From 8 May to 23 June: a link which shows what matters

Seventy-one years ago today, something remarkable happened. Remarkable for Europe, or at least the Western bit. Remarkable even for the rest of the world, since it kept getting sucked into European quarrels.

What happened on 8 May 1945? The Second World War in Europe came to an end. That moment marked the end of centuries of conflict, constantly erupting anew, ever since the Roman Empire collapsed.

Field Marshal Keitel signs the military surrender of Germany,
ushering in seven decades of peace in Western Europe

Take the last three centuries. In the 18th, we got the War of Spanish Succession out of the way, only to see the outbreak of the War of Polish Succession twenty or so years later and, blow me down, a decade after that, the War of Austrian Succession.

Tired of this succession of wars of Succession, we next had a go at a war based on the passage of time – the seven-year war. After all, the thirty-year war in the previous century had been such a good lark, and this one packed in almost as much excitement in a much shorter time. It was also the first world war waged by the European powers, with major theatres in India and in North America (where the locals called it the French and Indian war).

We also had some impressive colonial conflicts, most notably between the British and the same Americans, with the French joining in to give their rivals across the Channel a bloody nose (which they successfully did).

Little more than ten years after that, we got stuck into the Napoleonic wars which managed to last nearly a quarter of a century and cover pretty much the whole of Europe, right out to Moscow.

That left people tired for a while, but we still managed some colonial battles within Europe – notably the Austrians in Italy, with the French getting involved. Meanwhile, the Prussians, beginning to exert their new-found power, fought the Austrians, the Saxons, the Danes – basically anyone who seemed in their way.

Which led neatly to the Franco-Prussian war. That meant France losing territory to the German Empire which, to add insult to injury, was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. The bitterness made inevitable the First World War (which was far from the first) forty years later; it didn’t get sorted out, so the Second World War broke out to wrap up the loose ends twenty years after that.

Those two wars were so close together that a great many fought in both. One of my grandfathers was in the artillery in World War One, taking an injury that gave him bother for the rest of his life; in World War Two, he was back in service but in the Fleet Air Arm, though serving on the ground, since he was too old for combat.

My other grandfather spent two years in gaol in the First World War, in company with Bertrand Russell among others, for refusing to fight. In the Second, however, as a Jew he felt he had to do what he could against Hitler, and joined the Air Raid Precaution service.

Through most of my childhood, I fully expected that when I reached adulthood, there’d be another conflict of this kind in which I, like my father and his father, would be called on to take part.

Well, it didn’t happen. Seven decades on from that remarkable day in May 1945, France, Britain, Austria, Italy, Germany have managed to remain at peace. Unheard of. Unprecedented.

Why is it so important for the rest of the world? Well, look at what happened in WW1 and WW2: so many other countries found themselves sucked in. Even those that remained neutral were affected by the disruption the world suffered, many having to impose rationing on foodstuffs and other essentials.

A French friend of mine was four when he saw his father for the last time. The Gestapo called to arrest him in 1940. The family never heard of him again.

He told me that story soon after the Euro was introduced. With tears in his eyes, he said that he would never have believed before that he would use the same currency as them, over there – gesturing towards the Rhine, just a few kilometres from his front door. He said it with a relief so strong that it bordered on joy. The Euro represented to him the latest brick in a wall between our nations and war – a wall built by tearing down the one that had previously separated the nations themselves.

That’s what we tend to lose sight of when we debate European construction in Britain. We talk about trade, or the movement of production and jobs, or immigration. We sadly don’t talk about all the good that has come from the longest period of sustained peace our countries have seen.

Make no mistake. The European Union is merely the expression of the efforts we have made over seven decades to secure that peace. To put an end to that long, dreary, destructive and bloodthirsty succession of wars that have afflicted us.

If on 23 June Britain votes to leave the EU, be under no illusion, it will be turning its back on all that painful work of peaceful construction.

Think of the bombing of Coventry or Dresden, of the extermination camps, of the Battles of Passchendaele or Jutland or Cassino or the Bulge, of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and ask yourselves: is that really such a smart move?

May the Eighth

The 8th of May. Funny old day. Here’s what the Guardian had to say about unusual events in Dublin:

“About 3 p.m. passers-by in the centre of the city were surprised to see students of Trinity College hoisting the Union Jack and the Red Flag over the main entrance to the University.... A large crowd gathered and the students assembled at the window and sang [...] ‘Rule Britannia!’ amidst an outburst of booing from the crowd.”

Unheard of. A few windows got broken and soon enough the Union Jacks came down, but still – the British flag flown and celebrated in Dublin?

But strange sights were seen in London too. “Five years ago it would have seemed the wildest of dreams that Soviet flags would fly in triumph in the City of London, as they are doing today...”

Wild indeed.

By now you’ll have guessed that these extracts from the Guardian don’t come from today’s issue, but from this day 69 years ago. The day, 8 May 1945, when Germany surrendered to the Allies and ended the Second World War in Europe.

8 May 1945, VE Day: when the Second World War ended in Europe

In a third article, the Guardian remarked: 

“Not the Beginning of the End but the End of the Beginning, said Winston Churchill after Africa. Today he might well say: Not the End but the Beginning.” 

It was thinking of the huge job of reconstruction that lay ahead.

It ended that piece:

“In his last speech – which sadly he was not able to deliver – President Roosevelt wrote, ‘More that an end to war we want an end to the beginning of all wars – an end to this brutal, inhuman, unpractical method of settling differences...’”

Since 8 May 1945, Britain has not known a single entire day when it has not been involved in war somewhere in the world. It’s just possible that when we get to the 70th anniversary of that victory, in 2015, this country will at last be at peace everywhere, for the first time in a century.

Then we might begin to approach the ideal Roosevelt referred to.

In the meantime, we can celebrate the victory, but I suggest in a muted way. Which, curiously, is much the way the nation celebrated it then, despite the students in Dublin. On 9 May 1945, the Guardian again reported:

“After five years of ‘blood and tears and sweat’ the British people found it difficult to express their joy and relief. We are a little out of practice. Many could not find it in their hearts to rejoice when there is still so much suffering in Europe as well as another war to win.”

I remember my mother saying much the same. There was a sense of relief in London that night, and a pleasure at seeing the lights come in the evening for the first time in over five years, instead of the constant blackout. But there was not great outburst of celebration. There was still the war in the far East to win. There was a lot too much to do.

A lot has since been done. We have, for instance, built a European Union in large part to stop such wars happenig again. But it has a long way to go and, today more than ever, a generation that has forgotten what it protects us against, is trying to dismantle it. Even the small steps we have taken towards ending “this brutal, inhuman, unpractical method of settling differences” are under threat.

But that’s enough of the gloom and the caution. There are ironies to the 8 May anniversary too, and I enjoyed them greatly when we lived on the Franco-German border. The French have a public holiday on that day, but some of my French friends didn’t realise that they could still do their shopping if they came across to Germany.

“Don’t they celebrate it, then?” they asked.

Oddly enough, no they don’t. Few countries in Europe are as opposed to Nazism as Germany. But they still don’t hold a party to mark a national defeat.

On the other hand, they’re vigilant against any renewed rise of the nationalism that precipitated a conflict in which their ancestors inflicted and underwent so much suffering. They snuffed out their neo-Nazis quickly when they started to make progress in the eighties. And they give the strongest support to the ideals of the European Union.

An example that we, who were on the victorious side on that 8th May, would do well to follow.