close she came to losing her life in this final, senseless, murderous act from an utterly defeated force.
40:51 Speaker 03 Eventually, their hand was kind of forced by the Germans themselves announcing that this ceasefire was taking place. Because, of course, they've got to announce it over the radio to stop their own forces from carrying on fighting. They've got to get them to stop somewhere, they've got to know that the end of the war is coming. So it gets announced on German radio, and then that's sort of on the afternoon of the 7th. And of course, once it's been announced on German radio, there's no keeping the news back.
41:23 Speaker 02 Though Stalin's conditions have not yet been met, with the surrender now broadcast by the Germans, the embargo is broken.
41:32 Speaker 02 The news goes out on the wires across Europe and around the world. The BBC announces that tomorrow, Tuesday the 8th of May, will be Victory in Europe Day and a national holiday.
41:45 Speaker 02 Many British people start celebrating early, filling the pubs, building bonfires, and burning effigies of Adolf Hitler. On VE Day, in towns and villages and cities across Britain, there are street parties and spontaneous celebrations.
42:01 Speaker 02 Church bells ring out, and back-to-back remembrance services are held to cope with the high number of attendees. Across free Europe, the scenes of joy are repeated. But while war in Europe is officially over, there is still the Pacific front of the conflict.
42:28 Speaker 02 Alongside their allies, American troops, still reeling from the recent death of their wartime president Roosevelt, are still fighting Japan.
42:37 Speaker 02 The US generals fear that this front of the war could continue for another two years. However, 15,000 police officers are drafted in to deal with the jubilant crowd of around half a million people that fills Times Square in New York.
42:52 Speaker 02 In Halifax, Canada, riots break out among the large concentration of military personnel stationed there, as men break into closed liquor stores to fuel their celebrations. In Australia, the war with Japan is nearer to home, and festivities in its towns and cities are muted.
43:12 Speaker 02 The Sydney Morning Herald seems to capture the mood of the nation when it poses the question: "Since when has it been customary to celebrate victory halfway through a contest?"
43:24 Speaker 02 Across Europe, allied and Russian troops mark the day as best they can, but not everyone is in a party mood.
43:34 Speaker 03 The soldiers wanted to celebrate just like everybody else, of course they did, but they can't just go out onto the streets like the civilians could. You know, most of them are still on duty, they're often confined to their barracks or their airfields. Lots of them were also quite resentful, not only about the fact that they weren't allowed to celebrate in the way that they wanted to, but also about what they'd been forced to go through over the last five or six years. I mean, they'd had to give up some of the most important formative years of their lives in order to fight this horrible war. I used to be friends with an old French fighter pilot, his name was Pierre Klostermann. He flew Spitfires for the RAF during the war.
44:15 Speaker 03 And he told me that in his airfield, the atmosphere on VE Day was downright gloomy. They couldn't really go out, so they all sat around in the mess and they were listening to the BBC where they were hearing stories about all the celebrations going on in Trafalgar Square. And they were so cross that eventually one of them just threw a beer bottle at the radio and broke it, and then they all just went to bed.
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45:34 Speaker 02 On the 8th of May, Stalin gets his surrender signing ceremony in Berlin. The Soviet Union holds its official Day of Victory celebrations on the 9th, and Russia still marks the end of the war on that day. The Soviets have lost an estimated 30 million soldiers and citizens, more than any other nation. It has seen its great cities of Stalingrad and Leningrad left in ruins. Many Russians are too shell-shocked and exhausted for jubilation. However, in Moscow, a city that almost fell to the Nazis, city folk crowd into Red Square to dance, drink and celebrate to the sounds of fireworks and cannon fire.
46:17 Speaker 02 In a speech broadcast on the radio, Stalin speaks of the great banner of freedom that now will fly over Europe. For the long-suffering citizens of the countries to the east of Europe, the reaction to the end of the war is relief tempered with new concerns. They may now be liberated from the Nazis, but their future under Soviet control is far from bright.
46:44 Speaker 03 Other cities were a bit more muted in their celebrations. I mean, Warsaw, for example. There weren't huge celebrations in Warsaw. The whole city had been entirely flattened by the Nazis before they left, and it was still sort of pretty much a ghost town even in May 1945. In Hungary and Romania, there was some celebrating, but there's also the communists have already started taking over, so there's also a lot of fear going around.
47:13 Speaker 02 With virtually every country across the continent left devastated by war, it's clear it will take more than street parties and fireworks to heal the wounds left by almost six years of destruction and brutality.
47:25 Speaker 03 In large parts of Europe, you've got no functioning governments, you've got no banks, or schools, or shops. Everything has been swept away by this cataclysmic event. Money was meaningless because there's nothing to buy in lots of places. People have given up using money altogether. They're bartering with food or with cigarettes instead of money. You've got prostitution starting up everywhere because people are starving and women will do anything that they have to do in order to feed their kids. There's lawlessness everywhere you go because all the police forces have been swept away. So people are looting anything they could get their hands on, selling it on the black market. And then there are people who are angry, so people are taking revenge.
48:07 Speaker 03 They're angry at their neighbours, they're angry at collaborators, and they're really angry at Germans. You can pretty much do whatever you like to any German in Europe and get away with it at the time. So you've got this whole wave of vengeance that's sweeping across Europe in 1945 and beyond.
48:32 Speaker 02 The Pacific War finally comes to an official close on September the 2nd, 1945. But the end is brought about by the most terrible means available: atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Stunned by the price they have paid for it, the world begins to adjust to peace.
48:54 Speaker 02 But lessons have already been learned. The Allies are determined not to repeat the mistakes of the First World War, when crippling sanctions against Germany sowed the seeds for the rise of the Nazis. And whatever camaraderie the triumphant leaders managed to muster at Yalta soon cools, as Stalin envelops his neighbouring countries into the Soviet Union, cut off by what Churchill famously calls "The Iron Curtain". Within a few months, the great British wartime leader will be voted out of office by many of the same people cheering him in the mire on VE Day. And once the bonfires have cooled and the bunting has been taken down, the reality of post-war life is not without its challenges.
49:42 Speaker 03 The anticlimax was sort of fairly universal, not necessarily on VE Day, but in the days afterwards. Because war, a war like that, especially a war so gigantic as that, it's a terrible event. But it's also kind of exciting. And there was definitely, there was one veteran I spoke to who told me that he burst into tears on VE Day because, you know, it was all over and he didn't know what was going to happen and what he was going to do with the rest of his life. The Second World War gave people a sense, not only of purpose, but also of unity. The whole country has come together to fight this war. It's a war when they really genuinely are all in it together and they know it.
50:25 Speaker 03 The whole country's come together and we've also come together with other countries. So, you know, we're all fighting together in this sort of grand purpose that we've all got. Once the war's over, VE Day's gone, that sense of purpose and that sense of unity sort of begins to dissolve and everybody starts squabbling again.
50:50 Speaker 02 The Second World War was the bloodiest conflict in the history of the planet. It involved 100 million people from 30 countries and left an estimated 80 million people dead, the majority of them civilians.
51:05 Speaker 02 By its end, humanity had exacted some of the worst horrors ever to take place on Earth. Millions have been murdered in the Nazi camps, incinerated in firebombings, or obliterated in atomic blasts. The war upended nations and an entire continent. It meant the destruction of economies and of cities that will take years to be rebuilt. But after VE Day, an international determination emerged, focusing this time on building a stable, more secure world. And though the decades that followed have certainly not been peaceful, a repeat of this global catastrophe has been avoided for the last 80 years.
51:49 Speaker 02 Which is one very good reason why many people still mark VE Day, even when so few of those who were part of it are still with us.
51:57 Speaker 03 The generations who lived through that time, they saw things that we can only imagine now. And they learned things. They learned the importance of standing up for freedom and not backing down and really standing by democracy. They learned what racism leads to. They saw it. If you don't stand up to racism and bigotry, it ends in the concentration camps. They saw this, they knew that, but we have to remind ourselves of it every day. That's what VE Day teaches us, I think, to stand up for democracy, to stand up against racism and to stand together with our allies rather than constantly sowing discord amongst each other.
52:46 Speaker 02 Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of the Anglo-Saxons.
52:53 Speaker 06 By studying this Saxon period, we understand what is still, in fact, very important to us today, which is the regionality of England. England isn't one single place, one single polity, but it's the combination of regions and identities with their own cultural traditions, which are as distinct as the different topographies of the different parts of England. And by studying those dominant regional kingdoms of Saxon England and how they both battled and negotiated their way towards a often rather troubled and rather unstable cohesive whole is in fact a story that resonates today.
53:36 Speaker 02 That's next time.
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