To not want to 'celebrate' VE

[Ramblethroughthebrambles]

I've been asked to take part in VE celebrations this week. I've politely declined. It feels OK to me to join in a solemn commemoration, with a focus on how to make sure this never happens again, but not a celebration of victory which all the UK events seem to be. I'm grateful for the sacrifices so many soldiers and others made and that we didn't become part of the Nazi empire. I completely get why people originally celebrated the end of such an awful war and its hardships. But celebrating military victory 80 years on doesn't sit right with me, especially given the conflicts in the world today. It seems to normalise military intervention and sends the message that military victory is a 'good thing' when often it's a result of failures in international diplomacy/ strategy / long term thinking. I'm not a complete pacifist and recognise there are times when military intervention is a necessary evil. But that doesn't make me want to celebrate it.

I never hear anyone else expressing this view in public. There seems to be an expectation that we'll all want to get the bunting out and have a tea party. So AIBU?

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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

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

Oh, give over. I'm well aware of how many millions died. I studied that period of history for my degree. My grandfather was at the Somme. You know, one of the battles in 'the war to end all wars'.

I see NOTHING to 'celebrate'. Commemorate, yes. Celebrate, no. So get lost with your 'truly disgusting post'. You don't pay a great debt for the ultimate sacrifice by having a party and putting up bunting. You read the names on the war memorials every time you pass one and quietly reflect that it was sheer chance it was their generation and not your own that saw such appalling carnage. Given where we're at though, there's still time for all of us to witness it for ourselves.

Read Sheila Hancock's piece.

i know that.

WW2 didn’t end until everyone involved had stopped fighting it.

The reason for ‘celebrating’ VE Day is that there is a strong memory (real for a few, second-hand or cultural for most) of the relief and euphoria British people felt on that day. It’s not ‘hurrah for war’ or ‘we won’ but a release from 6 years of hunger, fear, hardship, separation and death. Can you imagine what that felt like?

In reality, although it was a victory, the war was a catastrophe. Britain came out of it appallingly damaged and impoverished. But we are celebrating the fact that as a nation, we survived.

I don't think that speaking German would really be such a major issue! Anyway, in most of the occupied territories people continued to speak their own language.

It wouldn't have lasted anyway. The Nazis had patently bitten off more than they could chew and it was spiralling for them long before the end of the war.

Oh come on, calling it a ‘fuss’ is awful. The suffering that the Nazi’s brought on this world is unimaginable. They were an incredible force to be reckoned with and our people along with many other nations took on that force with a bravery that wouldn’t be seen today. I for one am really bloody proud of what our country and its allies accomplished during the war and I can’t begin to imagine how much more suffering would have gone on if no one had bothered to take on the Nazi’s. When VE was announced in 1945, the world celebrated and rightly so. They knew the killing would come to an end. They knew that the boys still alive would be coming home. Of course we have to remember the fallen and the awfulness of those wars but that’s what Remembrance Day is for. VE Day is a day for celebrating the end of it all.
You don’t have to celebrate or put the bunting out but just be glad you have the freedom to make whichever choice you like and don’t judge the people who make different choices.

@Feelingmuchbetter: What a delight - I can understand that peace isn't something you'd appreciate since you apparently like to go around swearing at strangers. But personally, I think the peace is more important to celebrate than the victory.

Half of Europe was under Soviet occupation after VE Day, but since Britain wasn't, I guess you're fine with that.

I agree, but I also feel when antisemitism and fascism is on the rise again across Europe then Lest We Forget feels a bit less meaningful in the current climate.

If we aren’t using it as a platform to learn, when does it become just jingoistic?

I am utterly exasperated by your abject ignorance, and it’s a free country thanks to the war heroes I can swear as much as I bloody well please!

This! I always think of VE day as being about a massive sense of relief that a horrible experience was ending, not victory as such.

And what about all the families in all the other wars? That are still going on?

It's time to move on from the past. It's different now the veterans are gone.

This too. I think a lot of these posts (not all) really don't understand this relief at all, possibly because they're projecting how we feel these days about wars we're in, which is mostly quite safe ourselves as civilians.

Take account of that feeling of relief when deciding whether to approve or disapprove of the mere idea of celebrating VE day. I'm not saying it should be celebrated the same way for ever, but at least try to understand fully what is being celebrated.

It might be time for you, but while I'm still alive, I will attach meaning, including respect. The veterans' legacy lives on.

If only it were possible to show our time now but as it would be under Nazi rule I suspect those who feel it was somehow mean of us to beat them would change their minds sharpish. Some of you people are unbelievable.

I'm not old enough to have been in that war - few are now, but I grew up in streets with rubble where houses used to be and I know what my parents lived through.

I wrote the above 2-3 times in my head and trust me that was the mildest version by far.

My DPs were children in the war and remember VE Day. It wouldn't have had to go on much long for my Dad and his friends to be called up.

The 'other wars... that are still going on' don't impact Britain in the same way. Are we not allowed to mark peace in our own country?