Historian Rick Atkinson Reflects on the Meaning of VE Day on Its 75th Anniversary

May 8 marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day, commemorating the end of World War II in Europe. "Race to Victory: WWII Europe," a new documentary about the 100 days leading up to May 8, 1945, is premiering May 4 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the Smithsonian Channel.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson is a major player in the film, sharing the expertise he gained from writing the acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about World War II in Europe. "An Army at Dawn," "The Day of Battle" and "Guns at Last Light" are modern classics of popular history, and he's kicked off a new series with 2019's equally acclaimed "The British Are Coming," volume one of a new trilogy about the American Revolution.

"Race to Victory" is scheduled to repeat on May 8 at 8 p.m. ET, and the show will be streaming on the Smithsonian Channel apps.

Atkinson spoke to us about Victory in Europe Day and why it's important to commemorate the particulars of that particular milestone in WWII history.

Military.com: Do you have a theory as to why VE Day doesn't get the same attention as D-Day or Pearl Harbor Day here in the United States?

Atkinson: It's been completely overshadowed by current events. I think that's entirely attributable to the pandemic. I've written a piece for The Wall Street Journal, and I'm sure that there are others scribbling and opining and whatnot, but it's hard to break through the noise of COVID-19.

Plus, there are diminishing returns on anniversary celebrations regardless of the event. VE Day doesn't quite have the resonance for Americans that the invasion of Normandy does. Of course, the end of the war is bifurcated with VJ day.I suspect that there are millions of people who don't know the difference between them. I don't think it's because people don't really care. I think it's because people are preoccupied.

Military.com: Of course, "The Guns at Last Light," the third book in your World War II trilogy, is an antidote to this, but it seems like people don't know much about the fighting that went on in the spring of 1945. It's almost like there's a collective gap in the public mind between June 6, 1944, and the dropping of the atomic bomb in August 1945.

Atkinson: I think there were 10,400 Americans killed in action in Germany in April 1945, the last full month of the war in Europe, which has almost as many as were killed in June 1944, the month of invasion.

The war was awful until the very end, virtually to the last gunshot. Many people know that the invasion occurred in June 1944 and then something nasty happened at the Battle of the Bulge that winter. But for the most part, they believe there was a glide path to victory.

Of course, things were a lot more difficult than that. There were battles like the Hurtgen Forest that were as ugly as any fighting that occurred anywhere in the world during the war. I've tried to do my part to educate people, but it's hard to break through, especially 75 years after the fact when you've now got three living generations who have no direct knowledge of the war and whose knowledge of the particulars is pretty sketchy.

Military.com: Sometimes at the end of a war, it seems like a culture makes a collective decision to ignore certain things as a way to move forward. There was an incredible amount of destruction in those few months and an immense amount of civilian casualties. Do you think there's either consciously or subconsciously a desire to just not talk about that part so much?

Atkinson: Obviously, for 75 years, there's been a fair amount of hoopla commemorating the war in one form or another and including the events leading up to VE day. I lived in Brooklyn for three years and, even there, May 8 was a pretty significant time of remembrance and reflection.

But it's certainly true that after every cataclysm people need to get on with it. Soldiers who were in Europe, my father among them, got home in the late summer of 1945 and they wanted to go to school or get married or go back to their families or get back to work.

That was generally the feeling among all 130 million Americans at that time. There are certainly events in those dark months of late 1944 and the first half of 1945 that were just pushed aside as part of the national effort to focus on the Pacific. It wasn't clear what was going to happen there on May 8, 1945.

I'm not quite sure the shooting at Paderborn or any of the other nastiness that occurred in the first few months in 1945 doesn't quite get the attention. It's not quite as dramatic, and there was an inevitability to the outcome. So maybe that's part of it too.

Military.com: As someone who knows as much about VE as anyone alive now, what do you think we should reflect on this May 8?

Atkinson: I've spent 15 years of my life thinking about the war. Now, I'm back a little farther in time in the 18th century. The first thing that all of us need to acknowledge and commemorate is the fact that, of the 16.1 million Americans who were in uniform during World War II, fewer than 400,000 of them are still alive today. And that number is shrinking rapidly.

A soldier once said, "No war is really over until the last veteran dies." By that standard, we're getting close to the point where World War II is really over. So that's important.

The postwar period that began in Europe on May 8, 1945, has extended now for 75 years and given us extraordinary things. First of all, it provided the institutions of stability that have been vital to preserving the peace and prosperity for the most part, including NATO and the United Nations, even if those seem increasingly brittle, if not superannuated.

The history of those institutions and the purpose of those institutions and the entire postwar construct that begins on May 8 was a new beginning for civilization, as well as the end of the biggest, baddest war in the history of the species. We should all recognize that those institutions were vital and remain vital.

We've seen an erosion of American leadership. We see it today in the COVID-19 pandemic, and it's tragic. There were 291,000 Americans killed in action in World War II. The 400,000 Americans altogether who died during the war, died for something. They died for the subsequent 75 years that we have enjoyed. It's vitally important that their sacrifice and contributions will be remembered, commemorated and affirmed, and that we build on what they built, what they provided for us. So I think that VE Day is a really important moment for reflection, even as we're preoccupied with other important and critical and alarming things that are going on in the world today.

Military.com: When will we see the next installment in your history of the American Revolution?

Atkinson: Well, I don't have anything else on my hands right here, right now. I'm hard at it, hammer and tongs. We're coming up on the first anniversary of when volume one came out. It took me 15 years to do the three volumes for World War II. I have no illusions that this will be any quicker.

It's too early to forecast when volume two will be published. … I am working hard on it, but it'll be several years still. Those of us toiling in this Revolutionary vineyard are aware of a new word in our vocabulary: a semiquincentennial, which means 250th.

The semiquincentennial for the American revolution begins in earnest in 2025 with the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord. Then, we'll have the usual parade of commemorations, including the Declaration of Independence and all of that right through 2033, which will be the 250th anniversary of the treaty of Paris. We all have our eye on that date in 2025, 2026, and I certainly have my eye on it too.