V-E Day was observed on May 8, 1945, in Great Britain, Western Europe, the United States and Australia, and on May 9 in the Soviet Union and New Zealand. V-E Day commemorates the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. For just over five years and eight months a war had been raging in Europe that began with Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. By the summer of 1941, the military of Germany’s fascist dictator Adolf Hitler had conquered or subdued virtually all of Europe from Spain’s eastern border to the western border of the Soviet Union. Italy, under the control of the fascist Benito Mussolini, was allied with Germany, and the two nations fought against the British (and later the Americans) in North Africa and Italy.
While still at war with Great Britain Hitler invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941, and on December 11 of that year he declared war on the United States of America, to honor a mutual support pact he had signed with Imperial Japan. The “European War” and the war the Japanese had been fighting in Asia and the Southwest Pacific were now a global conflict — the Second World War. Upon entering the war in December 1941, the United States agreed on a “Europe first” strategy: concentrate on defeating Germany, Italy and their satellites rather than focusing the bulk of men and resources on the war in the Pacific.
V-E Day, therefore, marked a major milestone for the Allies but did not end the war — as Allied governments pointedly reminded their citizens. Attention turned to finishing the war against Imperial Japan.
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