VE Day to Virtu

VE Day to Virtu

It was 64 years ago that the scourges of Nazism and Fascism were defeated on the European continent. On May 7 and 8, 1945, the Allies accepted Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in Reims and Berlin. It was called Victory in Europe Day (VE Day). One of the most heinous regimes in human history, Hitler's Third Reich, was finally defeated. As Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin on April 30 1945, the German surrender was signed by Karl Donitz, Hitler's replacement as Germany's President. The war in the East would drag on for a number of months, before the terrible spectre of two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively.

In Germany, France, Britain, Czech Republic, and Slovakia May 8 is a public holiday to commemorate the triumph over Fascism and Nazism. The Soviet national holiday is on May 9, with its attendant painful memories of the Great Patriotic War that saw a staggering 30 million die in the fight against Nazism. Millions more Soviets perished under Stalin's gulags, forced deportations, and famines.

VE Day reminds us that we might live in a very different world had the Nazis won. It is also instructive because it showed that virtu was on the side of the Allies. Virtu is a word popularized by the Florentine political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527). It does not connote moral virtue, but rather the leadership, skills, wisdom, intelligence, guile, political realism, and willpower of rulers. In the end, VE Day was possible because Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin combined to have more virtu than Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Franco, and company. They also had more fortuna, the dose of fortune or luck that was necessary for these leaders to lead their peoples to victory in wars of self-defense against Nazi expansionism.

At what a horrendous cost! An estimated 70 million people paid with their lives on all sides, with a staggering 50 million civilians. 25 million soldiers died, many so young they did not even fall in love once. The Allies paid the heaviest burden: 60 million dead. It was the deadliest conflict in human history.

I once saw a Japanese movie with this epigraph, which sums up my disdain for war: "There is no such thing as a holy war." Wars can never be holy, even if the cause was righteous like the struggle against Nazism. They are not holy because in killing others we kill ourselves. In asking for soldiers to kill and be killed, they are forever filled with a valley of tears. Civilians also pay too heavy a price, as new technological innovations led to greater civilian casualties. Furthermore, honourable soldiers cannot rejoice at the site of their dead enemies because those soldiers are like them: Men with hopes and dreams, families and friends, joys and pains.

One million people celebrated VE Day on May 8, 1945 in London, New York, Paris, Ottawa, and numerous European cities. See the Ottawa celebrations above! US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in office on April 12th and was unfortunately unable to celebrate VE Day. His successor, Harry Truman, made the fateful decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan.

When we celebrate VE Day this week, we should bow our heads in respect to those that paid with their lives during World War Two. To all those that died, irrespective of the sides. To the victims of the Holocaust, the "crime of crimes," because people were cruelly targeted merely for who they were biologically. To the victory over the evils of Fascist ultra-nationalism and Nazi racial expansionism. To both our virtu and fortuna in winning the most terrible of wars, which has not suddenly ended the scourge of war. Machiavelli was very unambiguous in The Prince: Great leaders must possess virtu in abundance, but the flood of fortuna makes up for 50 per cent of the fate of leaders. Our fortuna was that Hitler possessed a childish, ideological racialism that was unable to compromise at all. The trinity of his enemies had to be completely subdued and exterminated: Jews, communist Slavs in the East, and the Anglo-American menaces in London and Washington. Our virtu was that we were masterful on the battlefields from the heroism of Russian troops at Stalingrad to the Allied victory in Normandy. But we should also pray for our fortune. For our white flag of hope that the dreaded swastika does not fly in Paris, London, Washington, Ottawa, or Moscow.

Tamir Bar-On