Latest news with #AlliedExpeditionaryForce
The Hindu
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Eighty years on, ‘never again' is sounding hollow
As conflict once again darkens horizons in the subcontinent, West Asia, North Africa and eastern Europe, Europeans are commemorating 80 years since the guns fell silent over Europe and the world's most destructive war began to wind down. On May 8, 1945, as news of Germany's surrender spread, crowds surged onto the streets of European cities in spontaneous gestures of thanksgiving and relief. In the decades that followed, that outpouring of relief has been commemorated as Victory in Europe (or VE) Day. Yet, Europe, though free, was shattered and bankrupt. After the war, the task of rebuilding Europe went hand in hand with efforts to prevent another war starting on the continent. 'Never again' was the watchword. From dates to memory Eighty years on, 'never again' is beginning to sound somewhat hollow. The contrast in the way that this major anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender is being commemorated in Russia and western Europe is telling. Indeed, the fact that the same event is celebrated on both sides of the former Iron Curtain on two different days suggests that the peace of May 1945 was tenuous. Tensions between the wartime allies of Britain, France and the United States on one side, and the Soviet Union on the other, meant that Stalin refused to accept the ceasefire signed by Germany in Reims on May 7 at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (led by General Eisenhower). This was to come into force at 11.01 p.m. the following day. Stalin instead insisted on a second, grander, surrender in Berlin (then under Soviet control) the following evening, by which time President Harry Truman, General Charles de Gaulle and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already formally announced Germany's surrender. When this document was signed in Berlin, it was already May 9 in Moscow. Hence the discrepancy in dates over essentially the same surrender. As with the difference with dates, so too with memory. It is an article of faith in Russia that the USSR's contribution to defeating fascism is discounted by its former allies. Estimates vary, but Soviet casualties are thought to be 26 million, including 11 million military deaths in what Moscow calls the Great Patriotic War. This was 10% of the entire Soviet population. Stalin was also bitter about the delay in opening a second front in the fighting against Germany to draw away some German troops after Hitler's invasion in 1941. Less often acknowledged in these accounts is that Moscow changed sides halfway through the war, when Hitler double-crossed Stalin. Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact on August 23, 1939, which contained a secret protocol dividing Poland and the rest of eastern Europe between them. A week later, Hitler invaded Poland from the west and the Soviet army moved in on eastern Poland 16 days after that. The German and Soviet occupation of Poland was brutal, with mass transfers of population. It is estimated that Poland lost 20% of its pre-war population. Thereafter, the Red Army moved into the Baltics and Finland. In these circumstances, perhaps it is unsurprising that trust was thin on the ground. The commemorations As with the history, so with the commemorations. Moscow's Victory Day (a national holiday) has grown into a massive military parade that celebrates Russia's latest weaponry — a great patriotic spectacle rather than an occasion of remembrance. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the parade has acquired additional significance, and this year will include troops from other countries. It will be attended by guests, including China's President Xi Jinping. Russia's erstwhile allies of that war observed VE Day rather more sombrely, with the focus on thanksgiving and honouring the few remaining veterans who served in the war. And of course there is the spectre of conflict against Russia hanging over the continent — a continent that started two world wars and has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace for 80 years. After the Second World War ended, America underwrote Western Europe's renewal (eastern Europe being under Soviet influence) through the dual approach of the Marshall Plan for reconstruction and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for external defence. President Truman described the security and prosperity provided by both as 'two halves of the same walnut'. There was an expressly political element to the American financial support to industrialise in a way that pushed the 17 States of southern and western Europe into ever closer economic and political union. It is testament to the success of this political project that when Germany's Bundestag voted in March to remove limits on defence spending, the rest of Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief. U.S. President Donald Trump's contradictory messaging on Ukraine and his refusal to reiterate full-throated support for NATO, including support for Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, has thrown Europe into a panic. European leaders are in full agreement that Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has moved from being a threat to the world order to being a direct threat to Europe. In French President Emmanuel Macron's words, Mr. Putin is 'an imperialist who seeks to rewrite history'. An air of insecurity And so Europe is rearming. Key European NATO members including Britain, France and Germany, are preparing for an orderly American exit from NATO. The European Union has proposed a defence fund, relaxed curbs on defence spending and published its first ever defence strategy. Several member states have advised their citizens to stockpile emergency survival rations for 72 hours. Poland and the Baltic States (all bordering Russia) have withdrawn from the landmine treaty. Almost all states are raising defence spending. This backdrop provides little room for celebration. The insecurity might also excuse to some extent the utter insularity of the commemorations in Western Europe — outsiders watching these might be forgiven for believing that the war was a purely European affair. Of course it was not. This was a war between empires: the fields of Europe and north Africa are soaked with the blood of people from Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean as well as America and Europe. And so, we all have a stake in how Europe settles its differences. As the shadows of conflicts darken different parts of the world, there is no room for complacency. Priyanjali Malik writes on politics and international relations
The Herald Scotland
06-05-2025
- General
- The Herald Scotland
GCHQ release cache of spy chatter discussing VE Day before end of war announced
The document cache includes a letter from then-Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, Dwight D Eisenhower, to the Deputy Director Naval Section via the Admiralty. The messages relay that the German high command had signed an 'unconditional surrender'. Intelligence agency shares spy chatter to celebrate VE Day (GCHQ/PA) The document, timestamped 8.30am on May 7, 1945, instructs Allied expeditionary forces to 'cease all offensive operations' but states that troops should remain in their present positions. The document states: 'Due to difficulties of communication there may be some delay in similar orders reaching enemy troops, so full defensive precautions would be taken.' The bottom of the document includes the instruction that 'no repeat, no release' is to be made to the press. The document also features annotations by the officer who had transcribed the message. At the bottom of the letter, a note reads: 'and u can jollu well RD TT plse'. Director Sir Edward Travis to his staff (GCHQ/PA) RD TT likely stands for read top-to-toe, with the addition showing the excitement felt by the operator who had the privilege of passing on the news. The voices of intelligence officials, charged with holding vital top-secret information and working under secrecy, rarely feature in historical accounts. GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler said: 'We know that intelligence had a significant part to play in VE Day and bringing World War Two to a close, and I'm proud that our predecessors at GCHQ were part of that. She added: 'It is also a powerful reminder of how those who worked so diligently and selflessly in the past paved the way for our future, and the world we live in today. 'It is with great pride that we pay homage to them today.' (PA Graphics) The second document in the cache is a letter written and signed by then-GC&CS (GCHQ) director Sir Edward Travis to his staff, stating that 'no congratulatory, greetings or other Victory telegrams will be sent from GC&CS on VE Day or subsequently without the Director's prior approval'. The letter is dated May 4 1945, four days before VE Day. It shows us that intelligence heads and the staff working at GCHQ were some of the first to know that the end of the war would soon be announced.
Telegraph
06-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Secret orders sent to spies ahead of VE Day revealed
GCHQ's secret orders to spies ahead of the VE Day announcement in 1945 have been revealed. A set of never-before-seen documents has revealed the Government Communications Headquarters' role in the declaration. The papers, released 80 years after VE Day, showcase the intelligence agency's role and the excitement felt by those in the organisation tasked with sharing the news that fighting in Europe would soon end. The document cache includes a letter from Dwight D Eisenhower, then supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, to the deputy director of the naval section via the Admiralty. The messages relay that the German high command had signed an ' unconditional surrender '. 'Full defensive precautions' The document, timestamped 8.30am on May 7 1945, instructs Allied expeditionary forces to 'cease all offensive operations', but states that troops should remain in their present positions. The document states: 'Due to difficulties of communication there may be some delay in similar orders reaching enemy troops, so full defensive precautions would be taken.' The bottom of the document includes the instruction that 'no repeat, no release' is to be made to the press. The document also features annotations by the officer who had transcribed the message. At the bottom of the letter, a note reads: 'And u can jolly well RD TT plse.' 'RD TT' probably stands for 'read top-to-toe', with the addition showing the excitement felt by the operator who had the privilege of passing on the news.
The Guardian
06-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘You feel the huge weight of history': the room where Nazi Germany surrendered
For a building that witnessed one of the pivotal moments of European history, it is oddly unremarkable: a nondescript red-brick schoolhouse on an unexceptional street on the wrong side of the railway tracks in Reims, eastern France. In May 1945 it was the Collège Moderne et Technique. Students came and went. Passersby may have wondered, briefly, at the two US military police officers outside the doors, but Americans were everywhere – the city had been liberated in August 1944. Up on the first floor, however, in a commandeered classroom, Gen Dwight D Eisenhower and his staff were coordinating the final assault on Nazi Germany from what was then the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force. It was, as the Baltimore Sun correspondent Price Day said, 'the most secret of secret places in Europe'. And it was here, as neat black lettering on the facade now notes, 'that on 7 May 1945 was signed the act that ended the second world war in Europe'. This Victory in Europe (VE) Day, the 80th, carries more weight than usual. Few of those who attend it are likely to mark the next major anniversary in 2035, and it comes at a time when peace and security on the continent have rarely felt more fragile. In the small museum that Eisenhower's headquarters has now become, the present mayor of Reims confessed to just one minor regret. 'France never appropriated that date of 7 May,' said Arnaud Robinet. 'There were reasons, but it's a shame. The date chosen for Victory in Europe Day was 8 May. Yet the Germans surrendered here, in the next room, on the seventh. It's been a bit forgotten.' Reims has always marked 7 May. This year, its ceremony will be televised, a day before national commemorations in Paris. The 80th anniversary was vital, Robinet said: 'We're at a turning point. A moment where memory and history separate.' To mark it here, the eternal flame is being brought from the Arc de Triomphe. Besides the official ceremonies there will be talks and documentaries, a specially written play, a son et lumière display, period vehicles, concerts and a bal populaire. Through five days of events, the focus will be on transmission to the next generation. 'Because events elsewhere show us the peace in Europe that was made here is not guaranteed,' he said. 'If you don't know your history, you can't prepare the future.' Next door at the Lycée Roosevelt, as the technical college is now known, Sven Turpin-Mihailovic, 18, agreed. 'You feel the huge weight of history – of the most devastating war in history – heavily here,' he said. 'Yet the same mistakes are being made.' Turpin-Mihailovic and two final-year classmates, Julie Le Bailly, 18, and Doriane Koutcheroff, 17, are among five students preparing a guided tour of the building for VIPs attending next week's commemorations. What happened in the schoolhouse was part of their upbringing, they said. 'My mum used to bring me here all the time,' said Koutcheroff. 'It's incredibly important today that this history is transmitted. We can't forget.' Le Bailly said the schoolhouse, and the commemorative events it will host, stood for 'memory, for peace, and for the courage of those who fought. They're a homage to all of that. And a warning not to commit the mistakes of the past.' Turpin-Mihailovic said the students felt 'like the guarantors of this history, this memory. The ones who will carry it forward. Our generation saw the return of war in Europe. Here, you can almost smell what that felt like, 80 years ago. We mustn't let go of that.' If history records that the allied victory came on 8 May 1945, it is mainly because of Joseph Stalin, who decided he wanted a far statelier, more symbolic capitulation in Berlin, where Germany's aggression began, and which was now in Soviet hands. The Reims surrender was a purely military affair, and relatively low-key. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Adolf Hitler's successor after the Führer's suicide on 30 April 1945, had wanted separate ceasefires so as to continue fighting the Red Army in the east. Eisenhower, however, refused, and on the afternoon of 6 May, Gen Alfred Jodl, chief of the German armed forces operations staff, was sent to Reims with authority to sign a full and unconditional surrender of land, air and seaborne forces. Final negotiations dragged on deep into the night, with the German delegation pressing in particular for a delay to the ceasefire to enable as many soldiers and civilians as possible to flee west and avoid falling into the hands of the Red Army. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion It was not until 2.41 on the morning of 7 May that the document was finally signed at the long table in the brightly lit war room, its walls hung with huge charts of battlefield and air operations, railways, supply depots and prisoners taken. Eisenhower's chief of staff, Gen Walter Bedell Smith, signed for the western allies, followed by Gen Ivan Susloparov for the Soviet forces, and Jodl for Germany. Maj Gen François Sevez, representing France, signed as a witness, since the surrender was on French soil. Seventeen members of the press had been bussed in from Paris for the occasion. 'The scene seemed to freeze,' the Associated Press correspondent Relman Morin, who died in 1973, would write later. 'It had the character of a picture, somehow, a queer unreality. Here was the end of nearly five years of war, of blood and death, of explosions and bullets whining and the wailing of air raid sirens. Here, brought into this room, was the end of all that.' With Jodl's signature on the act of surrender, Morin said, he was 'signing away the German army, and the Luftwaffe, and the submarines'. With one scratch of the general's pen, 'the state that was to have lasted a thousand years, died.' Because Eisenhower outranked Jodl, he was not present for the signing, but he received the German delegation in his office upstairs. Minutes later, he dispatched a simple message: 'The mission of this allied force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.' There were no immediate celebrations. The ceasefire was set for 11.01pm on 8 May, and the correspondents present were sworn not to report the surrender until further notice. A few hours later, however, German radio did – and the news was out. 'Nazis Quit!' was the banner headline in a late-night extra edition of the Cleveland News on 7 May, with variations on the same theme in every other US paper. 'The greatest war in history ended today with the unconditional surrender of Germany.' The western allies' leaders – the US president, Harry S Truman, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, and the head of the Free French, Gen Charles de Gaulle – announced the end of the war the next afternoon. It was not quite over yet, though. 'Stalin refused to acknowledge the surrender and said Susloparov was not authorised to sign it,' said Bénédicte Hernu, the director of Reims's historical museums. 'He insisted on another, grander surrender in Berlin that would highlight the Soviet role.' De Gaulle fully backed the idea, Hernu said, since he believed the Free French 'had been short-changed by the Americans, too'. The other allies did not object, so Reims became 'the military surrender, and Berlin the political, diplomatic one'. The text – containing hardly any significant changes, but agreed this time by three marshals: Georgy Zhukov, Arthur Tedder and Wilhelm Keitel – was signed at 10.43pm CET. At 11.01pm, as dictated in the Reims capitulation, the fighting in Europe ended. The Museum of the Surrender in Reims, where the war room has been preserved almost exactly as it was on 7 May 1945 – bar a few missing ashtrays, spirited away on the night as souvenirs – closes for renovation after the 80th VE Day events. 'We're modernising it, focusing on explaining what happened here and why, and what is left now,' Hernu said. 'It's about educating and transmitting. No one would have thought, even a few years ago, we'd be asking the same questions as then.'
Belfast Telegraph
06-05-2025
- General
- Belfast Telegraph
GCHQ release cache of spy chatter discussing VE Day before end of war announced
The documents, released 80 years after VE Day, showcase the intelligence agency's role and the excitement felt by those in the organisation tasked with sharing the news that fighting in Europe would soon end. The document cache includes a letter from then-Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, Dwight D Eisenhower, to the Deputy Director Naval Section via the Admiralty. The messages relay that the German high command had signed an 'unconditional surrender'. The document, timestamped 8.30am on May 7, 1945, instructs Allied expeditionary forces to 'cease all offensive operations' but states that troops should remain in their present positions. The document states: 'Due to difficulties of communication there may be some delay in similar orders reaching enemy troops, so full defensive precautions would be taken.' The bottom of the document includes the instruction that 'no repeat, no release' is to be made to the press. The document also features annotations by the officer who had transcribed the message. At the bottom of the letter, a note reads: 'and u can jollu well RD TT plse'. RD TT likely stands for read top-to-toe, with the addition showing the excitement felt by the operator who had the privilege of passing on the voices of intelligence officials, charged with holding vital top-secret information and working under secrecy, rarely feature in historical accounts. GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler said: 'We know that intelligence had a significant part to play in VE Day and bringing World War Two to a close, and I'm proud that our predecessors at GCHQ were part of that. She added: 'It is also a powerful reminder of how those who worked so diligently and selflessly in the past paved the way for our future, and the world we live in today. 'It is with great pride that we pay homage to them today.' The second document in the cache is a letter written and signed by then-GC&CS (GCHQ) director Sir Edward Travis to his staff, stating that 'no congratulatory, greetings or other Victory telegrams will be sent from GC&CS on VE Day or subsequently without the Director's prior approval'. The letter is dated May 4 1945, four days before VE Day. It shows us that intelligence heads and the staff working at GCHQ were some of the first to know that the end of the war would soon be announced.
