Celebrating our ancestors caught on camera
The Beginning Of The End
Londoners celebrate on the eve of VE Day, 7 May 1945
In 1914 the book The War That Will End War collected a series of articles about the First World War by HG Wells, and a shorter version of the title “the war to end war” caught on with the public. Before the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, an estimated 20 million people had lost their lives. And then, just over two decades later, the unimaginable happened again. The Second World War broke out on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and would see more than 50 million die, most of them civilians. The war in Europe formally ended on 8 May 1945 when Germany surrendered, provoking wild celebrations. But fighting continued in the Far East and the Pacific for three more months until Japan surrendered too.