VE-Day events in Europe kept low-key due to virus outbreak
LONDON — Europe marked the 75th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces in low-key fashion Friday because of coronavirus lockdown restrictions across the continent.
Big celebrations planned were either cancelled or dramatically scaled back. There were no mass gatherings, no hugging or kissing, but the day of liberation was emotionally charged from Belfast to Berlin. For the few surviving Second World War veterans, many living in nursing homes under virus lockdowns, it has been a particularly difficult time.
BRITAIN
The Queen brought the U.K.’s commemorations to an end with a televised broadcast to the nation at the exact time her father, King George VI, addressed the country in 1945.
The Queen, 94, remembered the sacrifices and the “joyous celebrations” that followed the end of fighting in Europe, and paid tribute to today’s generation combating the coronavirus pandemic.
“The wartime generation knew that the best way to honour those who didn’t come back from the war, was to ensure that it didn’t happen again,” she said from Windsor Castle. “The greatest tribute to their sacrifice is that countries who were once sworn enemies are now friends, working side by side for the peace, health and prosperity of us all.”
After the Queen’s address, people were encouraged to go out onto their doorsteps to sing Vera Lynn’s iconic wartime anthem, We’ll Meet Again.
Across the U.K., people got into the spirit of VE-Day, designated a public holiday this year. Many dressed up in 1940s attire, while bunting was displayed outside homes, including at 10 Downing Street in London that houses the prime minister’s office. The “Victory in Europe” speech by Britain’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, was broadcast on television.
People gathered on the hills of London to marvel at the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows. The nine planes flew in formation above the River Thames and let loose their red, white and blue smoke.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote to veterans, describing them as “the greatest generation of Britons who ever lived,” while Prince Charles and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, led the country in a two-minute silence at the war memorial on the grounds of Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Charles laid a wreath of poppies on behalf of the nation.
Flight Lt. Terry Clark, one of the last surviving veterans of the Battle of Britain, died Friday at 101. Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, Chief of the Air Staff, said it was “particularly poignant” news on this of all days.
FRANCE
Victory Day has been a traditional holiday in France, but it was far more sombre this year given the lockdown. Small ceremonies were allowed at local memorials as exceptions to restrictions were granted following requests from mayors and veterans.
President Emmanuel Macron led a small ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. He laid a wreath and relit the flame of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, atop a deserted Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Macron was accompanied by former presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Macron also laid a wreath at the statue of one of his predecessors, Charles de Gaulle, the general revered for leading the French Resistance from London after France had fallen in 1940.
GERMANY
Although VE-Day is a very different occasion in Germany, it is considered a day of liberation, too.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top officials laid wreaths at the memorial to victims of war and violence in Berlin, standing in silence as a trumpet played on an empty Unter den Linden.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier recalled how, at the end of the war, “the Germans were really alone” and “morally ruined.”
“We had made an enemy of the whole world,” he said in a nationally televised address, adding that 75 years later “we are not alone.”
Steinmeier underlined Germans’ responsibility to “think, feel and act as Europeans” in this time of crisis and to confront intolerance whenever it emerges.
POLAND
In Poland, VE-Day elicits mixed emotions as the country, which suffered massively during the war, was subsequently subjugated by the Soviet Union and remained part of the communist bloc until 1989.
At a wreath-laying commemoration at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, President Andrzej Duda described VE- Day as a “bittersweet anniversary.” Six million of Poland’s 35 million people were killed, half of whom were Jewish.