The Allies Defeated Hitler 75 Years Ago. But Victory Came at a Horrible Cost.

Sunday, May 13, 1945, the first weekend of peace in Europe: in London it is the hottest weather of the year, 85 degrees, and the skies are clear when a vast force of 1,500 U.S. bombers and fighters flies over the capital, marking the final Allied victory over Hitler.

A few days earlier, on VE Day, May 8, so many people poured into London from the suburbs to celebrate in the streets that there were not enough trains to take them home, so they just stayed. Many were still there for the Sunday fly-past. 

The upcoming celebrations of the 75th anniversary of VE Day have been seriously curtailed by the coronavirus lockdowns both here and in Europe. (More Londoners have been dying than in the worst weeks of the Blitz.) As we struggle to defeat a new and lethally pervasive enemy, this is surely a moment to savor what victory looks and feels like. 

But it’s also a reminder that, as sweet as those days were, much of the world was ravaged. The cost in human lives and suffering was immense. At least 20 million Europeans died, and 60 million were uprooted from their homes. At the end of the war, many people were just hanging on to life. At the same time, tensions already were evident that foreshadowed the next war, the Cold War. 

There is a unique way to see this moment in history—through the actual words of the reporters who were there to experience the whole gamut of emotions, from the exultations of freedom to the shock of seeing the human cost of liberation.