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"God makes no ado. He does not defend Himself. He suffers men to blaspheme. His enemies make a murmuring but he refrains. And much of what is said is awfully true - for those who utter it. To men, to nations, God is silent; there is no God. Their ears are closed so that they cannot hear. They who love the darkness have it. To those who will not listen, God does not speak."


Tokyo's Response to the News of the German Surrender (Yank Magazine, 1945)

When Tokyo heard that Nazi Germany had cried uncle and surrendered to the Allies on May 8, 1945, the Imperial Japanese spin-machine digested the news and simply decided that it was a non-event.

Articles about the daily hardships in post-war Germany can be read by clicking here.


The German Surrender (Yank Magazine, 1945)

The attached article is an eye-witness account of the World War II surrender proceedings in Reims, France in the early days of May, 1945. Written in the patois of the 1940s American soldier (which sounded a good deal like the movies of the time), this article describes the goings-on that day by members of the U.S. Army's 201st Military Police Company, who were not impressed in the least by the likes of German General Gustav Jodl or his naval counterpart, Admiral Hans von Friedeburg.

Surrender or not, the Germans continued killing their enemies for hours after their capitulation - you can read about that here

Click here to read how the Army intended to transfer men from the ETO to the Pacific Theater.

VE-Day in Europe (Yank Magazine, 1945)

Assorted reports from various European capitols concerning the capitulation of Hitler's Germany:

"Finally, when Paris believed the news, it was just a big-city celebration --crowds and singing and cheers and lots of cognac and girls. People stopped work and airplanes of all the Allied forces buzzed the Champs Elysees. Pvt. Ernest Kuhn of Chicago listened to the news come over the radio at the 108th General Hospital. He had just been liberated after five months in a Nazi PW camp and he still had some shrapnel in his throat. "I listened to Churchill talk", he said, "and I kept saying to myself, 'I'm still alive. The war is over and I'm still alive' I thought of all the guys in the 28th Division Band with me who were dead now. We used to be a pretty good band."

Click here to read how the Army intended to transfer men from the ETO to the Pacific Theater.

VE-Day in the U.S. of A. (Yank Magazine, 1945)

A report from Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Minneapolis, St Louis and Springfield (Mass.) as to how VE-Day was celebrated (or not) in these cities:

"To get an over-all view of VE-day in America, Yank asked civilian newspapermen and staff writers in various parts of the country to send an eye-witness reports. From these OPs the reports were much the same. Dallas was quiet, Des Moines was sober, Seattle was calm, Boston was staid."


VE-Day in Paris (Yank Magazine, 1945)

Eyewitness accounts of all the excitement that was V.E. Day in Paris:

"On the Champs Elysees they were singing 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary,' and it was a long way even the few blocks from Fouquet's restaurant to the Arc de Triomphe if you tried to walk up the Champs on VE-Day in Paris. From one side of the broad and beautiful avenue to the other, all the way to the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe in the Place de l'Etoile, there was hardly any place to breathe and no place at all to move. That was the way it was in the Place l'Opera and the Place de la Republique and all the other famous spots and in a lot of obscure little side streets that nobody but Parisians know."

Click here to read about the liberation of Paris.


VE-Day in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Record, 1945)

The citizens of Philadelphia took the news calmly. There were isolated pockets of tremendous joy, but many were wary because they had celebrated the event the previous month when a false rumor had circulated.

"Many soldiers and sailors were gathered in small groups in Market, Walnut and Chestnut streets. One said: 'Even if it's true, it doesn't mean a thing. It's over for us when we get out of this uniform.'"


The Civil War Begins (NY Times, 1861)

"The ball has opened. War is inaugurated. The batteries of Sullivan's Island, Morris Island and other points were opened on Fort Sumpter at 4 'oclock this morning... The answer to General Beauregard's demand by Major Anderson was that he would surrender when his supplies were exhausted, that is, if he was not reinforced."

Here are the dispatches from Charleston that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on April 13, 1861.


The U.S. Navy at War's End (All Hands Magazine, 1945)

"During the final days of the war, the Navy's carrier aircraft concentrated on northern Honshu, inflicting heavy damage on industrial targets of Hamaishi on the ninth of August. One of the last blows struck, however, was directed at Wake Island, where the Japs had scored one of their earliest victories of this war."


H.L. Mencken: Not Impressed with Lincoln (The Smart Set, 1920)

As far as culture critic and all-around nay-sayer H.L. Mencken was concerned, Abraham Lincoln was simply another opportunist who fed at the federal trough and he found himself at a loss when it came to understanding the American deification of the man. It seemed that even Jefferson Davis might have had an easier time uttering a few sweet words to describe Lincoln then did the "Bard of Baltimore". Yet, there was one contribution Lincoln made that Mencken applauded, the Gettysburg Address:

"It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection --the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it [in other speeches]. It is genuinely stupendous."

(Although, like any unreconstructed Confederates, he thought the argument was all a bunch of rot.)