Victory Order of the Day: On This Day, 1945

On May 8, 1945, one day after Germany’s unconditional surrender ended World War II in Europe, Commander of the Expeditionary Armed Forces Dwight D. Eisenhower issued a Victory Order of the Day to commend the victorious Allied forces for their "valiant performance of duty." 

You have taken in stride military tasks so difficult as to be classed by many doubters as impossible. You have confused, defeated and destroyed your savagely fighting foe. On the road to victory you have endured every discomfort and privation and have surmounted every obstacle ingenuity and desperation could throw in your path.

While Eisenhower encouraged troops to celebrate their hard-won victory, he also urged them to recall the horrific casualties and universality of destruction wrought by the war: 

The route you have traveled through hundreds of miles is marked by the graves of former comrades. From them has been exacted the ultimate sacrifice; blood of many nations – American, British, Canadian, French, Polish and others – has helped to gain the victory.

Eisenhower also emphasized the collaboration and mutual effort that led to victory, and warned against glorifying any particular nation for winning the war:

Working and fighting together in a single and indestructible partnership you have achieved a perfection in unification of air, ground and naval power that will stand as a model in our time. . . . Let us have no part in the profitless quarrels in which other men will inevitably engage as to what country, what service, won the European War. Every man, every woman, of every nation here represented, has served according to his or her ability, and the efforts of each have contributed to the outcome.

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