A nationalistic VE Day fails to capture the spirit of the great celebration of 1945

The way we commemorate our national anniversaries tells us as much about the present as the past. But to understand the significance of celebrating the 75^th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, which took place on 8th May 1945 and was described by Winston Churchill as the greatest day in our history, we need to look at the event in context. And this involves a comparison of VE Day, which marked the official end of the Second World War (though Japan had yet to be defeated), with Armistice Day, 11th November 1918, which signalled the end of the First. Both dates cast long shadows into the future.

The conflict ended suddenly in 1918 and the unexpected outbreak of peace was greeted with an explosion of joy distinctly different from the jubilation prompted by the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Of course many of the manifestations were the same. Streets filled with ecstatic crowds, cheering, singing and dancing, drum-beating and flag-waving. Bands played Tipperary and God Save the King. Complete strangers embraced, even copulated. Flags waved and drums sounded amid bonfires, fireworks and booze. But there was a raw edge of violence to the demonstrations of 1918.

In Cambridge, undergraduates went on the rampage and burned the Kaiser in effigy. Lloyd George wanted him hanged and proposed to squeeze Germany until the pips squeaked. In London the young Agatha Christie witnessed “a sort of wild orgy of pleasure, an almost brutal enjoyment. It was frightening. One felt that if there had been any Germans around the women would have advanced upon them and torn them to pieces.”

After the carnage on the Western Front, it was understandable that the air should be charged with a lust for revenge. But the atmosphere was made still more frenetic by the simultaneous arrival of a murderous second wave of the Spanish flu pandemic. On Armistice Day alone, it has been estimated, 1,000 Londoners died of the disease, which eventually killed some 250,000 Britons. Unlike coronavirus, it was disproportionately fatal to people in their 20s and 30s.

Yet soon the moral certainties about the war to end war began to wane. A recognition dawned that there had been rights and wrongs on both sides. And the passions of Armistice Day were assuaged by elaborate rites of remembrance with which we are still familiar. Britain commemorated the fallen with poppies, silences, slow marches, the Unknown Soldier, wreath-laying at the Cenotaph, and war cemeteries bordered by flowers—banned from German graveyards as being too sentimental. The rows of headstones were an implacable reminder of the stupendous toll of blood. Their sameness was especially affecting. They formed a relentless mosaic of death, an interminable pattern of obliteration—unforgettably multiplied at the end of Joan Littlewood’s film Oh, What A Lovely War.

By contrast VE Day had long been planned and anticipated. Churchill, who had refused to mock or begrudge the “overpowering entrancements” of Armistice Day, now sanctioned “a brief period of rejoicing.” He even ensured that supplies of beer were sufficient and that bunting could be bought without a ration book, confident that the public would celebrate the victory of 1945 without descending into “unrestrained mafficking.” The temper of the time was, indeed, patriotic rather than chauvinistic. It reflected the general feeling that Britain had, uniquely, entered the war on principle and fought to the finish in a just cause. The country had overcome fearful odds and combined with allies, as Churchill said, to vanquish “the evil-doers, who are now prostrated before us.” Hearing that phrase, as the speech was relayed through loudspeakers to crowds in Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, people gasped.

However, the prime minister did not speak in a revanchist spirit. On the contrary, his maxim was “In Victory Magnanimity.” In another of several addresses he gave on VE Day, Churchill declared that “a terrible foe has been cast on the ground and awaits our judgment and mercy.” As a matter of fact he was already preoccupied with the danger posed by the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe, and he was conjuring with the term “iron curtain.” After the First World War his slogan had been “Kill the Boshie, Kiss the Hun” and he now contemplated driving back the Red Army, perhaps in concert with the remnants of the Wehrmacht. This plan was aptly codenamed “Operation Unthinkable.”

Needless to say it proved abortive and it remained a secret, even from President Truman (though Stalin may have known about it through his spies).  As far as the British public was concerned, VE Day was a communal triumph, a paean of national exultation. It was also an incomparable spectacle.  Searchlights illuminated the golden cross on the dome of St Paul’s. Big Ben wore a grin on its face, wrote Harold Nicolson. The balcony at Buckingham Palace was reinforced after the bombing, ensuring that it did not collapse under the combined weight of Churchill and the royal family, thus bringing the war, as King George suggested not entirely in jest, to a dramatic conclusion.

The monarch himself made eight appearances. Among the revellers beneath, most sporting rosettes or red, white and blue ribbons, were his two daughters, experiencing the thrill of incognito freedom for almost the only time in their lives. They joined in chants of “We want the King.” And they sang along with “Roll out the Barrel,” “We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line” and “Run, Rabbit, Run.” The last was one of Churchill’s favourites and he himself engaged in a theatrical dialogue with the Whitehall throng. “This is your victory,” he declared. “No, it’s yours!” they roared. “Did anyone want to give in?” “No.” “Were we downhearted?” “No.”

Britain’s victory in the People’s War henceforth occupied a salient position in our collective memory. It eclipsed grim recollections of the Somme and Passchendaele. Its splendour was enhanced by hideous revelations of Nazi crimes. As the Empire disappeared and the country entered a period of relative economic decline, it acquired a mythopoeic quality and loomed ever larger in the public mind. It was a symbol of British greatness, a key part of our national identity, a talisman. So the milestone anniversaries of VE Day have become a cause for increasing celebration. But a curious role reversal has taken place.

The annual Remembrance Day ceremonies, belying their origins in the jingoistic frenzy of 11th November 1918, have matured into the acme of dignified solemnity. But the festivities commemorating VE Day have become more insistently nationalistic than the communal rejoicing of 8th May 1945.  This is hard to measure and still harder to explain. There is obviously a spontaneous popular drive to recall the reddest of red-letter days in the British calendar and it certainly provides a better excuse than many for a general knees-up. On the other hand, the heritage industry has a vested interest in exploiting nostalgia for the great days of yore. And governments like to create events which promote unity and foster loyalty. Such invented traditions range from royal jubilees to clapping the NHS on Thursday nights—a cheaper alternative to paying and protecting its workers properly. So perhaps the more raucous expressions of VE Day enthusiasm owe something to official encouragement, especially in the xenophobic climate generated by Brexit.

Prime ministers also like to wrap themselves in the union flag and don the mantle of Churchill. No one favours this sartorial melange more than Boris Johnson, as evidenced by his dreadful book about the great man, a flagrant piece of self-promotion written in the style of the Beano. Unfortunately for him coronavirus has ensured that the 75th anniversary of VE Day can only be virtually commemorated. But no doubt he will find some way of basking in its reflected glory.