James Holland
ITWAS a national outpouring of joy. Bobby Brown, who had spent much of the war working for the Foreign Office in London, explained: “For so many years one had to control one’s emotion, and then suddenly the war was over – and the control went.” On May 8, 1945, Bobby came into the centre of London by Underground and, like so many others, made her way through the dense crowds towards Buckingham Palace.
The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had broadcast to the nation at 3pm, officially announcing the war in Europe was over. He had then driven to the Palace to join the King and Queen.
Bobby had worked her way up the Mall but then suddenly it had all become too much. Her fiancé, a Belgian pilot flying for the RAF, had been posted missing after a bombing mission to the Balkans the previous year. Suddenly, she didn’t feel much like celebrating. Instead of partying, she found tears rolling down her cheeks.
Perhaps there would be news back home in Mill Hill, north London, that her fiancé had survived.
It was not to be. He was one of the many millions who had been killed during the bitter five-and-a-half-year conflict that ravaged Europe.
Today, we still commemorate that sacrifice on VE Day, but few perhaps know that, really, it was a story of three Victory in Europe Days and two final surrenders. Most importantly, it was not even the end of the war.
Nonetheless, most of Britain was in a party mood that Wednesday, May 8. The largely euphoric release was understandable. We had been at war since September 3, 1939, and the end, when it finally arrived, had seemed a long time in coming.
Following the great Allied victory in Normandy the previous August, and the smashing of the German Army Group Centre by the Soviet Red Army along the Eastern Front at the same time, it really had seemed as though the war might be over by Christmas. And yet, Hitler insisted that Germany fight on.
In the rain, mud, snow and ice of a terrible winter across Europe, the Allies struggled on, pushing the Germans back inch by inch, until finally crossing the Rhine in late March. The Red Army then launched its last great offensive of the war that April, bursting across the river Oder east of Berlin and closing in and surrounding the capital.
Even after Hitler killed himself in his bunker on April 30, Germany fought on. Nor was the war over even after all German forces in north-west Germany surrendered to Field Marshal Montgomery early on May 5.
Finally, on May 7, a German delegation was sent to the Supreme Allied Headquarters in Reims, Northern France, to formally surrender to Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower at 2.41am. However, with pockets of fighting continuing and borders in flux, Stalin insisted the surrender be kept secret for a further two days.
US President Harry S. Truman, agreed. All who had witnessed the signing were sworn to secrecy. Ironically, it was the Germans who let the cat out of the bag, announcing the surrender in a communiqué later that morning.
Ed Kennedy, a US journalist working for the Associated Press, realised he had the scoop of his life and decided to ignore the embargo. At 2.27pm, the story broke around the world.
In New York, it was 9.30am and, almost immediately, hundreds of thousands gathered in the streets in a euphoric response.
Back in Britain, Churchill prepared to address the nation via the BBC. Stalin, however, still refused to allow the news to be officially announced until he’d had his own surrender ceremony in Berlin.
Increasingly frustrated messages were batted back and forth between London,
‘Finally the PM decided the British people could wait no more. Defying Stalin, he ordered a BBC statement’