From 1945 to Today: Carrying the Torch Against Tyranny
Eighty years ago today, the war in Europe came to an end. After nearly six long years of death, terror, and resistance, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied forces. Across Britain and much of the world, people danced in the streets, wept in churches, and lit bonfires that turned night into day. It was both a military and moral victory. Fascism had been defeated. Tyranny had been pushed back, and a vow echoed across the continent: “Never Again.”
Like millions of others, we are the grandchildren of those who lived through that time. The children of evacuees, of Home Front volunteers, of soldiers who fought in the fields of Europe and beyond, of those who kept the country going through working on farms, factory floors and coal mines. Our grandparents knew what authoritarianism looked like, not in theory, but in practice. They knew what it meant to fight for freedom, not just as a slogan, but as a duty. They bore the cost of that fight, and they carried its lessons with them for the rest of their lives. They envisioned a fairer world coming out of it; they wanted their sacrifices to mean something.
We were raised in the long shadow of that war. In our families, as in many others, VE Day was a memory kept alive in quiet stories, in battered medals, in the silences that fell when certain names were spoken. It was a warning, passed down with love but also with urgency: democracy is fragile. Authoritarianism doesn’t knock politely. Tyranny is always closer than you think.
Today, on the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe, we remember that the defeat of fascism was not inevitable. It was hard-won. And it remains unfinished. The generation that fought it is almost gone, but the threat is not. If anything, it has returned in new guises: in the strongman politics of the 21st century, in the normalisation of hate speech, in the erosion of rights and the rise of movements that celebrate cruelty as strength.
VE Day is partly about commemorating the sacrifices that were made. It should also be about looking forward and building a world their memory deserves. What we do now, how we respond, will define whether the promise of VE Day still lives.
What VE Day Meant Then
On the morning of 8 May 1945, after days of speculation and radio silence, the announcement finally came: Germany had surrendered. The war in Europe was over. Across Britain, church bells rang out for the first time in years. Londoners swarmed Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus; strangers kissed and danced. In villages and towns up and down the country, people threw open their windows, dusted off Union Jacks, and gathered in the streets to celebrate a long-awaited release, not only from war, but from the constant, suffocating fear of what a Nazi victory would mean.
But the jubilation of that day was not untouched by grief. By May 1945, the true scale of the horror was becoming clear. The liberation of concentration camps had revealed industrialised death on an unimaginable scale. The names Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau had begun to filter into public consciousness, their meaning still only partially grasped. Six million Jews had been murdered, along with Romani people, disabled citizens, political dissidents, trade unionists, and LGBTQ+ people. Civilians across Europe, from Warsaw to Coventry, had watched their cities turned to rubble. Tens of millions were dead. Countless more were displaced, traumatised, and grieving.
VE Day was not a victory without cost. It was the culmination of resistance against a regime that sought to reorder the world through racial hierarchy, brutality, and total control. It wasn’t just soldiers who resisted. The war against fascism was fought on multiple fronts: by codebreakers in Bletchley Park, nurses in bombed-out hospitals, resistance fighters smuggling messages through forests, and families who kept each other alive during the Blitz. It was fought by people who refused to look away, and by those who risked their lives to hide others.
When the cheering stopped, and the bonfires faded, a more serious task began: how to ensure this could never happen again. Out of the ashes came a determination to build institutions that would bind nations together. Imperfect, yes, but founded on the lessons of catastrophe. The United Nations was formed that October. The European project, however uneven, was rooted in the idea that economic and political interdependence would prevent another war. In Britain, the 1945 Labour government swept to power with a mandate to create a fairer, more equal society, one in which returning soldiers and civilians alike would not be left to fend for themselves.
These post-war settlements, the welfare state, the NHS, international cooperation, were not charity. They were part of a conscious effort to rebuild a world that had stared into the abyss. The defeat of fascism was a moral reckoning. VE Day symbolised not only relief but resolve. A society that had fought against tyranny had to learn how to defend peace, dignity, and democracy in peacetime, too,
It is a task that is still with us.
Lessons From Those Who Lived It
For us, like so many others, the memory of the Second World War isn’t just something preserved in museums or textbooks. It lives on through stories our grandparents told, the values they carried, and the silences they sometimes held.
My grandfather served in the British Army during the war. He saw things no one should have to see. He carried the trauma of that time permanently, the weight of it etched into the lines on his face and the caution in his words. He had lost close friends, men he had trained with, fought alongside, and laughed with. He never stopped grieving them. Their absence was a wound that never quite closed.
He never romanticised the war. There were no tales of jingoistic pride. What he remembered most was the senseless loss, the fear, and the terrible price paid by ordinary people. He understood, deeply, the necessity of standing up to fascism, but he never mistook that necessity for heroism. He spoke about the futility of war, about the cost to the human soul. And in 2003, when Britain joined the invasion of Iraq under the pretext of false intelligence and political ambition, he was beyond horrified. It broke his heart to see the country he had once fought for sending another generation into a war.
From him, and others like him, we inherited something extremely valuable: a recognition that peace is fragile, and that democracy is not a given. That resisting tyranny isn’t just about fighting on battlefields; it’s about refusing to be complicit in cruelty. It’s about speaking out when the powerful lie, when the vulnerable are scapegoated, when hatred is rebranded as patriotism.
Our grandparents’ generation didn’t see themselves as heroes. They were ordinary people forced to confront extraordinary evil. But what made them remarkable was their understanding that the fight didn’t end when the war did. The post-war years demanded something different but equally difficult: the construction of a society that honoured the sacrifices of war by refusing to repeat its mistakes.
They voted for a welfare state because they believed no one should be left behind. They built the NHS because they knew the cost of a broken body and a broken system. They valued truth because they had seen what lies could justify. And they passed those lessons on, sometimes in words, sometimes just by example, to their children and grandchildren.
It’s up to us now to remember them not just with gratitude, but with resolve. They gave us more than their memories. They gave us a responsibility.
The Resurgence of Authoritarianism and the Normalisation of Fascist Ideas
When we say, “Never Again,” we don’t just mean the horrors of concentration camps or the blitzed-out cities of wartime Europe. We mean the creeping, incremental steps that lead to them. The slogans before the violence. The scapegoats before the round-ups. The silence before the storm.
Yet today, eighty years after VE Day, we are watching the same playbook unfold as live politics. Across the democratic world, authoritarianism is resurgent. It doesn’t always wear a uniform or raise a flag. It often wears a suit, and it sometimes smiles. It might tell you it’s here to ‘restore order,’ to ‘take back control,’ to ‘protect children’ or ‘defend national values.’ But beneath the soundbites lie familiar tactics: the erosion of democratic norms, the vilification of minorities, the attack on truth, the demand for loyalty over liberty.
In the United States, President Donald Trump has employed language that alarmingly mirrors that of historical authoritarian regimes. During a Veterans Day speech in 2023, he referred to his political opponents as “vermin,” (Kurtzleban, 2023) a term historically used by fascist leaders to dehumanise adversaries. He also claimed that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” (Trump, 2024) rhetoric that has drawn comparisons to Adolf Hitler’s language and raised concerns among historians about its authoritarian implications.
Beyond rhetoric, the Trump administration is overhauling the federal civil service, having purged thousands of career officials to replace them with loyalists. This initiative, known as ‘Schedule F,’ (Tausanovitch, et al) threatens the independence of the civil service and has been criticised for undermining democratic institutions.
Here in Britain, the danger is less overt but no less real, and we have been sleepwalking into a more authoritarian era for years. The government has taken steps that critics argue erode democratic norms. In 2016, following a High Court ruling that Parliament must approve the triggering of Article 50 to leave the EU, the Daily Mail branded the judges involved as “Enemies of the People” (Pells, 2016.) This headline was widely condemned for attacking the independence of the judiciary and drew over 1,000 complaints to the press regulator.
More recently, the UK government has introduced legislation that restricts the right to protest. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 grants police greater powers to impose conditions on protests, a move that Amnesty International and other civil liberties groups have criticised for undermining the fundamental right to peaceful assembly (McVeigh, 2022.)
Across Europe, far-right parties are rising, often led by populists who claim to speak for ‘the people’ while chipping away at the institutions designed to protect us from tyranny. We need to learn to never trust those who pretend to have all the answers. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has already dismantled the free press and taken control of the judiciary. In Germany, the AfD grows bolder by the year. In Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden, the pattern repeats.
What we are seeing is not the return of history, but the repetition of its warning signs.
The language of fascism has crept back into mainstream discourse. Once-fringe conspiracy theories are now aired on national platforms. Public figures speak of ‘replacement’ and ‘degeneracy’ and ‘purity,’ the same words used to justify genocide less than a century ago. These ideas have found new homes in social media echo chambers, in algorithms designed to provoke, in politicians who understand that fear wins votes faster than hope.
The right no longer needs to seize power through violence. It is being ushered in, quietly, legally, and with applause, by people who no longer recognise the danger. Some look the other way. Others welcome it, cloaked in the language of tradition, security, or religious identity. But fascism never starts with death camps. It starts with jokes. With slogans. With shrugs.
This is the moment when vigilance matters most. Fascism adapts to the age. And today, it is adapting well: into TikToks and manifestos, into border policies and talking points, into a culture where cruelty is celebrated and compassion is mocked as weakness.
Our grandparents did not defeat fascism so that it could be rebranded. They did not suffer and sacrifice so that we could forget the playbook and mistake it for populism or patriotism. Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive overnight. It grows, if left unchecked, in the spaces we vacate, when we give up on politics, or let fear replace principle.
Why ‘Never Again’ Means Now
For decades, “Never Again” been a solemn promise. A moral line drawn in the ashes of war, across the graves of soldiers, resisters, and victims of fascist brutality. But slogans fade when they are not renewed with action. Promises wither when they are not protected by vigilance.
“Never Again” was never meant to be retrospective. It was meant to be preventative.
That’s why VE Day matters so profoundly, not only as a commemoration but as a warning. The people who celebrated in the streets in 1945 did so because they had emerged from the nadir. They knew how fragile freedom was. They had watched as fascism rose not just through violence but through elections, through laws, through propaganda and political apathy. They saw how quickly a democracy could collapse when its institutions were weakened and its people too exhausted, divided, or disillusioned to fight back.
The danger we face now is not that history will repeat itself exactly. It is that we will fail to recognise its rhymes. The authoritarianism rising today is smarter, subtler, and often wrapped in the symbols of democracy: ballots, borders, national flags. It exploits economic hardship and cultural disorientation. It thrives in a digital age where lies travel faster than facts and outrage is monetised. It gains ground not because people love tyranny, but because they no longer believe in the alternatives on offer.
This is how democracies die in the 21st century. With courts sidelined. With journalism undermined. With protesters labelled extremists. With cruelty reframed as strength, and compassion as weakness. With the past buried under nostalgia and the future mortgaged to strongmen.
That is why “Never Again” must be spoken aloud now. The people who fought fascism organised, resisted and took risks. And they understood that fighting tyranny wasn’t a one-time event, but a lifelong duty.
We, too, must understand that the fight continues. It continues every time we speak up when others are silent. Every time we challenge dehumanising language, or reject the politics of fear, or defend the right to protest, or tell the truth in the face of distortion. It continues in our communities, our schools, our legislatures, our media, in absolutely every space where freedom is either protected or surrendered.
History has shown us what happens when fascism is allowed to flourish. We do not need to speculate. We only need to remember. But memory alone is not enough. We honour the past by defending the present; by acting, resisting, and refusing to forget.
Carrying the Torch: What Our Generation Must Do
If the story of VE Day teaches us anything, it’s that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, not only in war, but in peace. The generation that defeated fascism rebuilt, reimagined, and demanded something better. They carried the torch forward as responsibility. Now it’s our turn.
The threats we face may feel overwhelming: climate collapse, political polarisation, disinformation, economic instability. But the fight against authoritarianism is not won by grand gestures or solitary acts. It is won in the choices we make every day. It is won when we refuse to normalise hate. When we defend the institutions that hold power to account. When we stand alongside the marginalised, even when (especially when) it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable.
We must speak out, not because we are fearless, but because we have seen what silence enables. We must vote, and vote wisely, not out of blind faith in broken systems, but because disengagement leaves the field open to those who seek to dominate it.
We must organise - in our unions, our communities, our classrooms - to build solidarity and collective power, as the foundation for something better.
There is also a cultural dimension to this fight. The right understands the power of narrative, and of controlling the story. That’s why history is being rewritten, protest reframed as threat, empathy caricatured as weakness. We must push back with facts, and with stories of our own. Stories that remind us of who we are and who we might still become. Stories that expose the cruelty, the corruption, the cowardice, and that elevate courage, decency, and moral clarity.
If our grandparents had the courage to fight fascism, then we, too, must find the courage to fight it in our parliaments, on our timelines, and in our town halls. Carrying the torch means protecting the light our grandparents passed to us, by holding it high, and using it to see clearly, speak bravely, and keep the path open for others.
A Living Memory
Eighty years ago today, the world breathed a little easier. The guns had fallen silent in Europe. The tyrants had fallen. The flags came out. But behind the celebration was a deep understanding of what had been lost, and what must never be lost again.
VE Day is often framed as a closing chapter. But for those who lived through it, it was not an ending. It was a beginning. A beginning built on the solemn recognition of what it takes to keep freedom alive. They had stared into the void and came back determined to make something better, fairer, kinder, more human.
That is the real legacy of VE Day. Not just the end of a war, but the beginning of a duty.
We carry their stories with us to learn from their truth. My grandfather fought not for medals, but because he felt it was the right thing to do. He mourned his friends over his lifetime with quiet reverence. He spoke of the futility of war and was devastated when his country betrayed those same lessons by invading Iraq. His grief, his moral clarity, his refusal to forget - these are the torches we hold now.
Authoritarianism has returned and it abuses the memory of previous generations who gave so much. It wraps itself in flags. It pretends to protect, even as it prepares to crush. If we are to honour the past, we must see the present for what it is: a test of our generation’s conscience.
The truth is simple, if uncomfortable: we are now the memory-keepers. The storytellers. The line between what was and what could be again. How the world could be already lives within us; in our refusal to look away, in our insistence on truth, in our belief that a better, fairer world is still possible. It lives in every act of courage, every word spoken in defence of justice, every quiet decision to stand on the right side of history.
Eighty years on, we honour the wartime generation not only with remembrance, but with resolve. Their fight lit the path; our task is to keep walking it, with eyes wide open, heads held high, and the torch still burning bright. The road to a better world is long, difficult, and marked by setbacks. But one thing remains clear: if we turn back, we will never get there. And we must never trust those who tell us to turn back.
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References
Kurtzleban, D. (2023) ‘Why Trump’s authoritarian language about ‘vermin’ matters.’ News, Podcasts and Live Radio, 17 November. Available online: https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary [Accessed 8 May 2025.]
McVeigh, K. (2022) ‘UK’s draft refugee and police laws are ‘human rights vandalism’ says Amnesty.’ The Guardian, 29 March. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/mar/29/uks-draft-refugee-and-police-laws-are-human-rights-vandalism-says-amnesty [Accessed 8 May 2025.]
Pells, R. (2016) ‘Daily Mail’s ‘Enemies of the People’ front page receives more than 1000 complaints to IPSO.’ The Independent, 10 November. Available online: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/daily-mail-nazi-propaganda-front-page-ipso-complaints-brexit-eu-enemies-of-the-people-a7409836.html [Accessed 8 May 2025.]
Tausanovitch, A., Angeloni, M., Newland, E., and Ford. W. (2024) ‘Trump’s Schedule F plan, explained.’ Protect Democracy (11 June.) Available online: https://protectdemocracy.org/work/trumps-schedule-f-plan-explained/ [Accessed 8 May 2025.]
Trump, D. (2024) Campaign event speech, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2 April. Quoted in, ‘Trump on Immigration: Tearing Apart Families, Communities and the Fabric of our Nation.’ American Civil Liberties Union, 2025. Available online: https://www.aclu.org/trump-on-immigration [Accessed 8 May 2025.]