#Victory day holiday how to

German President Richard von Weizsäcker was not the first person to point to May 8 as a 'Day of Liberation' from the inhumane and tyrannical system of National Socialism. We want to reckon from then on and not from the collapse, as difficult as the years of the collapse were.' In a dossier from parliamentary debate at the time, Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education quotes Adenauer as saying: 'It is in truth, the first happy day for us Germans since the year 1933. Four years after the end of the war, the republic's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, is said to have proposed ratifying the fledgling country's Basic Law on May 8, 1949. In West Germany, the Federal Republic (FRG) sought to keep its distance from the concept of a liberation day. In fact, for years May 8 was an official state holiday in East Germany. The newly formed German Democratic Republic (GDR) in East Germany, on the other hand, pursued a Soviet path, viewing itself as an anti-fascist successor state bearing no responsibility whatsoever for the crimes committed by Nazi Germany. The day simultaneously symbolized defeat and liberation - at the time it was simply too complicated for the young postwar republic to grapple with. For the general population, capitulation signaled what became known as 'zero hour.' Initially, no one wanted to look back at what had happened.

#Victory day holiday how to

Germany, the country that organized and perpetrated the horrors of the war, has needed a long time to arrive at a solution for how to deal with May 8. Russia steps up Ukraine attacks ahead of its Victory Day Germany has long grappled with the meaning of May 8 In the Netherlands, the end of German occupation is known as 'Bevrijdingsdag' and celebrated on May 5. That is why Russia has traditionally commemorated the end of hostilities on May 9. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, seeking to cement his control on the eastern front, secured the signature of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief commander of the German Armed Forces High Command, on an act of surrender at Soviet headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst just after mignight. The surrender went into effect at 11:01 pm, May 8, 1945. Colonel General Alfred Jodl, chief of the operations staff of the German Armed Forces High Command, signed a surrender agreement with Allied forces on the night of May 6/7, 1945, in Reims, France. The aggressor's unconditional surrender was assured more than once - thus the reason different countries mark the end of the war on different days. After 12 years of brutal dictatorship, nearly six years of war, 60 million dead and six million systematically murdered Jews, Nazi Germany was finally defeated on May 8 and the war in Europe was over. In some countries, like France and Slovakia, it is a national holiday. Liberation Day, Victory Day, VE-Day: Victory over Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in Europe has many names.