8 May 1945 - VE Day When WWII Ended in Europe

Today is VE Day, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. The end actually began with the Allied Normandy D-Day landing on June 6, 1944, in northern France. A secondary landing on August 15 in southern France added to making 1944 the turnaround year for the Allies, who pushed across France toward Germany. After heavy fighting in Normandy, Allied armored divisions raced to the Rhine, clearing most of France and Belgium of German forces by October 1944. The use of V-1 and V-2 rockets by the Germans proved as futile as their counter-offensive in Belgium under General von Rundstedt, where they lost the Battle of the Bulge. On the Eastern Front, in 1944 the Soviet armies swept through the Baltic States, eastern Poland, Belorussia, and Ukraine and forced the capitulation of Romania, Finland, and Bulgaria. Having been forced out of the Balkan Peninsula, the Germans resisted in Hungary until February 1945, but Germany itself was being squeezed. The Russians entered East Prussia and Czechoslovakia in January 1945 and took eastern Germany up to the Oder River on March 7, 1945. The Western Allies -- whose chief commanders in the field were US General Omar Bradley and British Field Marshall Montgomery -- crossed the Rhine, after having smashed through the strongly fortified Siegfried Line, and overran western Germany. The German collapse came after the April 25 meeting of the Western and Russian armies at Torgau in Saxony, and after Hitler's suicide on April 30 in his bunker under the ruins of Berlin, which was falling to the Russians under marshals Zhukov and Konev. The unconditional surrender of Germany was signed at Reims on May 7 and ratified at Berlin on May 8, marking the formal Allied victory ending World War II in Europe. ~~~~~ Before Hitler committed suicide, he named Admiral Karl Donitz head of the Third Reich. The Donitz government was soon ordered dissolved by Eisenhower, although Donitz continued to act as if he were the German head of state, but his Flensburg government -- named after its base at Flensburg in northern Germany -- controlled only a small area around the town and was never recognized by the Allies. On 12 May an Allied liaison team arrived in Flensburg and took quarters aboard the passenger ship Patria. On 23 May, acting on SHAEF's orders and with the approval of the Soviets. American Major General Rooks summoned Donitz aboard the Patria and told him that he and all the members of his Government were under arrest, and that their Government was dissolved. The Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme Authority by Allied Powers was signed by the four Allies on 5 June. ~~~~~ But it took several years to undo the effects of WWII. The Potsdam Agreement that organized post-WWII Europe was signed on August 2, 1945. At Potsdam, the Allied leaders planned the new post-war German government, resettled war territory boundaries, de facto annexed a quarter of pre-war Germany situated east of the Oder-Neisse line, mandated and organized the expulsion of the millions of Germans who remained in the annexed territories and elsewhere in the east. They also ordered German demilitarization, denazification, industrial disarmament and settlements of war reparations. Cessation of hostilities between the United States and Germany was proclaimed on December 13, 1946, by US President Truman. The Paris Peace Conference ended on February 10, 1947, with the signing of peace treaties by the wartime Allies with the minor European Axis powers (Italy, Romania, Hungary Bulgaria, and Finland). The Federal Republic of Germany, that had been founded on May 23, 1949, when its Basic Law was promulgated, formed its first government in September 1949, while the German Democratic Republic in Soviet east Germany was formed in October. An 'end of state of war' with Germany was declared by many former Western Allies in 1950. The state of war between Germany and the Soviet Union didn't end until early 1955. The full authority of a sovereign state was granted to the Federal Republic of Germany on May 5, 1955, under the terms of the Bonn-Paris conventions. The treaty ended the military occupation of West German territory. ~~~~~ But, while the Allies and the US Marshall Plan were re-building and re-organizing Europe after WWII, in 1951, another Treaty of Paris was signed, creating the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The Treaty of Paris was an international treaty based on international law, designed to help reconstruct the economies of the European continent, prevent war in Europe and ensure a lasting peace. The original idea was conceived by Jean Monnet, a senior French civil servant and announced by Robert Schuman, the French Foreign Minister, in a declaration in May 1950. The aim was to pool Franco-German coal and steel production, the two raw materials that were the basis of the industrial and military power of the two countries. The proposed plan was that Franco-German coal and steel production would be placed under a common High Authority within the framework of an organisation that would be open for participation to other European countries. The underlying political objective of the European Coal and Steel Community was to strengthen Franco-German cooperation and banish the possibility of war. France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands began negotiating the treaty establishing the ECSC, which was signed in Paris in April 1951 and entered into force in July 1952. The Treaty expired on 23 July 2002, after fifty years, as planned. The common market opened in February 1953 for coal, iron ore and scrap and in May 1953 for steel. ~~~~~ Aiming to create a federal Europe, the Benelux states and Germany also wanted to create a general common market, although it was opposed by France. As a result of the 1955 Messina Conference, Paul-Henri Spaak was appointed as chairman of a preparatory committee ( Spaak Committee) charged with the preparation of a report on the creation of a common European market. The Spaak Report provided the basis for further progress and was accepted at the Venice Conference in May 1956, where the decision was taken to organize an Intergovernmental Conference. The report formed the cornerstone of the European Common Market. The conference led to the signature, on 25 March 1957, of the Treaty establishing what is still the European Economic Community. ~~~~~ So, dear readers, when we celebrate VE Day today, we should remember that the horrors of World War II so revolted and frightened the nations and peoples of Europe that they were determined that Europe would never again be the theatre of war. Their solution was to create a united Europe in which all nations were bound together economically -- and as we now see, through common fiscal policies and a common currency, the Euro. The jury is still out on the European Union's success, but we must surely sympathize with Europe's determination to demilitarize Germany by bringing it into a united and less nationalistic Europe that has avoided war for 70 years - the longest peace period in its history.