To understand what war mean to us just one fact:
”Casualties of the Soviet Union from all related causes were over 20,000,000, both civilians and military, although the statistics vary to a great extent largely”.
For our family, Victory Day always has been the day of remembrance and respect to all veterans and fallen heroes. We remember all civilians who worked in extreme hostile environments of war time to help their country to win this terrible war. We remember those who did not survive this terrible time.
My and my wife’s grandfathers were at World War II fighting Nazi and their allies and were killed. They died as heroes protecting their country and people.
Looking back from this time I proudly can say that they saved many innocent people in different countries from Nazi’s genocide.
Those starting the war had their own agenda, but those who protected their country and people had no choice but fight back till the victory.
As children we were taught that any war is bad and no reason can justify because wars destroy human lives and countries.
Please remember and respect the price our countries paid to liberate European countries and countries in Far East during World War II.
Military Cemetery in Zary, Poland
My wife’s grandfather from father’s side was killed in fight near Odessa in 1941, protecting Odessa city. Place of burial unknown.
Grandfather from mothers’ side was killed in fight near Leningrad (St. Petersburg now) in 1943, protecting Leningrad. Place of burial unknown.
My grandmother’s brother fought Nazis for 4 years and was killed in a battle on April 5, 1945, only one month before the Victory day.
He is buried at the War Cemetery in Cmentarz Wojskowy w Żarach – Military Cemetery – Zary, Poland
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke
Victory Day on May 8 and May 9 Two separate capitulation events took place at the time
Tuesday 8 May 1945 was ‘Victory in Europe’ (VE) Day, and it marked the formal end of Hitler’s war.
With it came the end of six years of misery, suffering, courage and endurance across the world.
Two separate capitulation events took place at the time. First, the capitulation to the Allied nations in Reims was signed on 7 May 1945, effective 23:01 CET 8 May. This date is commonly referred to as the V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day) in most western European countries. The other World War II victory day, the V-J day (Victory in Japan Day) is commemorated in August, and is of considerably lesser significance in Europe.
However, the Soviet Union’s only representative in Reims was General Ivan Susloparov, the Military Liaison Mission Commander. General Susloparov’s scope of authority was not entirely clear, and he had no means of immediate contact with the Kremlin, but nevertheless decided to sign for the Soviet side.
Susloparov was caught off guard; he had no instructions from Moscow. But if he did not sign, he risked a German surrender without Soviet participation. However, he noted that it could be replaced with a new version in the future. Joseph Stalin was later displeased by these events, believing that the German surrender should have been accepted only by the envoy of the USSR Supreme command and signed only in Berlin and insisted the Reims protocol be considered preliminary, with the main ceremony to be held in Berlin, where Marshal Zhukov was at the time, as the latter recounts in his memoirs:
“ [Quoting Stalin:] Today, in Reims, Germans signed the preliminary act on an unconditional surrender.The main contribution, however, was done by Soviet people and not by the Allies, therefore the capitulation must be signed in front of the Supreme Command of all countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, and not only in front of the Supreme Command of Allied Forces. Moreover, I disagree that the surrender was not signed in Berlin, which was the center of Nazi aggression. We agreed with the Allies to consider the Reims protocol as preliminary. ” (
Therefore, another ceremony was organized in a surviving manor in the outskirts of Berlin late on 8 May, when it was already 9 May in Moscow due to the difference in time zones. Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel submitted the capitulation of the Wehrmacht to Marshal Georgy Zhukov in the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst. To commemorate the victory in the war, the ceremonial Moscow Victory Parade was held in the Soviet capital on 24 June 1945 (four years and two days after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa – the invasion of the Soviet Union).
Victory Day Parade in Moscow every year May 9
Victory Day 9 May marks the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union in the Second World War (also known as the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union). It was first inaugurated in the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union, following the signing of the surrender document late in the evening on 8 May 1945 (after midnight, thus on 9 May, by Moscow Time). The Soviet government announced the victory early on 9 May after the signing ceremony in Berlin.
Though the official inauguration happened in 1945 (which means it has been celebrated since 1946), the holiday became a non-labour day only in 1965 and only in some of the countries.
In the former Soviet Union this festival was celebrated to commemorate the Red Army’s victory over the Nazi forces.
National WWII Memorial “Save Our History” Teachers Guide and Interactive TimelineThe History Channel� developed a teacher’s manual that accompanied its special on the National World War II Memorial. You can download the guide by clicking on the links below. The document is in two parts and can be viewed with Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. (Download Adobe Acrobat Reader here.)
Note: The American Battle Monuments Commission is no longer raising funds for the WWII Memorial. Please do not implement the fund raising suggestions provided in chapter IV of the Teacher’s Guide unless for a cause other than the National WWII Memorial.
The War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick This documentary film tells the story of the Second World War through personal accounts of men and women from four American towns. – http://www.pbs.org/thewar/
Fifth Symphony was written in 1804–1808. It is one of the most popular and best-known compositions in classical music, and one of the most frequently played symphonies.
First performed in Vienna‘s Theater an der Wien in 1808, the work achieved its prodigious reputation soon afterwards. E. T. A. Hoffmann described the symphony as “one of the most important works of the time”.
It begins by stating a distinctive four-note “short-short-short-long” motif twice: (listen (help·info))
The symphony, and the four-note opening motif in particular, are well known worldwide, with the motif appearing frequently in popular culture, from disco to rock and roll, to appearances in film and television.
The opening of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.
Guerrieri writes about how Beethoven’s piece resonated with everyone from revolutionaries to Romantics, and German nationalists to anti-German resistance fighters.
So many people have found so much meaning in just those first four notes. But Guerrieri says that we really don’t know all that much of what Beethoven meant by them.
“The most common story that is told is that Beethoven allegedly said that the opening of the symphony was supposedly symbolizing fate knocking at the door. And this is probably an invention of his biographer, although we can’t really tell,” Guerrieri tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. “The other story going around at the time that Beethoven wrote it was that he had gotten the opening motif from the song of a bird. And that story just sort of fell away as the fate symbolism took over. But in Beethoven’s time, and to Beethoven, that actually would have been a fairly noble way of getting a musical idea.”
A Romantic ‘Bombshell,’ Delivered By Beethoven’s Fifth
English: Trio from Beethoven’s 3rd. Symphony (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In his book, Guerrieri writes:
“The Romantic era [of the early 19th century] never really ended … Every time a singer-songwriter is praised for projecting autobiographical authenticity, every time a movie star expresses the desire for a project that is ‘more personal,’ every time a flop is subsequently recategorized as a before-its-time masterpiece, all these are reverberations of the bombshell of Romanticism. And one of its pre-eminent delivery systems was Beethoven’s Fifth.”
The author adds: “I think that the Romantic era is another thing that we just sort of take for granted, because they’ve kind of always been there for us. But it’s amazing how many of these ideas were new around the time that Beethoven was writing music. The whole idea that music picks up where language leaves off — which is pretty much a cliche nowadays — that was a very specific Romantic idea, and it’s one that lasted. Also, the idea that the artist is somehow more privileged in accessing these things beyond language, in accessing the sublime, in accessing glimpses of the divine, however you want to characterize it. A lot of the ideas we use to talk about music are these ideas.”
And how to play those four notes? “The two things that have been argued about more than any other technical aspect of the opening are the tempo and the fermata that Beethoven stuck in the opening,” says Guerrieri. “A fermata is an indefinite hold — the conductor can hold onto a note as long as he wants.”
The question of tempo relates back to an interesting story Guerrieri tells in his book. The metronome was an invention of Beethoven’s day; he didn’t have access to it when he was writing his early symphonies. But later, he came into contact with it and loved the device. “He immediately buys one and sits down and starts going back over all his old scores and putting in metronome markings,” Guerrieri says. “And he picked a tempo for the Fifth Symphony that even today sounds really, astonishingly fast.”
The setting he chose was 108 beats per minute — so fast, so hard to play, Guerrieri says, that people have been theorizing for centuries about why Beethoven might have mismarked his own symphony. A broken metronome? Advancing deafness? Nobody knows.
Dah-Dah-Dah-Duh For ‘Victory’
Here’s one other story Guerrieri writes about those first four notes: In World War II, the anti-German resistance in occupied Belgium needed a simple graffiti symbol. A Belgian came up with the letter “V.” It stood equally for victoire — “victory” in French — and freiheit, or “freedom,” in Flemish. “Once that ‘V’ idea got back to the BBC and they wanted to start using it in their overseas broadcasts,” says Guerrieri, “it was at the BBC that they had the idea of combining it with the Morse code for ‘V’: three short and one long. Somebody at the BBC realized that matches Beethoven’s Fifth. So they could start using that as a little tag to symbolize that [something] was going to be a pro-Ally, propaganda broadcast from the BBC.”
For our family, Victory Day always has been the day of remembrance and respect to all veterans and fallen heroes. We remember all civilians who worked in extreme hostile environments of war time to help their country to win this terrible war. We remember those who did not survive this terrible time.
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