The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
The end of the Second World War – Imperial War Museums: Timeline of events
Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) on May 8, 1945, remained in the memory of all those who witnessed it
It meant the beginning of the end to nearly six years of a war that had cost the lives of millions.
Allied nations rejoiced, with Britain marking VE Day with street parties, dancing and singing.
However, fighting continued on a global scale and the impact of conflict remained central to people’s lives.
The war in the Pacific did not end until August 15, 1945, when Japan surrendered following the dropping of the atomic bombs. The day was celebrated across the world as Victory over Japan Day (VJ Day).
Nevertheless, the political, social and economic repercussions of the Second World War were felt long after it officially ended.
Teacher training college student Cynthia Edwards, like countless others in Britain and across the world, was aware that she was witnessing a momentous event in history on VE Day, May 8, 1945.
In many respects London was the epicentre of this event, and she captures the key moments of her day in the capital in the letter she wrote to her family shortly afterwards, a letter that is now part of Imperial War Museum’s collections.
In it she recalls the service of thanksgiving in St Paul’s Cathedral (of which there were several throughout the day to accommodate as many visitors as possible), Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s radio announcement of the end of hostilities at 3pm, his later public appearance on the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, the regular appearances of the Royal Family on the main balcony at Buckingham Palace, King George VI’s victory broadcast at 9pm, and the night time revelries and official “light shows”.
Allied leaders including UK Prime Minister Churchill, US President Roosevelt and Russian Premier Stalin meet at Yalta in Crimea to discuss plans for the end of the war and the ensuing peace. At the Yalta Conference the three leaders agree to divide Germany, Austria and their capitals into four post-war occupation zones, controlled by U.S, British, French and Soviet military forces.
Cynthia’s letter gives us a more personal glimpse of these occasions, enabling us to participate in them across the intervening years in a way that would not otherwise be possible.
She is star-struck by her immediate neighbour in the St Paul’s service, the celebrated screen actor David Niven (whose surname she touchingly misspells – perhaps her friends had to tell her who he was).
Although there is no mention in other sources that David Niven was in London during the VE Day celebrations, his wife was indeed pregnant at the time, a detail which Cynthia also mentions in her letter.
She notes what seems to be the relatively muted reaction of the crowds to the appearance of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace, and the contrastingly unbridled enthusiasm for Churchill, struggling to speak to the cheering multitude in Whitehall, in the midst of which she has difficulty staying on her feet.
Her letter includes a map of exactly where she stood in the crowds at Whitehall, enabling her family to picture the scene she witnessed for themselves.
After the late-night celebrations, some of her fellow students are called up before the college principal for being too late back.
We have had the privilege of being permitted a moment of intimate access to Cynthia’s life at a defining period of our modern history, sharing her unique personal experience of this time. She writes that the newspaper reporting “cannot possibly show what it is really like”.
It is only through the medium of letters, diaries, photographs, films and other kinds of personal records, created by ordinary men and women, that we are now able to approach what history “is really like”.
Cynthia’s letter is just one of millions of memories cared for in Imperial War Museum’s collections.
To read more personal stories of the people who witnessed the end of the Second World War and to find out more information about how this momentous milestone in our history unfolded, please visit https:// www.iwm.org.uk/history/ victory
● On May 8, 2020, Imperial War Museums will be sharing first-hand testimony of VE Day in the form of voices from its unique sound archive.
This will be the first of three in a trilogy of unique broadcasts, Voices of War, aimed at sharing recollections of the end of the Second World War through the voices of those who were there.