To not want to 'celebrate' VE

Millions of people celebrate something they don't actually believe in

One fifth of peers who fought in WW1 were killed. You should Google it

Plenty of the aristocracy died in the two world wars. Including the brother of Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

@derxa
Your two word response to a thoughtful post is trite and inappropriate re the subject matter.
It sure as hell wasn’t the powerful dying in their droves in Ww1 and 2 .
Amd it isn’t the powerful dying in their thousands today .

People will celebrate however they wish but the war did not end on 8th May 1945 and I wish that people would stop calling it the end. It was not. We had a forgotten army in the Far East who were held captive by a brutal and cruel regime and we had troops still out there who, along with our allies, were still fighting to bring the war to a close.

The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945, the second on Nagasaki on the 9th August. Whatever people’s personal views are on the dropping of these bombs it was this that finally brought the war to a close.

It is good to celebrate victory in Europe, we should do that, but please don’t call it the end of the war. For 3 more long months hundreds of our people were still dying in the most horrific way and thousands of families were still anxiously waiting for news of loved ones who may or may not be coming home.

The official end of the war is 6th August, VJ Day. They were the forgotten army in 1945 and, unfortunately, it seems they are the forgotten army today.

Luxury beliefs

THIS is the image I'm focusing on today. The people who lived through the war. Heaven forbid patriots put bunting up, a smile on their face and feel an array of feelings in commemoration and celebration. I suppose a lot of it is to do with how gloomy your outlook on life is.

What a truly miserable attitude to have.

It’s all a matter of personal opinion, isn’t it?

Two totally separate events, the existence of one doesn't remove the wish to commemorate the other. Personally I will be waiting until August when WW2 really ended with the surrender of Japan and my late Dad able to return home after 6 years.

Agree @SerafinasGoose and @mustytrusty . Fascism has never really gone completely from Europe and its modern iteration is gaining strength - starting from the 90s Balkan war, the numbers have multiplied across all areas and particularly the east including, yes, Ukraine. Incidentally if this is all "just" about "celebrating freedom" why on earth were Ukraine troops at the ceremony on the weekend? There is nothing neutral or simple about any of it.

As for the heroic Allies, it's well seen that we don't get the bunting out for VJ day to celebrate dropping atomic bombs on civilians. Best keep quiet about that one and thank our lucky stars that we did win, otherwise it would almost certainly have been off to the war crimes tribunal for us.

One of my Grandfathers fought another was an air raid warden as too old to fight. I hate war but I will commemorate the end of WW2 and take time to feel proud of their contributions and explain them to my kids so that their memory will continue.

Exactly this. Excellent post which clearly pinpoints the horrible cycles of the repetition of history, and how a celebration of victory and of 'being right' should ring hollow in the ears of anyone paying attention to current events. Long before the last polling day it struck me how very similar political rhetoric and sentiment today was to that of the 1930s. It's a thought I find more than a little alarming. And it's not just the UK. There's a spread of it in much of the western world.

You are right, @mustytrusty: we are well on the way. We are eighty years into the future and the world has moved on whilst still harbouring the sentiments that led to two World Wars in the first place. Constantly commemorating history isn't preventing war and genocide from happening again: we had the rest of the last century to teach us that much. Yet our eyes are averted from preventing similar catastrophes in the past: quite likely because they're not happening directly on our doorstep.

The best 'commemoration' to our grandparents' generation would be to tackle the mess that's unfolding in front of us right now - just as they did in their own time. It starts at the polling booth, but there are various grass-roots social movements always tackling injustice, if you care enough to find them.

It's up to us.

Thank you for this

You are right

I completely agree with you OP.

I've always been uncomfortable about it as it seems wrong to celebrate anything where huge numbers of people died but it's been brought home to me even more with the current Ukraine and Gaza situations that there aren't 'goodies' and 'baddies' but that people dying at the hands of others because of some desire for power at the top is just appalling. Our hands are not clean now and they won't have been then. Glorifying it and being the 'winner' doesn't make it ok. And all those saying 'we'd be nazis now if it wasn't for the sacrifice', look around you. We're on our way there again now and nobody seems to be bothered. The 'sacrifice' was for nothing.

Monday’s “celebrations” weren’t really supposed to be that. They were trying to create an event - possibly the last - commemorating the celebrations of 80 years ago today.
As someone whose parents lived through (and served) in WWII, I think a lot of younger people don’t ‘get’ this point - and that includes the BBC coverage on Monday, where some reporters clearly also didn’t get it, judging by some of the completely inane questions they were asking the veterans.
Luckily, quite a few of these very politely answered these questions with the gentle reminder that we were commemorating the relief of ordinary people who had lived through extraordinary times.
I suppose that those wanting to recreate the street parties (and run the gamut of being accused, by those ignorant of history, of celebration) were hoping to keep the memory alive for younger generations, in the hope that we remember the awfulness of war and work towards peace in the future.
We ignore history at our peril, and today, the actual anniversary, along with the rest of Europe, I will be remembering the fallen, the murdered and the survivors, from whom we are all descended, hoping and praying that we and our descendants never have to live through such terrible times as they did eighty years ago, and feeling thankful for the sacrifices made by ordinary people to ensure our safety during my lifetime…

Reading the thread two things jumped out.

I saw it suggested by one poster we should ‘forget Ww1/Ww2’ or similar words. This is a dangerous road. Forgetting history means over time we forget the lessons of that history. So while I understand the feelings of those on this thread who have a preference for commemoration not celebration, I think ignoring the past is too far to go.

On the subject of WW2 being different, it was. For me the biggest difference is that we had a power and land grabbing enemy actively seeking to invade our shores and physically take the country. Imagine a war being on your doorstep. Think of the home guard, the prisoners of war on our farms, the bombings, the evacuees, German planes overhead, and the threat of invasion. Beating that at a time when radio meant everyone knew what was happening. I can only imagine how it felt to be there when Churchill announced that was ending and the war in Europe was ended.

others are right, things will shift to commemoration as time passes. But I think it will always be different so rememberance of WW1. It was a very different war. Equally brutal and hard, but different.

Two minute silence is at midday today.

At the very least I think we can all manage that given the number of people that have died.

Some people a few streets away have their whole house festooned with flags and a sign on the front gate saying "bomb shelter this way". Ho ho - what fun!

No - it wasn't fun - and wars aren't fun for the people in the world today who are suffering in them.

OP is not being an arsehole.

Reread your own post and note the word 'irony'.

Then don't 'celebrate' it and overthink it. I'm going to a VE event, where there will be a 1940s band with singing. I'm going to don my VE 80 badge, have a drink a jive and enjoy the freedom many men and women gave me. It's called gratitude.

@OneAmusedSharkI think that’s a really good point honouring all the Commonwealth soldiers, including so many Muslims, who died in WWII, often without even a plaque or mention. If more people knew about our shared history, it might actually reduce racism. It could help people feel more connected and included, especially those from diaspora communities who often feel overlooked and probably weirded out by VE day despite their families sacrifices.

Totally fine not to take part but remember millions died for your right to be an arsehole.

I'm still not sure what point you're trying to make. By the 1930s it's true that the UK wasn't a Utopia for everyone, but average living standards were improving: life expectancy in 1905 was about 50; by 1935 it was 61. I have no idea what you mean by 'eugenics was still the norm'. 'Norm' implies that it was enforced on most people, which it clearly wasn't.

Ot perhaps you are arguing that the Politburo of the USSR was no worse than the governments of the UK, USA etc, in which case I'd recommend that you read Anne Applebaum.

The world isn't neatly split into good and evil. A government that cocks a few things up is still a lot better than a government that cocks the same sort of things up but also has vast slave labour camps (a million and a half dead in the Soviet gulags - or dying soon after release), show trials, a tightly controlled press and no hope of promotion for someone born into the 'wrong' sort of family (i.e. dissidents, not members of the Party - I knew someone years ago who had left Czechoslovakia for exactly this reason).

So yeah, I'm very confused about what it is that you are arguing.

And Philips mother hid Jews from the Nazis.

How much influence do you think the Royal family would have had over Philips family? The Queen and Philip weren't even dating yet so they were just very distant cousins.

They'd already made it quite clear that Edward and Wallis Simpson were not welcome around the place.