“The wider war was not yet over. Nevertheless, VE Day came as a beacon of hope and light for a nation wearied by war.”

By Ronan Thomas

IT WAS 7:40 p.m. on May 7, 1945 when the BBC Home Service dramatically interrupted its evening radio broadcasts with some breaking news.

Newsreader John Snagge reported that the war in Europe had ended. Nazi Germany had surrendered unconditionally, at Allied Headquarters in Rheims, France. The following day was to be a national holiday, ‘Victory in Europe Day’ (VE Day).

Celebrations immediately erupted across Britain (as well as in the Commonwealth and in the United States) as crowds spontaneously took to the streets in an outpouring of mass relief. The following day cities, towns and villages across Britain held thousands of impromptu VE Day parties, church thanksgiving services and victory parades.

The wider war was not yet over; most Britons expected the fighting in Asia against Japan to continue for months, if not indefinitely. Nevertheless, VE Day came as a beacon of hope and light for a nation wearied by war.

This week, 80 years on, as VE Day is remembered with commemorations in Britain, throughout the Commonwealth and the United States, it’s interesting to look back on how the historic moment was marked at the time.

London rejoices

In the British capital, official events on May 8 centred on the seat of government, in Westminster, and at Buckingham Palace. At 3 p.m. that day, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made his famous Advance Britannia! radio broadcast direct from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. He first confirmed that hostilities would end officially at 12.01 a.m. the following morning. He tempered the jubilation with a grim reminder. “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,” Churchill said. “But let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead”.

At 5 p.m., he gave a further speech from the balcony of the Ministry of Health Building. Making his characteristic “V” sign hand gesture, his words: “This is your Victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom!”

His message was relayed by loudspeaker to massive crowds, flowing along Whitehall from Trafalgar Square, filling Parliament Square, facing the Houses of Parliament. Nearby, Westminster Abbey’s seventy church bells pealed out.

Later, the Royal Family, led by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, and joined by Churchill, appeared eight times on the Buckingham Place balcony to swaying, rapturous crowds packed along the Mall.

London landmarks including Big Ben, Nelson’s Column and the Houses of Parliament were floodlit by anti-aircraft searchlights. That evening, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret mingled unrecognized in the crowds in front of Buckingham Palace to cheer their own parents.

On VE night around 50,000 civilians and Allied servicemen crammed into Piccadilly Circus, celebrating and rejoicing, while in thousands of homes and pubs across the city people drank, sang, danced, and gave thanks that the European war was over. It was a similar picture across much of Britain.

VE Day in Cardiff

Cardiff came to a standstill with the news. Crowds poured into the streets on May 8 or flocked to the city centre. Many joyful street parties were held. (Among the crowds that day was my own late father, Gareth Thomas, then aged eight and living in Inverness Place, Roath.)

During the war, Cardiff, Britain’s largest coal port, was a frequent target of Hitler’s Luftwaffe. It suffered four air raids in July and August 1940, three night raids in January 1941, nine attacks from February to April 1941 and two in May 1941.

On the cold night of January 2, 1941 — Gareth was aged four and a half but still remembered it — 100 German bombers attacked the city and its docks. The aircraft dispatched were a mixture of Dornier Do-17, Heinkel He-111 and Junkers JU-88 medium bombers, flying from bases in occupied northwestern France. Dropping parachute flares to light their targets, they unleashed thousands of incendiaries and hundreds of high explosive bombs. Buildings in Grangetown, Riverside and Canton were devastated. A parachute mine blew the spire off Llandaff Cathedral. The raid killed 165, injured 427, destroyed 350 properties and left 3,000 people homeless. Further air raids on Cardiff took place during June-July 1941, June-July 1942, May 1943 and into March 1944.  By 1945, 355 people had been killed in Cardiff (around 1,200 in total across Wales, primarily in Cardiff and Swansea) and over 500 seriously injured. At least 2,100 high explosive bombs were dropped on the city.

As a child in wartime Cardiff, Gareth had experienced nights in his family’s garden Anderson shelter as bombs detonated nearby. He remembered his steel-helmeted father opening the shelter door to check on his family after a heavy night raid in February 1941. His father carried him along Inverness Place in time to see the burning roof of St Martin’s Church, Roath collapse into its interior. Gareth grew accustomed to wailing air raid sirens, strict food rationing, the sight of Barrage balloons swaying in Cardiff parks, playing on bomb sites, the sinister drone of enemy aircraft engines, the dazzling beams of probing searchlights and the roar of anti-aircraft gun and rocket batteries firing from Roath Park Recreation Ground. In April 1945, playing in Roath Park, he plucked out a newspaper floating in a stream. The headline told of events at a place called Belsen. On May 1, he remembered hearing the BBC Radio newsflash announcing the death of Adolf Hitler.

Then came VE Day. On May 8, Gareth happily attended a street party with his family outside his home on Inverness Place. Bunting and Union Jack flags festooned the telephone wires and trees. Local residents gathered as many foodstuffs as could be found. Long tables were set out along the street, at which sat local children wearing party hats and enjoying sausage rolls, fish paste sandwiches, jam tarts, blancmange, jelly, tea and orange squash. In the evening, Gareth was taken to Cardiff’s City Hall to see the celebrations. Cardiff’s public lighting was symbolically switched on again, after five years of wartime blackout. Impromptu bonfires blazed in streets across the city. Fireworks detonated overhead. There was public dancing and singing and the beer flowed. The next day, Gareth was permitted an additional day off from Roath Park Infants School. Later in 1945, he joined a large crowd outside St John’s Baptist Church, northwest of the Hayes, in central Cardiff, watching a low victory flypast by Spitfires and Hurricanes. Some flew inverted, the pilots waving from their cockpits to the crowds below. Their flying helmets and faces were clearly visible.

 

The staggering cost of victory

The VE Day celebrations were tinged with sadness and uncertainty for some across Britain.

Hundreds of thousands of families had lost relatives in battle or in air raids or worried for those still engaged against the Japanese in Asia. More than 384,000 British military personnel were killed in action.

Britain had been bombed heavily for four and half years, Britain had endured the physical and psychological consequences of mass air attack: fear, shock, the loss of loved ones, deprivation, comprehensive destruction of property and the potential of defeat. During 1940-1945 an estimated 60,000 British civilians were killed by aerial bombing (43,000 from September 1940-May 1941). Around 71,000 British people were treated for life-threatening injuries and over 88,000 others were less seriously injured.

In London, nearly 30,000 were killed in air raids in the Blitz of September 7, 1940 to May 11, 1941. Around 50,000 others were seriously injured in the same period. Over one million buildings in the capital were destroyed or otherwise damaged. A further three million properties suffered the same fate across the nation during the war.

Devastating raids also took place on18 other British cities, towns, ports and industrial production centres. They included: Coventry, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Belfast, Tyneside, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Hull, Southampton, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Glasgow, Clydeside, Nottingham and Exeter.

From 1944, four months of night conventional bombing raids resumed, during the so-called Little Blitz, which killed a further 1,500 civilians with 3,000 seriously injured. This was followed by the “V-Weapons” campaign of June 13, 1944 to March 29, 1945. In a final destructive onslaught, Hitler launched V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets against London and Southeast England. Over 3,000 V-Weapons struck the capital and its suburbs. Almost 9,000 people were killed. At least 24,000 others were seriously injured.

By VE Day 1945, Britain was physically shattered, psychologically exhausted and economically crippled. The nation was virtually bankrupt, soon to be strictly mortgaged to an Anglo-American loan (1946) negotiated by Churchill’s successor, Prime Minister Clement Atlee and his new Labour government. The loan would not be finally paid off until 2006.

VE Day in 1945 took place in the context of numbing dislocation in Britain, before and after. Many individual dreams and future hopes had vanished amid the rain of bombs. Hundreds of thousands of people across Britain had lost everything, their homes and businesses gone for good. Britain endured a period of prolonged peacetime austerity between 1945 and 1951. Food rationing remained in place until 1954. Only by 1957 could economists and politicians point to a return to prosperity.

VE Day also took place whilst the Second World War still raged. Fighting ground on in Asia remorselessly, until Japan’s surrender on August 14, formally signed on September 2. The war against Japan cost 90,332 British casualties, including 29,968 killed. In turn, Britain would mark each August 15 as “Victory in Japan Day” (VJ Day).

Today, VE Day remains a key reflection point of the Second World War, particularly among those who remember the joyous street parties as children. Eighty years on, it remains prominent in British, Commonwealth and Allied collective historical memory of the Second World War.

VE Day at 80 will be commemorated across Britain starting May 5, 2025 in national and local events and themed street parties.

Ronan Thomas is a British-based writer who coverers international relations and history. His work has been published by over 40 newspapers, current affairs magazines and online publications.