To not want to 'celebrate' VE

Peace didn’t happen by accident and most of ‘Europe’ was under Nazi control for fucks sake!

In Europe it ended but unfortunately Japan didn't surrender until August hence VJ day.

6 million Jews were killed in the gas chambers by nazis and their workers.
I can’t believe that posters feel this was such a yawning boring event we should kick it into touch - British people deserve to be recognised for contributing to ending this horror

I'd prefer it to be called Peace in Europe Day or something - since that's what is after all being celebrated. "Victory" sounds a bit jingoistic, like "ya sucks we beat the Hun".

TBF I'd forgotten it was happening today until I happened to arrive in central London just as the flyover was going on. So I don't feel under any pressure to celebrate it.

If I worked with you op I would think a lot less of you as a person.

A person that is either too poorly educated to understand the war, or one that is so privileged and ignorant that they feel they can be disrespectful around such an important life changing time for our nation, remembering millions of fallen heroes and the blessing of peace.

I think you should acquaint yourself with what Stalin got up to - the show trials of the 1930s, the Siberian labour camps and all of that.

It wasn't the Russians as such that were the issue, it was the Russian system.

Celebrating VE Day is fine - it marks the fall of the Nazis, and that is well worth marking well into the future.

But VJ Day was the end of the war, which a lot of people and organisations (the BBC included) often seem to forget. On VE Day this week I will be very aware that 80 years ago my grandmother and several other family members were still interned, cut off from the news, starving and sick. Many others were living under a really brutal occupation which had seen other family members killed or tortured. For them, liberation didn't come until several weeks after the surrender of Japan, when Allied troops finally arrived.

So like @BassesAreBest, VJ Day has much more resonance for me.

What's so evil about Russians? It always puzzles me a bit. I know the west was terrified of Socialism and not having royalty, so the propaganda was intense.

This was a world wide event. The end of it was worth celebrating.

You don’t need permission. Just don’t do it.

I do feel increasingly conflicted around it all as I age.

I am beyond thankful that the Nazis and Japan were defeated.

But a lot of the talk about heroism (which there certainly was) elides the fact that men were compelled to serve. I believe the only alternative was prison?

I once saw my grandfather’s call-up papers and the box where it specifies the length of service just says: ‘For the duration’.

No discussion, no options, that was it.

In his final dementia he actually re-enacted that process of being called up, trying to make it up to London to visit the War Office. In the early 2000s. Thankfully the police brought him back home. But perhaps it shows how traumatic and powerful that memory was?

Love this

That is a truly disgusting post. Do you know how many millions of people died to give you the freedom you have today??? You would be living under a dictatorship speaking German and most of your Jewish/mixed race/ other minorities friends and ancestors would be dead.

You have totally lost it on the woke cool aid, or have become so despicably complacent you can not fathom the great debt we owe to those that paid such a heavy price for us.

Just a long dressed up virtue signalling post about how forward thinking and anti-Colonialism etc you are

What even is there to discuss, you refused as is your right, end of

Sorry to say it, but it's one of the few things that the UK can "celebrate" these days, and that may be why there is so much jingoistic focus on it as a Victory.

Britain didn't win the war on its own though did it? I wonder how other Allied countries mark VE day. It appears to be quite low key, respectful and reverential elsewhere.

A visit to the Menin Gate in Ypres for the last post is just so fitting and reverential. Every night it's done.

And another to Dachau and Auschwitz together with the martyred village of Oradour sur Glane show the horrors, which are sometimes overshadowed by "celebrations" in Britain.

I say thanks to all who fought for our freedom. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

It’s all turned a lot more jingoistic since most of the people who had adult experience of it have died.

I commemorate VJ Day in preference to VE Day for personal reasons, which hasn’t become such a 1940s cosplay opportunity mainly because most people seem to forget VE Day wasn’t the end of WW2 so don’t bother remembering it.

It celebrates that the war in Europe was over and victory was in sight. It celebrates the people who gave up their lives so that we didn't get overtaken by a fascist dictator.
As history seems to be about to repeat itself I think it's a good thing that they're teaching kids in school and we take pride.

It's nothing but propaganda. We might have won the war, but we definitely lost the peace. Britain has been on a very long downward trajectory since then. But it doesn't matter because we still get to put our bunting up and pretend that things are fine and dandy.

War should be a last resort. We should commemorate the immense sacrifice, but celebrate? No! We've learned nothing from it though, so perhaps celebrations are only to be expected.

Sheila Hancock's piece in the Saturday Guardian is well worth reading.

It feels a bit mawkish, and to me it cheapens the sacrifices that those men and women made when you dress it up as some kind of festival.

I think commemorating is how it should be done but I think we need to spend our time looking forward as a country rather than looking backwards to relive the past.

We don't know we are born TBF.

I agree OP.
I think after this commemoration it should be laid to rest. It was 80 years ago.
It’s like the Victorians celebrating Trafalgar Day which continued until after the First World War (and they had yet another grim conflict and massive loss of life to commemorate). Too much celebrating and not enough reflecting on why we keep ending up in huge messes like this every bloody century (and doing more to prevent it).

Exactly. A lot of us with Jewish parents and grandparents who lived through the war definitely wouldn't be here if the Nazis had won.

I always found it telling that the veterans don’t want to celebrate-one on the news just now said as the camera moved away from him “And don’t start another one!

I have never heard of Remembrance Day being referred to as poppy day.

Where i live i am involved with local community groups as well as the RBL. We have came together (6 groups) to commemorate and celebrate VE day. On Thursday there will be wreath laying ceremony at the War memorial then on Saturday an event. At the event there will WWII memorabilia and information boards on local men who served during the war, some not returning home. We are priviliged to have veterans still alive and are looking forward to attending. Also at the event there will be some childrens entertainment relative to the 40s and a local singer with a swing time set. There will be tables set up street party style and we will feed everyone.
We often get together to organise events such as this and our older residents in particular are looking forward to attending especially those who were children during the war.
I understand for some they feel unconfortable with a celebration, we are trying our best to do both.

Yes and majority of the country struggled with Covid lockdowns !

I couldn’t imagine what being bombed would be like