Low-key commemorations held in Europe

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.

The big celebrations planned were either canceled 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 World War II veterans, many living in nursing homes under virus lockdowns, it has been a particularly difficult time.

Britain

Queen Elizabeth II 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 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’s white drawing room.

“The greatest tribute to theirsacrificeisthatcountries whowereonceswornenemies are now friends, working side by side for the peace, health and prosperity of us all.”

The queen was surrounded by personal mementos from the war years during her pre-recorded address. On the desk in front of the queen was her Auxiliary Territorial Service khaki-coloured peaked cap — part of her uniform when she undertook National Service in February 1945 and became a driver. It was this cap that the teenage princess pulled down to shield her face as she and her younger sister, Margaret, and friends joined thousands of revelers unnoticed outside Buckingham Palace on V-E Day.

France

Victory Day has been a traditional holiday in France, but it was clearly far more somber 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 Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris.

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 V-E Day is a very different occasion in Germany, it’s considered a day of liberation, too.

German 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 boulevard.

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.”