Shanna Kelly's List: v-e day

• Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) was on May 8^th 1945. VE Day officially announced the end of World War Two in Europe.
• large crowds gathered outside of Buckingham Palace and shouted: “We want the King”.
• Ironically the Germans had been told by their government that the war was officially over.
• tens of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Central London to celebrate.

• People gathered in Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus and boats along the Thames sounded their horns in celebration. 

   

   
• The celebrations only ended when a thunderstorm and heavy rain drenched those still celebrating – just before midnight.
• May 8^th, Victory in Europe Day, s
• Street parties were organised across the land; neighbours pooled food, some of which was still rationed.
• At 13.00, Churchill went to Buckingham Palace to have a celebratory lunch with George VI.
• At the end of the speech, the crowd sang ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’.
• People built street fires out of whatever flammable materials they could find.
• The war in Japan was still being fought and austerity became the norm for very many people.
• But for one short day people could afford to let their hair down.

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• Tuesday 8 May 1945 was 'Victory in Europe' (VE) Day, and it marked the formal end of Hitler's war.
• end of six years of misery, suffering, courage and endurance across the world.
• Individuals reacted in very different ways to the end of the nightmare: some celebrated by partying; others spent the day in quiet reflection; and there were those too busy carrying out tasks to do either. Ultimately nothing would be quite the same again.
• end of the World War One on 11 November 1918
• The German forces in Italy surrendered on 2 May.
• In New Zealand, victory was celebrated on 9 May in an orderly fashion
• Britain, VE Day was marked by street parties.
• The people of Britain badly needed to let their hair down. The country was war-weary by May 1945.
• five inches of water to a bath, few eggs, no bananas and the motto 'make do and mend'.
• Half a million homes had been destroyed, and many millions of lives disrupted.

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• it is also sometimes known as Liberation Day, especially in Germany.  
  
• It marks the official end of World War II, and the end of Nazi Germany.
• VE Day is a national holiday in many of the former allied countries
• It holds major significance for the French, since the act of military surrender of Nazi armed forces was signed at Reims on May 7, 1945.

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• the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more;
• German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire.
• The Russians took approximately 2 million prisoners in the period just before and after the German surrender.
• About 1 million Germans attempted a mass exodus to the West
• 13,000 British POWs were released and sent back to Great Britain.
• when the fighting in Czechoslovakia ended
• May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered.

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