Victory in Europe — V-E Day
At 2:41 a.m. on 7 May 1945, Germany's Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl signed the instrument of unconditional surrender at Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims; a second ceremony was held in Berlin on 8 May at Soviet insistence with Zhukov presiding. 8 May 1945 — V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day) — ended the war in Europe. Street celebrations erupted across Allied capitals: in London Churchill addressed enormous crowds; in Moscow there were fireworks and public joy. The war in Europe had lasted five years and eight months from Germany's invasion of Poland, and had killed an estimated 40-55 million people — roughly half of the entire Second World War's death toll — of whom the great majority were civilians, including the six million Jews of the Holocaust. The continent lay in ruins: its cities bombed, its population displaced, its economies shattered. From the rubble would emerge, over the following decades, the divided Europe of the Cold War and eventually the European Union — an attempt to make the catastrophe unrepeatable.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
