![]() The 94-year-old monarch said those who had served during the conflict with Nazi Germany would admire how their descendants were coping with the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus. ![]() ![]() “Never give up, never despair – that was the message of VE Day.” Street parties “The end distant, the outcome uncertain,” she said, in a rare televised address on Friday. UK towns fear crowds after lockdown eased Ī full 75 years later, the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II – who herself was moving through those crowds incognito that day – reminded her nation of the spirit from which to be drawn while facing today’s global challenges, and how the outlook that seemed bleak at the start of the war may still resonate. It was dubbed Victory in Europe Day – VE Day. In central London, more than a million people packed the streets to hear Prime Minister Winston Churchill declare the end of the war in Europe. The defeat of Nazi Germany sparked celebrations across Europe and beyond. The document was signed in the hours that followed. The commanders were kept waiting until 10pm, when the Allied delegation arrived and presented them with the details of Germany’s unconditional surrender. Hitler had killed himself in his bunker eight days previously, and across Europe, pockets of the German army were waving the white flag and handing themselves over to the Allied forces. Just a month earlier, the building had been a German officers’ mess hall. They were brought to the headquarters of the Soviet military administration in the suburb of Karlshorst. On May 8, 1945, by arrangement of United States General Dwight D Eisenhower, the commanders in chief of the three branches of the German military were flown from Flensburg, the northern town where Adolf Hitler’s successor and his allies had been attempting to form a new administration, to Berlin.
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