{"id":9206,"date":"2015-05-07T01:56:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T01:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9206"},"modified":"2015-05-07T01:56:01","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T01:56:01","slug":"v-e-day-still-resonates-70-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9206","title":{"rendered":"V-E Day still resonates 70 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Seventy years ago a huge chapter in the world’s greatest armed conflict came to a close.<\/p>\n

The Red Army reached Berlin on its march from what was then known as the Soviet Union. It had beaten back the Third Reich and in a race to the German capital city with the force led by American and British troops advancing from the west, they crossed the “finish line.”<\/p>\n

They accepted the Germans’ surrender and the war in Europe came to a close.<\/p>\n

It’s called Victory in Europe Day. V-E Day.<\/p>\n

The millions of men from allied nations performed acts of heroism against the Nazi war machine that cannot be forgotten.<\/p>\n

Those men are all old now. They’re in their late 80s and 90s. They’re dying by the thousands daily. Those who remain — be they American, British, French, Russian or from any of the nations allied in the fight against tyranny — deserve our eternal gratitude.<\/p>\n

It’s been said in the seven decades since the surrender that our<\/em> side — the Americans and Brits — should have gotten to Berlin first.<\/p>\n

But the Red Army got the jump on the American-led forces advancing from Normandy. They turned back the Nazis at Stalingrad in winter of 1942-43. Our forces wouldn’t land on the French coast until June 6, 1944. By the time our men slogged ashore, the Red Army had begun its advance on Germany.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, the Soviets were able to claim Berlin as their captured capital and the carving up of Germany into western and eastern regions — independent of each other, with the east being controlled by the communists in Moscow — would become a source of tension that helped trigger a Cold War that lasted until 1991.<\/p>\n

But the struggle that engulfed Europe had come to an end. There would be smaller conflicts that flared immediately after World War II. Greece fought a civil war between royalists and communists. Hungary would erupt in rebellion against the Soviets in 1956. Czechoslovakia would do the same in 1968.<\/p>\n

But on May 7, 1945 — with Adolf Hitler dead in his bunker under the ruins of his city — the good guys defeated the 20th century’s most evil tyranny.<\/p>\n

World War II wouldn’t end until September 1945. We still had another enemy to fight in the Pacific. The European fight, though, was over.<\/p>\n

The task of rebuilding a shattered continent would begin.<\/p>\n

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Seventy years ago a huge chapter in the world’s greatest armed conflict came to a close. The Red Army reached Berlin on its march from what was then known as the Soviet Union. It had beaten back the Third Reich and in a race to the German capital city with the force led by American … Continue reading V-E Day still resonates 70 years later<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}