Historian: VE Day highlights complex legacies of WWII

World War II provided two contradictory lessons, says historian James J. Sheehan: war must be avoided at all costs and democracies must be ready to resist aggression.

Today is the 75th anniversary of “Victory in Europe Day”—the day when people from across the world celebrated the acceptance of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allied forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union on May 8, 1945.

Sheehan, professor in the humanities and professor of history emeritus at Stanford University, is the author of Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), a history of war and peace in 20th-century Europe.

Here, he discusses the difficult challenges the world faced, despite the end of the war in Europe:

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