VE Day

Learn about VE-Day with these WW2 Magazine Articles. Discover History in Our WW2 Articles.

President Truman’s VE-Day Proclamation (Think Magazine, 1946)

Attached is a page from the Diary of Participation in W.W. II which was compiled by the editors of THINK MAGAZINE; this page contains the printable text of a portion of President Harry Truman’s VE-Day Proclamation of May 8, 1945:

The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God’s help, have won from Germany a final and unconditional surrender. The Western world has been freed of the evil forces which for five years and longer have imprisoned the bodies and broken the lives of millions upon millions of free-born men… Much remains to be done. The victory won in the West must now be won in the East…

VE-Day in the U.S. of A. (Yank Magazine, 1945)

A report from Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Minneapolis, St Louis and Springfield (Mass.) as to how VE-Day was celebrated (or not) in these cities:

To get an over-all view of VE-day in America, YANK asked civilian newspapermen and staff writers in various parts of the country to send an eye-witness reports. From these OPs the reports were much the same. Dallas was quiet, Des Moines was sober, Seattle was calm, Boston was staid.

The Nazi Surrender Proceedings

An eye-witness account of the 1945 German Army surrender proceedings in Reims, France in the early days of May, 1945.

Penned in that unique english of the 1940s American soldier (which sounded a good deal like the movies of the time), this article describes the goings-on that day by members of the U.S. Army’s 201st Military Police Company, who were not impressed in the least by the likes of German General Gustav Jodl or his naval counterpart, Admiral Hans von Friedeburg:

Sgt. Henry Wheeler of Youngstown, N.Y., said, ‘The wind-up was pretty much what we expected. ‘Ike’ didn’t have anything to do with those phonies until they were ready to quit. Then he went in and told them to sign up. And what does he do as he comes out of the meeting? He shakes hands with the first GI he comes to.

The Nazi Surrender Proceedings

An eye-witness account of the 1945 German Army surrender proceedings in Reims, France in the early days of May, 1945.

Penned in that unique english of the 1940s American soldier (which sounded a good deal like the movies of the time), this article describes the goings-on that day by members of the U.S. Army’s 201st Military Police Company, who were not impressed in the least by the likes of German General Gustav Jodl or his naval counterpart, Admiral Hans von Friedeburg:

Sgt. Henry Wheeler of Youngstown, N.Y., said, ‘The wind-up was pretty much what we expected. ‘Ike’ didn’t have anything to do with those phonies until they were ready to quit. Then he went in and told them to sign up. And what does he do as he comes out of the meeting? He shakes hands with the first GI he comes to.

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