To not want to 'celebrate' VE

for anyone who wants to explore the conflicting feelings of VE day. I recommend
Miller ‘buried’ frontline war experiences, archive says ahead of show www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/may/14/lee-miller-buried-ww2-experiences-photo-london-lgbtq-plus-ukrainian-soldiers?CMP=share_btn_url Lee miller
A recent film with Kate Winslet and a brief exhibition in London.

Well if you feel you're not getting invites to the right events, that makes you even more entitled. It's not about you, it's about remembering the sacrifices that were made - whether that's through remaining solemn or having celebratory get together. As it's the latter you feel iffy about, be honest with those inviting you. They will know not to bother again.

Come off it, it didn't take 50 years to come out of rationing and rebuild.

For me it’s very simple.

Although the world is not, and never will be, perfect, is Europe in a better place now
than it would have been if the Nazis had won?

It’s a big emphatic “yes” from me!

I think there's one aspect of this that might be being overlooked, and that's that some of the stuff about cakes, and trestle tables, music and street parties and so on isn't always war-related but is part of more general nostalgia for earlier times, often things we associate with parents or grandparents.

I think often we don't only feel nostalgia for our own youth, but also for the different generations of adults that were there in our youth but have now gone, but who influenced our childhoods through things like their cooking, the games they played with us, their homes, the way they spoke...

All those things have gone, but can leave behind fond feelings towards recreations of earlier decades, as a general thing - not just because of the war, but of course mixed up with the war for the 1940s, and with the war creating far more excuses for nostalgic re-enactments.

That always seems to be overlooked. The war wasn't over for my father or the men fighting with him.

I think i agree with your general sentiment but think you're directing it at the wrong thing...

I have always had to be very careful about expressing the fact that I feel very uncomfortable about glorifying military. But I get far more uncomfortable when we have adverts on TV recruiting young lads to the modern day army telling them it's noble/something to be proud of and how you "make something of yourself", we revere and thank young modern day soldiers and military personnel for their "service" and "protecting us" by fighting ( that was far more true of the men who died in world war 2 than now... Nowadays intelligence agents protect far more than any soldiers/boots on the ground in my opinion).
And if we move away from modern, back to the world wars, I also agree in not glorifying it. Think, poems like "dulce etc decorum est.." which also tackle that issue. Even remembrance Sunday is a bit odd sometimes and has overtones of immense glory of the dead rather than always acknowledging how little say some of them had in whether or not they wanted to "lay their life down" and the true nature and horror of it, rather than the glorified, noble, heroic way people like to "remember" through rose-tinted lenses. (And I do think sometimes this "hero reverence" can mislead young people today into thinking that they want to be soldiers/in the military that maybe otherwise would be less inclined if you described it less sentimentally).

However, VE day in my opinion isn't really any of the above, but celebrates the end of a horrific war, preventing even further loss of life , rather than glorifying it! Would you rather the war went on another 2 or 5 years? I don't quite see how that's the one to get upset over of all the other ways we glorify military and war. My only real issue with VE day is the jingoistic and nationalist types that often get themselves hyped up, flag waving, and having to see the royals on telly. But I can't see an issue with the principle of it ..

@Ramblethroughthebrambles

Thank you for starting the thread.

Without Britain, WWII would have been lost with the invasion of Poland. The Russians only entered the war because Hitler's forces would be split. The US only entered the war because Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

And without the Royal Navy and assorted British Imperial troops holding the line in Asia and the Pacific, the US would have struggled to reassert itself later in the Pacific. Yes, the British were pushed out of Burma and Malaya, but Japanese forces were kept out of Australia and India (iirc, they were held in Borneo).

We can say what we like now about appeasement, but we were in no position to go to war against Nazis. Even in 1939, there weren't enough British and French troops to hold back the invasion of France. After Dunkirk, Britain was wide open to invasion: while many troops were evacuated from the beaches of northern France, a huge amount of kit was lost. Invasion was expected, hence the training of the Home Guard and the development of the Auxiliary Units - groups of men whose job was to go to ground as a Nazi invasion swept past, and pop up behind it and start shooting up staff cars and blowing up railway lines and bridges. They expected to die, if push came to shove. The Battle of Britain was more the Battle FOR Britain: if Hitler had been able to take out the RAF, invasion would have been relatively easy. So yes, in that sense, Britain barely survived - but Britain was nonetheless key to the eventual Allied victory. The country put itself on a war footing, and turned the tables, slowly but surely.

And without war materiel from the US and the UK being shipped in via the Arctic convoys, the USSR would have been in a desperate situation. Arguably, without the notorious Russian winter and the willingness of Stalin and his generals to accept incredibly high casualties, Hitler would have taken Moscow.

World War II cost Britain a huge amount in blood and treasure, but it is not a 'false memory' to recall that the country and its empire were absolutely crucial to the defeat of the Nazis.

I would also take issue with the description in your later post of events in Gaza as a genocide, but that is another argument and not the topic of this thread.

The UK appeased Hitler initially and agreed that he could take back the disputed Sudetenland. The former King was a nazi sympathiser who encouraged the sustained bombing of London.

In any case where is the fight against fascism now ? We are told that few knew about the German death camps (I don’t agree with that argument) but we have daily evidence of murder and starvation all over the world - genocide in Gaza - we are supplying weapons to help this genocide as we have in wars all over the world

But don’t look over there - put up your bunting and wave your flag

The Nazis wanted all of Europe to be a fascist totalitarian state. They were horrendously repressive and violent and murdered millions of people. It's absolutely right that we should celebrate that the Allies (at great cost) were able to stop them.

Thanks. Churchill acknowledged their sacrifice at the time- he said:

“the unsurpassed bravery of Indian soldiers and officers, both Muslim and Hindu, shine for ever in the annals of war".

It’s time we did the same, in my opinion.

Britain didn’t win the war - it barely survived it
VE Day was barely mentioned in the years after the war . Was it even much of an event pre Covid ? I don’t think so

Ask yourself why now and who is benefiting from this creation of false memory.

Exactly this! It’s not ‘we won and will gloat over our enemies’ it’s ’thank god it’s over and I didn’t die in the horrific war I’ve just lived through’.
I’ll take that as a celebration.

Of course we should celebrate peace in the world

@derxa
You’ve been fed more propaganda and swallowed it , .

We hear a great deal about the so called aristocrats who died in WW1 and 2 . Their demographic was 1% of the population

That was the point and why your ‘luxury beliefs’ post was wrong.

1. “well don’t take part then” - a childish response designed to be a conversation stopper. Also, OP has clearly stated she is NOT taking part.
2. Equally childish to call someone “weird” because they are expressing a different opinion.
3. OP stated clearly that she DOES think it is worth commemorating
4. VE day was not the end of WWiI.

There has been 4 days of events. Some sombre and serious. Some more light. Surely there is something for everyone in that. Different bits will impact with different people.

I logged on to start a thread on the OTT VE celebrations but you have already started it, OP. I agree. Your post echoes exactly how I feel. Commemoration should be the key word not celebration. I have googled a few articles on this point of view which make interesting reading. Commemorating the end of war in Europe, the tragedy, the sacrifices and the suffering is one thing but when it spills into jingoistic flag waving it sticks in my craw.

You're all talking like ww2 was the last ever war. The horrors have already been forgotten. How many wars have there been since?