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?

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.

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.

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

What a truly miserable attitude to have.

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.

Luxury beliefs

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.

@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 .

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

@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.

Of course we should celebrate peace in the world

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Hmm, live and let live? I've wondered this a couple of times when reading some very thoughtful posts on this thread. Certainly we need to be respectful of others' often deep and complex feelings around this topic. The thread has reminded me that it's not 'hurrah we won the war, who's up for another?' vs 'who gives a shit about the sacrifices of previous generations' (despite some posters wilfully misreading posts to reduce it to this). The problem though is that these events are often organized as community events. Being in a group invited to take part, I was asked to take on quite a public role and was perceived as letting others down by saying 'no'. The thread was really helpful for trying to frame a fuller explanation this week (when I was asked to reconsider) whilst trying not to trample over the feelings of people who had organized what, for them, was a very meaningful event.

But there's a wider issue, beyond 'feelings'. Whatever the original intentions of event organizers, the more celebratory events can gloss over the horrors of war, and can make war seem almost honourable, rather than the least worse option. I'm not suggesting that offering someone a cucumber sandwich whilst wearing fancy dress will lead to WW3, but culturally shared beliefs do shape political decision making and very visible shared community / national events shape cultural beliefs. My concern is that few, if any, VE events convey the nuance and complexity of many responses on this thread. They come across as simply celebrating the triumph of good over evil. Yes, the allies did fight against an evil regime and WW2 was probably unavoidable, certainly once world events had facilitated the rise of Hitler. But WW2 also led to further evil and horror (approx 60-80 million total deaths worldwide, Hiroshima, East German regime and Stasi...). It's become unacceptable to mention the negative consequences of WW2 because that would be seen as diminishing the ultimate sacrifice so many made. However, we absolutely do need to keep the consequent horrors in mind, alongside gratitude for the positive outcomes we gained, to inform the political decision making of future generations. That's what some of the veterans seem to be asking us to do. I don't know how anyone can dismiss thinking and talking about such important issues as 'overthinking', 'navel gazing', 'virtue signalling'.... 🤦 (Not meaning you @TeenToTwenties)

Thanks @Ukisgaslit, @SerafinasGoose @mustytrusty and others

I think you're right that the real danger is that looking back with pride, through a blurry narrowed lens, risks blinding us to current failures and dangers.

There are an awful lot of people on here, though, looking back in a much more nuanced way. I wonder how easily they feel able to express some of this in relation to remembrance events IRL? Despite the UK having, supposedly, fought to preserve our freedom of thought, there's always seemed to me to be a required way of thinking about WW2.