V-E Day remembered

This month, May 8, marks V-E Day. For those veteran readers of this column, you may recognize that acronym, for the younger readers, perhaps not. It was, though, for millions of people, one of the most celebrated days in history.

The V-E stands for Victory in Europe.

Great Britain and its Allies on the continent had been fending off attacks from the army, navy, and air forces of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Third Reich since 1939. The United States remained formally neutral until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in an effort to provoke the U.S. armed services to divide its troops between Europe and Asia. With Germany condoning the attack, Congress met, and on Dec. 8, 1941, declared war on Japan, and then, three days later, announced the same against the Nazi regime.

Allied army, navy, and air forces (mostly from the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) moved from the west against the Third Reich, which had occupied most of Europe and The Soviet Union, after being invaded by Nazi forces, responded by fighting back from the east. Unlike the United States, however, they did not become as actively involved in Asia, as Japan had not threatened their territory in the Pacific Rim.

In seven years of fighting (a little under four for the U.S.), by the end of Spring 1945, Germany had lost almost 4.5 million armed personnel in the war and an estimated1 million civilians. Austria, which joined the Nazi regime, gave up 600,000 of its young men, and it is believed, 50,000 civilians. Italy, having chosen to support the Third Reich, saw the death of 302,000 men in uniform and 156,000 civilians.

The numbers for the Allied side were equally as daunting. The United States lost 416,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen, Britain, 784,000, plus 67,000 civilians. France gave up 218,000 lives in uniform with an additional 350,000 civilian losses, and Australia, Canada, and New Zealand gave up 97,000 of their best men.

The Soviet Union sacrificed 15 million military lives and lost a purported 9 million civilians to the war. All totaled, when including the Japanese on the Asian front, the number equaled nearly 3 percent of the entire known population of the Earth.

By April 1945, the Allies had advanced through Belgium and were squeezing through Nazi defenses into Germany from the west. The Soviet Army had also penetrated into Germany’s homeland and was rapidly progressing from the east. On April 30, Adolf Hitler poisoned the woman with whom he was sharing his underground bunker, then poisoned his dog, and killed himself. By his order, prescribed before his death, Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, took over the Reich.

With the Allies pinning down the German forces in the west and the Soviets on the east, Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower sought a summit to address surrender of the Nazi armed forces. Donitz agreed to discussions and sent Chief of Staff, Alfred Jodl, who consented to the terms of unconditional surrender.

On May 7, at the Rheims Technical College in Rheims, France, where Eisenhower had established his headquarters, Jodl met with Walter Smith, Chief of Staff for the Allied Armies and Ivan Susloparov, General of the Soviet 10th Army, to sign the instrument of surrender itself. It was done at 2:41 in the morning, making May 8 Victory in Europe Day … or did it?

The Premier of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin, was enraged. He wanted capitulation of the Third Reich to be in Berlin, so refused to recognize the ceremony that took place in Rheims, and demanded a real surrender occur under his planning, in Germany.

In fact, so disgusted was he, that he ordered Susloparov arrested by the Soviet Secret Police, and he was not heard from again until several months later, as a low level instructor at a military school in Russia.

Stalin insisted that the Supreme Commander of the Third Reich, Wilhelm Keitel, sign the “real” surrender document, and Stalin sent Marshal Georgy Zhukov, to sign for the Soviet Union. The United States directed General Carl Spaatz to represent U.S. troops, and Britain dispatched its Air Chief, Arthur Tedder, as its delegate to the signing.

Ceremonies got underway just after midnight in the Mess Hall of a German engineering school which the Soviets had captured. Keitel signed first, followed by Zhukov and Tedder, and then Spaatz for the United States. When the procedure concluded, Stalin announced to the world that May 9 was Victory in Europe Day, denying the validity of the actions the previous day in Rheims.

The chronological order in which the surrenders occurred in Berlin did not matter, however. Eisenhower had already informed his staff of the signing in France, begun on May 7 and concluded in the early hours of May 8. With it, war was over in the nations of Europe, except Russia, where they had to wait another day for peace.

For the United States, though, war was not over, as fighting continued in the Pacific. As such, President Truman declared May 8 Victory in Europe Day, but battles continued around the Pacific Rim for another three months.

A third surrender, this one at Tokyo Bay, would be signed by the Japanese on Sept. 2. A fourth came, with Iowa native, Admiral Frank Fletcher, presiding at Mutsu Bay, Japan, on Sept. 9. With those signatures, the war truly was officially over, but the war of words with Stalin, and the Soviet Union under the dictatorial Communism of his successors, continues on to this day.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.