 which the world has been six years waiting has come. Unconditionally and finally, our German enemy has surrendered to Russia, to Britain and her Commonwealth, to America, to the millions who fought with their hearts and souls, to the French, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Norwegians and Danes, to the Czechs and Poles in Yugoslavia, the Greeks, to the people of all free nations. With celebration, we must remember that unity which won us victory, which with our continued labor, will win for peace and freedom the years to come. Let us look back and see how this hour has come about. We may assure that the suffering will bear fruit, that the dead will not have died in vain. It has taken twelve years and a united world, but again the German war has ended. For the second time in a generation, a world has been driven to the brink of disaster, and many times this war has been almost lost. The German army was a tough, strong, mechanized force. It had a powerful air fleet. In the end, so had we the rest of the world. It had an army of hard, well-trained, fighting men, but after bitter years, the free armies were harder. There were, there are still, terrible problems to be solved, but not as these men thought to solve them by turning their backs on humanity. Britain, with 700 years of freedom in her veins, said no. The 160 million workers of the Soviet Union said no. Democratic America, the new and rising world, said no. Beware a united world from east and west. Bismarck, Maltke, close of it, said, but they turned their backs on history too. And they struck. In disregard of her own pledged word, in disregard of the world's opinion, on the 1st of September 1939 they attacked the Polish state. Here, Germany and her first armed aggression began the war, began the death, began the pain that was to end on her own soil. The Polish people who saw their children die, their cities destroyed, their men killed or carried into captivity, the Polish people will not forget. And Germany too began to pay the price. England and France declared war, of a second time in 25 years. It is not only nations that make war, it is people who suffer war, to begin with the French and British people. It is people who suffer loss of their children, loss of their homes, their work, loss of their future hope, loss of their old age in peace, loss of their much rare love, in Paris as in London, for the second time in 25 years. They sent their children, their future, into safety. But Germany did not strike at England or France yet. On the 9th of April 1940 it struck at Denmark and Norway. In a disunited world, in a world where free men had not yet found their common cause, German aggression struck at them nation by nation and flung them down. Belgium, Sunday the 10th of May, 1940, in a few days it was over. Luxembourg that stood alone, neutral, alone. And Germany moved into the Dutch farmlands over Holland, neutral and alone. This was Rotterdam, without reason destroyed after the signing of an armistice. And the way having been cleared, the mezzanine line outflanked, German power struck toward the center of France. This is what war means. Not places captured, not victories or defeats, but that ordinary people who work at plows and machines and desks, who sometimes sit in theaters, ordinary people should flee in hunger and panic, destitute and without friends. Because in a world of every man for himself, they were alone. The armies arrived in Paris. Here was the German triumph. Buried the dead, let the grass grow. Now they'll remain to finish England, who stood alone. Some were dead already. Their equipment was shattered or sunk. And the German army, hard and battle day Germany, tomorrow England, tomorrow the whole world. For England, without arms, without troops, without allies, that tomorrow almost came. For the Luftwaffe went to end the war. And what could England do being all alone? She fought back day after summer day they came. August, September, and then in the night time too, October, November, December. Only afterward did the world learn by what a narrow margin England stood. For reserves, you could count them on your two hands. It looks easy being already done, but doing was what counted. It took labor and tears and blood being alone. But Germany and all its power had not done what the whole world discovered, that there is a strange inexplicable traded men that makes them rather die than knuckle down, that makes them cry thus far and no farther. England stood and held the West and waited. In common sense, it was a lost cause. But these British working people held England for the world. It was here also that Germany experimented with total war. Not with the destruction of factories, but on November 14, 1940, with the obliteration of whole cities, Coventry, confidently, England fought back, waiting for the rest of the free world to come to her aid. The thought England was done for. They did not sense a strong spirit of unity growing in the world. But Blicor and Maltke and marched east. On the 22nd of June 1941, Germany with tanks, planes, troops and self-propelled guns attacked the Soviet Union. For on the east, until now, Russia had stood alone. And in Moscow, the people of a great nation heard the news on their loudspeakers, read the news in their papers. They rose in their determination and they marched. They built themselves an army. In their factories, they worked. Germany, sowing conquest, reaped only hatred. Like England, the Russians fought back. Like England, they refused to surrender. As the enemy advanced, they set fire to their houses, to their fuel depots, blew up their dams and powerhouses. But for 18 terrible months, the German army cut and cut at the red line, forced it backward, mile after bloody mile. Until at the end, Stalingrad. Battered and torn, the red army had fought back. Until at the Volga, Germany slowed to an aching crawl, lost heart. Stalingrad. And beyond this, Germany would never go. And all this while, over a thousand miles away to the northwest, lay another heroic city, Leningrad. Cut off, surrounded, under siege. In Leningrad, they died of exhaustion in the factories. They died of shellfire in their beds. They died of hunger in the streets. But those surrounded, they were not alone. But Germany had forged a ring of enemies around herself, stronger than all her armies. And the tide turned. In January of 1943, at Stalingrad, the red army struck. Like mighty shears, they cut the German line. And red army troops, joyously meeting from north and south, having thus surrounded the sixth German army, drove west. In a cold cellar, Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered to his conquerors. He and his army had had enough. They were tired to the point of death. And so were these. Seeing them, the red army renewed with a terrible intensity, its battle cry, smiertfascistkimzachvachikam, death to the fascist invaders. But even before this, the free world had become one, and thus dealt aggression the greatest blow of all. Now no nation was alone. After Pearl Harbor, we were united. Now America, too, was the world's military partner. With their backs to the wall, the nation was united. And in the fall, the nations had joined hands. That was the secret of victory. For Germany's allies struck at America, but America struck back. Within 48 hours, she had declared war. Orders went to the factories, to the assembly lines, to the growing army, to the navy and the air forces. With neutrality, with isolation of each unto himself had come defeat, with unity would come victory. Within weeks, American troops were on their way to the Pacific. Within months, American soldiers were rushing the island beaches that Japan had seized. Within a year, American armies were flung round the globe, into North Africa, into Italy, into an attack that was to end only with the surrender of all our enemies. And in England, on June 6, 1944, the allies delivered the most powerful and dramatic stroke of all. With a tremendous mass of equipment and troops of all the United Nations joined as comrades in arms, on the morning of the 6th of June, they struck at the European continent. Here, the world struck back. The head went the bombers in overpowering force to destroy German rail yards, troop concentrations, fuel and supply dumps to reap this harvest. And this is that fruit of a late learned unity. For the 22nd of August, Paris had been freed. Brussels followed, Luxembourg, Belgrade, Athens, Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest. For one wonderful summer, Europe went mad with victory. Now Germany would have liked to make peace, not surrender, but peace. But Germany made war in her good time, but the free world would make peace in its own. The war went over the border. This is Cologne on German soil, who had asked for total war. These are Germans in front of air raid shelters. And while the Allied armies struck from the west, the Red Army, in a coordinated offensive, came driving over the plains of Poland. In memory of Smolensk and Karkov, guests in of London, Odessa and Kiev and of Rotterdam, Leningrad and Oral and Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad and Rostov, in memory of the world's burned towns of dead children of shattered hopes, in memory of brutal nights and terrible days, of nations bleeding and once near death. Soon it was German towns, German hopes, German desires, and German dead. They have made the world fuller of torment and death than in a thousand years. While from the west, the Allies struck deep into Germany beyond the Rhine. How many German houses were burned that winter and spring? How many German fields littered? How many German vineyards cut down? There will be silence in Germany for a long, long time. The German people who allowed its leaders to lead it into war have discovered the tragedy of war. This is Germany, land of darkness, of moral collapse. And a united world has learned through its dead, through its much pain, that only in unity of us all is there hope for any of us. If we forget that, in the end this long war will have been in vain. Germany, these German people have never in their history fought for their own internal individual freedom, until they know the meaning of freedom of dignity for every citizen. There is no hope for Germany in a civilized world. Here is the German army, the greatest army Germany ever had. The world has lost much, but Germany who was so mad as to forget the world, Germany has lost the most of all. But we, the people of the free world in the spirit of the dead American president, we shall work, we shall plan, we shall cooperate in the mutual political effort in the days to come. Allied forces joined hand to hand are still fighting a strong and resolute enemy in the Pacific. But together our military effort will grow ever easier. We look beyond that. We look toward the future when instead of guns we may build the homes, the schools, the industrial power, the happier life for all men for which we have fought so long. In the free world with victory, there has grown a faith that not only politically or militarily, but also in the great mutual economic planning. We shall for the lives of our future generations preserve our unity for the work of peace.