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V-E And V-J Day

The jubilation that followed the announcement of V-J Day 60 years ago is best remembered through Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous photograph of a sailor giving a nurse a celebratory kiss in New York's Times Square.

Victory in Europe

Germany's unconditional surrender, which took effect May 8, 1945, brought a dramatic close to the conflict that intensified after U.S., British and Canadian troops invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, and started to drive the Nazis out of France.

By 1945, the Allies had liberated France and crossed the Rhine River in Germany. The Soviet army occupied the eastern one-third of Germany. German defenses were near collapse. The two weeks leading up to V-E Day brought a dramatic conclusion to Germany's defeat.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was arrested and executed by firing squad alongside 17 other fascists. Germans in Italy signed an unconditional surrender. U.S. soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp and captured Munich. On April 30, Adolph Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker, and the days that followed witnessed the end of German power.

Salzburg fell, then Berchtesgaden, site of Hitler's mountain retreat. An American column pushed through Austria to the Brenner Pass. German Grand Admiral Karl Donitz surrendered all forces in the north, including Denmark and the Netherlands.

On May 7, German Gen. Alfred Jodl signed the document of surrender at the Reims headquarters of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme allied commander of Allied forces in Europe. Germany had originally tried to strike a deal to surrender only to the Western allies, but not Russia, but ultimately gave in to demands that it surrender unconditionally on all fronts. "With this signature, the German people and armed forces are for better or worse delivered into the victor's hands," Jodl said.

The guns were no longer firing It was said on May 8, 1945, that some of the victors wandered around in a daze. They were puzzled by a strange silence. The guns were no longer firing the permanent barrage, their constant companion, during those last months since they had crossed the Rhine. Some could not quite believe it was all over. They had longed for an end to the war in Europe for years. "Then suddenly it was upon them all and the impact of the fact was a thing that failed to register - like the death of a loved one," the historian of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division wrote that year. On that day in May, a combat engineer sergeant serving with General George S. Patton, Jr.'s Third Army in Austria wrote to his wife, "The war's over: All we can think about is, thank God, thank God ... nobody is going to shoot at me any more. I can't be killed. I have made it!" Medal of Honor Recipient Audie Murphy, recuperating from his three wounds in Cannes, went out into the crowds celebrating the great victory. "I feel only a vague irritation," he wrote later. "I want company and I want to be alone. I want to talk and I want to be silent: There is VE Day without, but no peace." Most of the GIs were not given, however, to philosophizing. They simply got blind drunk instead. It was Tuesday May 8, 1945 - Victory in Europe Day. It was all over. The Germans were beaten at last. There was peace again.

The surrender took effect at 11:01 p.m. May 8, on what was declared V-E Day. It was a day marked by widespread celebration and, in some corners, somber reflection. In his victory order issued that day, Eisenhower praised the men and women in uniform who made V-E Day possible. "Your accomplishments at sea, in the air, on the ground and in the field of supply have astonished the world," he said. "You have taken in stride military tasks so difficult as to be classed by many doubters as impossible. On the road to victory you have endured every discomfort and privation and have surmounted every obstacle that ingenuity and desperation could throw in the your path."

The road to victory was "marked by the graves of former comrades" who paid the ultimate sacrifice, Eisenhower said, noting that 186,000 Allied troops were killed during the 11 months between D-Day and V-E Day. More than a half million Allies were wounded, and more than 100,000 remained missing, later to be declared dead. "Each of the fallen died as a member of a team to which you belong, bound together by a common love of liberty and a refusal to submit to enslavement," Eisenhower said. "No monument of stone, no memorial of whatever magnitude could so well express our respect and veneration for the sacrifice as would the perpetuation of the spirit of comradeship in which they died," he said.

Thus ended the war in Europe which had lasted five years and eight months. During all this time the very existence of western civilization was at stake. V-E Day was celebrated throughout the civilized world. Millions went to church and thanked God for peace and freedom at last. We have seen General Eisenhower's triumphant ovation in London, Paris, New York, and Washington, and his return to the little home town in Kansas and his eighty-three-year-old mother.

Generals of the army and private soldiers alike were greeted with unbounded enthusiasm as they came home from the war. In his address to the nation that day, President Harry S. Truman urged the American people to "refrain from celebrating and dedicate themselves instead to the solemn task which lies ahead" - the war still raging in the Pacific. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers remained in Europe to preserve peace, and hundreds of thousands more came home. But ahead of us still lay the final drives to liberate China, Burma, India, the Netherlands Indies, and, finally, to take the war directly to the Japanese homeland and bring about the destruction of the Japanese Empire.

Victory In Japan And The End Of World War II

The Japanese government sent U.S. President Harry S. Truman a cable, delivered through the Swiss diplomatic mission here, to advise the Allies of Japan's unconditional surrender. At noon Japan standard time, Hirohito's announcement of Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was broadcast to the Japanese people.

The day came to be known as "Victory in Japan" or "V-J" Day-a day that ended the most destructive war in history. Three months earlier, Germany surrendered to the Allies during "Victory in Europe" or "V-E" Day. "This is the day we have been waiting for since Pearl Harbor," Truman told a crowd that gathered outside the White House after hearing news of Japan's surrender. "This is the day when fascism finally dies, as we always knew it would."

British Prime Minister Clement Atlee confirmed news of Japan's surrender in a radio broadcast. "The last of our enemies is laid low," he said. Atlee thanked all nations who supported the effort but expressed particular appreciation to the United States, "without whose prodigious efforts the war in the East would still have many years to run."

The Allies had delivered Japan the Potsdam Declaration, demanding an unconditional surrender, two weeks earlier. When Japan ignored the ultimatum the U. S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9. Japan's formal surrender took place aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander, joined nine other Allied officers to accept the surrender from Japan's foreign minister and the commander of Japanese forces. The 18-minute ceremony ended a war that began for the United States three years, eight months and 22 days earlier at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Offices and schools temporarily closed and newspapers heralded the news that the war was over. But the celebration followed years of struggle, and the initial outlook for the Allies was bleak. The United States entered the war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. After the attack, the Japanese quickly gained control over a vast area of the Pacific, with Guam, Wake Island and Hong Kong all falling within the next three weeks. The following April, the Allies faced another major defeat with the fall of Bataan in the Philippines.

The turning point of the war came in June 1942, when U.S. naval forces halted the Japanese advance during the Battle of Midway. After that battle, the Allies launched a counteroffensive, beginning with Marine landings on Guadalcanal, a critical move to protect Australia. After six months of bloody fighting, the Allies finally took control of Guadalcanal.

Meanwhile, Army troops and their Australian allies succeeded in taking New Guinea's Papua peninsula. From that point, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz and MacArthur engaged in island-hopping campaigns that struck at Japan's weak points and stopped Japanese advances. By 1944, they had reached the Marshall Islands and secured the Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls. The Marianas Islands followed in mid-June 1944, and the Allies liberated the Philippines in mid-1945.

Despite continued defeats and the Allies' intensive bombing campaign, Japan continued to refuse to surrender until atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs had been developed by the United States with assistance from the United Kingdom and Canada under the code name "Manhattan Project" and tested in the New Mexico desert in July 1945. Less than a month later, Truman ordered the bombings to bring a quick resolution to a war that already claimed so many U.S. lives.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson supported the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan as the "least abhorrent choice," and the best way to avoid sacrificing thousands more U.S. servicemembers. After accepting Japan's surrender on the Missouri, MacArthur was named commander of the Allied powers in Japan and directed the Allied occupation of Japan, which lasted until 1952. During that period, the U.S.-led effort focused on demilitarizing Japan and introducing sweeping economic, social and political changes.

Donna Miles. Commemorations to Honor 60th V-E Day Anniversary / V-J Day and End of World War II Remembered. American Forces Press Service. WASHINGTON. May 6 / Aug. 15, 2005.

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