What do you think?
Rate this book
The Day the War Ended: May 8, 1945 - Victory in Europe
One of Britain’s most acclaimed historians presents the experiences and ramifications of the last day of World War II in Europe
May 8, 1945, 23:30 hours: With war still raging in the Pacific, peace comes at last to Europe as the German High Command in Berlin signs the final instrument of surrender. After five years and eight months, the war in Europe is officially over.
This is the story of that single day and of the days leading up to it. Hour by hour, place by place, this masterly history recounts the final spasms of a continent in turmoil. Here are the stories of combat soldiers and ordinary civilians, collaborators and resistance fighters, statesmen and war criminals, all recounted in vivid, dramatic detail. But this is more than a moment-by-moment account, for Sir Martin Gilbert uses every event as a point of departure, linking each to its long-term consequences over the following half century. In our attempts to understand the world we inherited in 1945, there is no better starting point than The Day the War Ended.
May 8, 1945, 23:30 hours: With war still raging in the Pacific, peace comes at last to Europe as the German High Command in Berlin signs the final instrument of surrender. After five years and eight months, the war in Europe is officially over.
This is the story of that single day and of the days leading up to it. Hour by hour, place by place, this masterly history recounts the final spasms of a continent in turmoil. Here are the stories of combat soldiers and ordinary civilians, collaborators and resistance fighters, statesmen and war criminals, all recounted in vivid, dramatic detail. But this is more than a moment-by-moment account, for Sir Martin Gilbert uses every event as a point of departure, linking each to its long-term consequences over the following half century. In our attempts to understand the world we inherited in 1945, there is no better starting point than The Day the War Ended.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
14 people are currently reading
159 people want to read
About the author
Martin Gilbert
249 books417 followersThe official biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian on the Twentieth Century, Sir Martin Gilbert was a scholar and an historian who, though his 88 books, has shown there is such a thing as “true history”
Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”
https://twitter.com/sirmartin36
https://www.facebook.com/sirmartingil...
Born in London in 1936, Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School, and Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. He was a Research Scholar at St Anthony's College, and became a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1962, and an Honorary Fellow in 1994. After working as a researcher for Randolph Churchill, Gilbert was chosen to take over the writing of the Churchill biography upon Randolph's death in 1968, writing six of the eight volumes of biography and editing twelve volumes of documents. In addition, Gilbert has written pioneering and classic works on the First and Second World Wars, the Twentieth Century, the Holocaust, and Jewish history.
Gilbert drove every aspect of his books, from finding archives to corresponding with eyewitnesses and participants that gave his work veracity and meaning, to finding and choosing illustrations, drawing maps that mention each place in the text, and compiling the indexes. He travelled widely lecturing and researching, advised political figures and filmmakers, and gave a voice and a name “to those who fought and those who fell.”
https://twitter.com/sirmartin36
https://www.facebook.com/sirmartingil...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 21, 2021
On May 8th, 1945, my late father was a 19 year old GI in the U.S. Army serving with a segregated unit of General Patton's Third Army in Czechoslovakia. I remember him telling me that when they received news of the German surrender, everyone celebrated and got extremely drunk.
Reading this book with its distillation of the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike on May 8, 1945 was a very touching experience for me. I almost felt as if I were there. In fact, I almost wish I had been among them in Europe on that day, just to be able to fully appreciate what my Dad's feelings must have been after surviving nearly a year of combat.
Reading this book with its distillation of the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike on May 8, 1945 was a very touching experience for me. I almost felt as if I were there. In fact, I almost wish I had been among them in Europe on that day, just to be able to fully appreciate what my Dad's feelings must have been after surviving nearly a year of combat.
March 21, 2021
I believe this is the best oral history of the end of WW2 in the European Theater.
February 19, 2019
Reminiscences of soldiers, civilians, students, POW's, allies and others relating to the end of the war in Europe (V-E Day). Not all was happiness; the war in the Pacific was on-going, soldiers were concerned about having to participate in the invasions of Japan (est. up to 900,000 soldiers could lose their lives in the invasion); families grieving for sons, family, daughters, husbands and wives who would not return from the war or who were grievously injured; the allies and the agreements that determined vast territorial changes, return of Soviet POW's who were incarcerates to the Gulag; homeless people in vast DP camps who had no families and homes to return to; families kicked out of the Sudetenland and walking west to avoid the on-coming Soviet army; liberation and horrors of the concentrations camps. So much history.................
December 15, 2017
a) finished
b) The appeal being made in this book is sympathetic because not only does the author use stories of WWII survivors, but his own personal story of how it affected him and his family in order to further explain his point. By getting different point of views, understanding the situation is a lot easier than it would normally be when reading only the author's opinion.
b) The appeal being made in this book is sympathetic because not only does the author use stories of WWII survivors, but his own personal story of how it affected him and his family in order to further explain his point. By getting different point of views, understanding the situation is a lot easier than it would normally be when reading only the author's opinion.
October 16, 2016
One of the best WWII histories that I've read!
June 23, 2020
A great perspective and resource for research or just the enjoyment of looking back at history and learning from it. The author does a great job of being thorough, and it was a wonderful book to seek information.
July 24, 2024
very detailed and interesting
The author uses lots of primary sources mainly interviews and letters from people both military and non military in the lead up to VE Day and the weeks afterwards. I enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.
The author uses lots of primary sources mainly interviews and letters from people both military and non military in the lead up to VE Day and the weeks afterwards. I enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.
March 24, 2011
This book covers the day and weeks leading up to and after VE-Day 1945 throughout the world, the celebrations in free and occupied lands, the reactions of soldiers, prisoners, civilians and world leaders, the aftermath of the war in Europe and the Pacific. It's very well-written and very comprehensive, with contributions and memories from an enormous range of people throughout the world, and it's fascinating to read just how people celebrated those momentous days. The descriptions of liberation by the concentration camp victims are particularly heart-wrenching, as one would expect.
February 16, 2014
Martin Gilbert is wonderful, as always. This book shows what things were like as war ended in Europe and later in Japan. Gilbert uses a lot of primary sources. Once again, I am mad at Russians and Germans and Japanese for what happened in WWII! There are some lessons we should learn from this period in history and I don't think we are paying attention...
September 22, 2016
This book made me aware of the challenges that they had during World War 2.This book also really focused on the reaction of the ending of world war 2, soldiers, people everybody had a voice in this book which I found was very unique. This story had a lot of content which was hard to understand but it was very intreating to know the facts about world war 2.
March 9, 2015
Very in depth. Slow. Too much on the Holocaust, and not enough on the soldiers.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews