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The Tudors
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Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin on April 30 1945. Seven days later, on May 7 at 2.41pm, Germany officially surrendered. The surrender was announced over the radio that night. The next day, in Britain, there were great celebrations. The day was known as VE (Victory in Europe) Day. According to my mother there was singing and dancing in the streets of London, she herself was in a massive crowd outside the Mansion House, and people looked forward to better times. Winston Churchill having led Britain since 1940 made a speech over the radio at 3.00pm. He spoke from the same room that Neville Chamberlain used to announce the declaration of war in September 1939. He appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with the King, Queen and the two princesses. Later he came out to speak to the crowds in London.

This is his speech. “My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole. We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny. After a while we were left all alone against the most tremendous military power that has been seen. We were all alone for a whole year.

There we stood, alone. Did anyone want to give in? [The crowd shouted “No.”] Were we down-hearted? [“No!”] The lights went out and the bombs came down. But every man, woman and child in the country had no thought of quitting the struggle. London can take it. So we came back after long months from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell, while all the world wondered. When shall the reputation and faith of this generation of English men and women fail? I say that in the long years to come not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we’ve done and they will say “do not despair, do not yield to violence and tyranny, march straightforward and die if need be-unconquered.” Now we have emerged from one deadly struggle-a terrible foe has been cast on the ground and awaits our judgement and our mercy.

But there is another foe who occupies large portions of the British Empire, a foe stained with cruelty and greed-the Japanese. I rejoice we can all take a night off today and another day tomorrow. Tomorrow our great Russian allies will also be celebrating victory and after that we must begin the task of rebuilding our hearth and homes, doing our utmost to make this country a land in which all have a chance, in which all have a duty, and we must turn ourselves to fulfil our duty to our own countrymen, and to our gallant allies of the United States who were so foully and treacherously attacked by Japan. We will go hand and hand with them. Even if it is a hard struggle we will not be the ones who will fail.”
 He then conducted the crowd as they sang “Land of Hope and Glory”.

However, as Churchill said, all fighting had not finished as the Japanese were still at war and British troops, including my uncle, were out in Asia. On August 6 1945 the United States air force dropped an atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima and 3 days later on the city of Nagasaki. On August 15 Japan surrendered and signed the surrender document on September 2. In Britain there were celebrations yet again, this time on August 15, called VJ day. The two bombs killed about 130,000 people and thousands more, possibly millions more, died from the after effects of radiation produced by the bomb.

In between the two surrenders, Britain had held a general election. During the war the political parties had all combined into a wartime government. When this ended in May 1945 the Conservative Party, led by Churchill, had a 242 seat majority but, in one of the most surprising elections, the man who had led Britain through the dark days of the war, led them to an ultimate victory, albeit with US help, lost the election and the Labour Party under the leadership of Clement Attlee won power with a 146 seat majority.

It is very hard to know why this happened. Churchill's popularity as a war leader was very high but many people weren't so sure he could lead the rebuilding of Britain. Also the Conservative Party still had MPs who had followed Chamberlain in trying to avoid war and to let Hitler do what he wanted. The Beveridge Report was very popular and Churchill didn't really enthuse about it. Whatever the reason, Britain's greatest wartime leader was now leader of the opposition. And the ordinary people still had to fight on in other areas. Farmers still had to provide food and we had to send some abroad both to our troops that were still there and, as an occupying power, to Germany. We received no more financial support from the United States, the country had no money and we couldn't afford imports. However some food did return to the shops again. On, I think, January 7 1946 every child was given a banana if their parent presented their ration book to a greengrocer. Bananas presumably came from parts of the British Empire which had not been able to send them during the war years.

Let's do what we did for WWI and look at casualties. 383,600 British military deaths occurred during the war and 67,200 British civilians died. In total, around the world, it would seem like 15 million military personnel died, 25 million were wounded and over 45 million civilians were killed. Think about it. Average that out over the whole six years and it works out at 40,000 dying each day. EACH DAY.

Germany not only fought the war but at the same time undertook a massive persecution of Jewish people. They were rounded up and sent off to concentration camps where they either lived in dreadful conditions or were killed in a horrific way in the gas chambers. One of the most famous was a girl called Anne Frank who spent some time hiding in an attic of a house in Amsterdam in the Netherlands before being found and along with her family being sent to a concentration camp where she died sometime in February or March 1945. The reason she became famous was that during her time in hiding she kept a diary which was found after the war and then published.

But war can result in some horrible things being done, even by the people who are fighting evil. In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 722 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city of Dresden. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed over 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city centre. An estimated 22,700 to 25,000 people were killed, although inflated casualty figures have been claimed over the years. Three more USAAF air raids followed, two occurring on 2 March aimed at the city's railroad marshaling yard and one small raid on 17 April aimed at industrial areas.

So, before we move on I just want to give you something to think about and I will use a quote from an ex President of the United States. His name is Jimmy Carter and he once said..............well read it.

Think about the quote because you are the next generation of leaders. We always remember, as we should, the brave men and women who fought for our freedom but we seem to forget the idiots who allowed it to happen. There will always be bad men and women in our world but they can't do much damage on their own. There is no law that says we have to follow them. Killing, maiming, harming, hitting, even bullying, face-to-face or on-line, is an evil. Not in a religious sense because more wars and deaths have been caused by religion than anything else but in a human sense. We don't have to like everyone else but we do have to live on the same planet as them. Remember that. And if you are being bullied and want to write to Owlbut, he'll listen to you. He's pretty wise and he might be able to help

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