ABSTRACT

Shortly after V-E Day, Winston Churchill summed up the meaning of the end of the war in the eloquent manner to which millions of Europeans had become accustomed. His words reveal the ambivalence with which many Europeans looked at their future and therefore they deserve long quotation:

I wish I could tell you that our toils and troubles were over. . . . On the continent of Europe we have yet to make sure that the simple and honorable purposes for which we entered the war are not brushed aside or overlooked in the months following our success, and that the words “freedom,” “democracy,” and “liberation” are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them. There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or police Governments were to take the place of the German invaders. . . . I told you hard things at the beginning of these last five years; you did not shirk, and I should be unworthy of your confidence and generosity if I still did not cry: Forward, unflinching, unswerving, indomitable, till the whole task is done and the whole world is safe and clean.1