The contrasts couldn’t be greater. 75 years ago, thousands of people thronged into central London and other cities, towns and villages to wave flags and, crammed together, sang, danced and embraced. Today there will be none of that. Not for want of celebrating 75 years since victory in Europe was declared, but because we can’t. Save for a few patriotic neighbourhoods who rarely need an excuse to get out the bunting and have a street party, the lockdown has muted, somewhat, the VE Day commemorations.
But before anyone carps, some perspective. Yes, it’s a drag that we can’t celebrate en masse; yes, it’s frustrating that there is a stilted atmosphere to the day that not even a Red Arrows flypast will lift. For some of us, there is little change on the horizon from being confined to base and in some cases of extreme medical risk, confined to quarters with clinical shielding applied. But whatever inconvenience and even financial hardships COVID-19 is bringing - and an existential threat that this represents - 8 May, 1945 should put it into some perspective.
450,000 Britons lost their lives in World War Two, including those fighting in Europe, Africa and the Pacific theatres, as well as those on the home front, enduring almost six years of the Luftwaffe’s bombs and Hitler’s V rockets. When the war formally ended after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the financial sacrifice made by Britain in its defence of liberty had been enormous. Even taking into account the material support that came the UK’s way from the United States, Britain was financially crippled. Post-war national debt peaked in the late 1940s to more than 230% of GDP.
The hardships of wartime rationing on the home front were met by conscripts returning from the war to face unprecedented difficulties that pale into insignificance even when compared to the bleak outlook we face today. Indeed, in 1945, it would be many, many years before the hardships receded, with rationing continuing well into the 1950s. Out of that period, however, emerged the National Health Service, the very institution we now stand on our doorsteps applauding every Thursday evening. The period after the war also produced the longest - and continued - era of global peace and, eventually, prosperity. Organisations like the UN came about. You could even argue that NATO was created to provide a potent buffer to any renewed military ambition from the east. While some of that - particularly the prosperity - may have been arrested by the coronavirus, the optimist must conclude that we will not be in lockdown forever. A recession, predicted to be the worst in 300 years by the Bank of England, may be over faster than any in living memory (though the scars will take longer to heal).
The hardships of wartime rationing on the home front were met by conscripts returning from the war to face unprecedented difficulties that pale into insignificance even when compared to the bleak outlook we face today. Indeed, in 1945, it would be many, many years before the hardships receded, with rationing continuing well into the 1950s. Out of that period, however, emerged the National Health Service, the very institution we now stand on our doorsteps applauding every Thursday evening. The period after the war also produced the longest - and continued - era of global peace and, eventually, prosperity. Organisations like the UN came about. You could even argue that NATO was created to provide a potent buffer to any renewed military ambition from the east. While some of that - particularly the prosperity - may have been arrested by the coronavirus, the optimist must conclude that we will not be in lockdown forever. A recession, predicted to be the worst in 300 years by the Bank of England, may be over faster than any in living memory (though the scars will take longer to heal).
I guess I’m saying that we may still be at the 1941 stage of this pandemic, with no end in sight and an attrition rate ruthlessly keeping us at home (even if the trend is downward, deaths are still equivalent to at least one loaded jumbo jet crashing every single day...). But we have to believe that the summer of 1945 will be here soon. Optimism, even if it was fuelled by a cocktail of patriotic fervour and government propaganda, kept the country going during the Second World War. Today we celebrate and commemorate the incredible suffering of everyone who lived through and fought in that conflict. I think of my own parents (especially my dad who probably only missed a call-up by a couple of years) as teenagers, denied all of the freedoms today’s teens still enjoy, even in the current circumstances. I think of the D-Day soldiers who never made it to the Normandy shore, the Lancaster bomber crews who had a one-in-three chance of coming home alive, and the sailors on Atlantic convoys risking all to bring in vital supplies. And I think of everyone back home who went to work, took on factory jobs and literally put their backs into keeping the country alive. It may sound trite, but we really do have so much to be thankful for.
I have lived in the Netherlands and in France, and have always found fascinating their attitudes to the war. The Dutch, in particular, have two events to commemorate their occupation by the Nazis, and the unfathomable suffering they were subjected to (just look at their war in late 1944 when the Allies were supposedly moving through occupied Europe, and yet the Dutch were being effectively starved to death as the last front of rearguard German defiance). On 4 May, the Netherlands holds its herdenking day (remembrance of the dead), a very sombre commemoration of people who’ve died in all conflicts, including the 70% of the pre-war Dutch Jewish population murdered by the Nazis). On 5 May, the Dutch celebrate Bevrijdingsdag - Liberation Day - a far more colourful and joyous occasion which, as the name suggests celebrates the end of the tyrannous occupation. These two days were always a reminder to me of what the UK escaped, even if that escape came at an incredible price. Life in wartime Britain was one of permanent darkness. Dad’s Army might caricature the stiffened upper lips of bucolic Warmington-on-Sea, but it rarely captured the extent of austerity, of making-do, of living, literally, off meagre rations. Now we’re past the initial madness of toilet paper shortages and tinned tomatoes going missing at least our supermarkets are stocked, Deliveroo will bring a family feast to the doorstep at the touch of an app, and with some obvious exceptions, we are comfortable. We have so much to be thankful for today.
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