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As his body was burned with gasoline at the door of the bunker, only part of the dictator’s jaw and two dental bridges could be recovered, which Soviet agents placed inside a cigar box and took to Moscow in great secrecy under Stalin’s orders. Nothing reflects the underlying confrontation between the allies at the end of World War II like the fate of the few remains that Soviet troops found of the body of Adolf Hitler, who had committed suicide on April 30. The USSR was not going to take long to impose communism in all the states that it considered should be part of its own sphere of influence. Stalin and the rest of the allies had divided up Germany and Europe by areas of influence. This time it would be without battles, albeit with a lot of violence, for the distribution of the world. The discussion around the celebrations of May 8 or 9 may seem trivial, but it reflects what the atmosphere was then among the victors of the conflict: everyone knew that a new war was about to begin, if it had not already begun.

Soviet soldiers celebrate the end of World War II in Berlin on May 9, 1945. It is by no means the first time that World War II has been used to justify present-day atrocities – Serb nationalists during the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s tried to resurrect all the ghosts of an alleged fascist threat – but it is disturbing to what extent Russian President Vladimir Putin not only uses May 9 for his propaganda purposes and to vindicate his invasion of Ukraine, but also replicates Stalin’s obsessions: to maintain control over the countries that he believes should remain under the Russian orbit and the accusations of Nazism against his enemies in order to justify any brutality. “Stalin retorted in displeasure that Soviet troops were still fighting Victory celebrations, Stalin wrote, could not begin in the Soviet Union until May 9.”Įurope is experiencing one of its most dangerous moments since then, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and threats from the Kremlin that it could resort to its nuclear arsenal, while Russian leaders toy with the idea that a third world war could break out. “Churchill cabled Stalin to explain that, since crowds were already gathering in London to celebrate, Victory in Europe Day celebrations in Britain would take place on May 8, as they did in the United States,” writes Antony Beevor in his book The Second World War. That is why Russia commemorates its victory in the so-called Great Patriotic War on Monday, while the rest of the allied countries celebrated it on Sunday. In fact, Stalin demanded that a second surrender be signed in Berlin before Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, which did not take effect until May 9. The lack of trust among the countries that had defeated Nazism was already very high at that time, so much so that they could not even agree on the moment in which the end of the war should be celebrated.

At that time, World War II officially ended in Europe in Asia, Japan did not surrender until August. It would take effect at 11.01 pm on May 8. General Alfred Jodl, who would end up being convicted at Nuremberg and executed in 1946, signed the unconditional surrender of Germany to the Allies in the French city of Rheims in the early hours of May 7, 1945.