(U-WIRE) - Sixty years ago last Monday, one of the most historic documents in history was signed in Rheims, France, by three men: U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, Soviet Union Maj. Gen. Ivan Sousloparov and German Col. Gen. Alfred Jodl. What document did they sign? Nothing less than the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied forces.
You might be scratching your head, trying to figure out who these three men were, signing a cease-fire at 2:41 a.m. May 7, 1945. That's not surprising, as only Jodl was a major military figure during the war. The other two were representatives of future President Eisenhower and the Soviet Union, respectively. The reason for this was that Eisenhower had a war to run, while the entire Soviet military was a couple hundred miles east. Still, the celebration of the end of a war that had encompassed six years and millions of deaths was intense. London, Paris and New York were the epicenters of the Allied world's celebration. Despite the months of war the United States had left with the Japanese empire, the prevalent feeling was that the war was won. The Allies had beaten Adolf Hitler.
Yet most of you likely spent Thursday reminiscing about your favorite excuse to drink margaritas and Corona, Cinco de Mayo. While it is a holiday marking a military victory from 1862 in Mexico, it doesn't have near the ramifications on Americans' lives that the Rheims agreement does. Meanwhile, over in Europe, people were getting ready to mark a real reason to celebrate: the liberation of an entire continent from the tyranny of the most horrific regime in modern history. I'd be shocked if one student on this campus celebrated V-E Day this past weekend. This is one of the few times that the French mention our great nation without turning their noses up, and most of you missed it!
On a related note, I was pleased to see that the president had planned his trip to Russian President Vladmir Putin's stomping grounds so that it coincided with the celebration of 60 years of freedom. I hope the owner of the world's second largest nuclear arsenal took the hint. This week was about freedom and the repression of tyranny, two concepts in which comrade Putin needs some serious schooling. Another byproduct of the end of the war in Europe was the onset of the Cold War. Spanning nearly 50 years, the forces of democracy and communism strove indirectly against each other, splitting nations around the world. Nowhere was this exhibited more prominently than in Berlin.
Berlin is best known for the imagery of a cold concrete wall dividing a city for 40 years, before that same wall's destruction at the hands of the people it divided marked the end of the an era in Europe. Berlin has evolved drastically in the past 15 years. The Reichstag, one of the most prominent symbols of Nazi power, had laid in ruin since the Soviet tanks crashed down Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in 1945. However, the building was revamped during reunification, and what was once a symbol of Nazi power is now a gleaming futuristic bastion of democracy in its new capacity as the Parliament Building of a unified democratic Germany.
Even the former Soviet Union has entered the modern world, empowering its citizens and becoming a member of NATO, the organization whose sole purpose was to prevent a Soviet attack into Western Europe. Yes, it is very odd to think that just 60 years ago the world was gripped in the throes of the most violent and all-encompassing war in history. It is especially odd for most of us, because we aren't even old enough to have many memories of the Cold War. Think about many of our grandfathers who were in Europe, fighting so that we could have the world we live in today. I'm sure they remember 1945.
Only a week after the suicide of the most infamous person in history -Hitler -the war in Europe ended with the signatures of three historically anonymous people. Think about that over your Coronas.
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