For strategic reasons, but hopefully rather more benignly, the United Kingdom occupied Iceland. German occupation was that of a conqueror subjecting the defeated and innocent it was not only alien, but also harsh and restrictive. Only six countries – Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Portugal, Spain and Ireland – remained officially neutral and unoccupied. Nazi Germany was one of the most odious, brutal, frightening, regimes in modern times. It was a dark chapter in history, a time of unimaginable terror, deprivation and human tragedy. Most European nations were aggressively overrun by, or allied to, Hitler’s Germany. It was a devastating time for all participants, hard for us to comprehend now. ![]() The Second World War in Europe lasted some five and a half years from September 1939. Many were also remembering those they had lost, individual lives among the millions that had perished. We may be familiar with scenes of jubilation associated with VE Day, but the people in the fading photographs were not so much celebrating a happy event, as celebrating deliverance – together with some expectation that modest hopes for a better future were not futile. But victory in Europe was a watershed, an ending and, for many, a beginning too. ![]() Of course, the war did not end with VE Day it carried on in the Far East for another three months, until Japan capitulated on 15 August (VJ Day). You wonder whether VE Day still has any relevance, why it is still marked and whether, by 2045, it will be any more than a historical note. Writing 75 years on in 2020, most people had no memory of the event, many had limited understanding of it and some hadn’t even heard of it. Last Updated on 11th November 2022 by Day, Victory in Europe Day, is celebrated on 8 May as the day the Second World War came to an end in Europe in 1945.
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