Churchill tells the crowd it's their victory, and they disagree
What happened
German Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl signed an unconditional surrender at Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims on 7 May; at Soviet insistence, a second, nearly identical surrender was signed in Berlin the next day by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, giving the war's end two dates depending on which side one asked, 8 May in the West and 9 May in Soviet Russia. President Truman, in office barely a month after Roosevelt's death, announced the surrender by radio. In London, Winston Churchill told the cheering crowds this is your victory; they shouted back, no, it's yours. On the island of Okinawa, still under Japanese attack, American troops marked the moment by firing an artillery barrage at Japanese positions at midnight, a stark reminder that the war was only half over.
Why it matters
V-E Day ended not quite six years of fighting in Europe, but the double surrender, and the double date, was itself a preview of the growing distrust between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union that would harden into the Cold War within a few short years of the celebrations.
How we know
Both surrender documents, signed at Reims and Berlin a day apart, survive in the historical record along with contemporaneous radio broadcasts of Truman's announcement and Churchill's own address to the London crowds.
Sources
- The National WWII Museum. V-E Day: Victory in Europe · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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