The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day.
One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said.
Photo courtesy of the Presidential Office
Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot sit idly by and allow aggression,” he said.
“The outbreak of the war in Europe certainly had much to do with an authoritarian regime seeking to satisfy its expansionary ambitions, but its wider spread throughout Europe had much more to do with a lack of vigilance toward acts of aggression,” Lai said.
Aggressors will not stop until “all democratic countries have fallen and the light of freedom has been extinguished,” he added.
Photo courtesy of the Presidential Office
Eighty years after the end of World War II in Europe, Taiwan shares the same democratic values as many countries that fought in the war and are now facing similar challenges, including the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, he said.
“Lovers of freedom around the world, both individuals and nations, must work together now in tight solidarity, before risks turn into crises and before crises are taken advantage of by those with ambitions for outward expansion, to make sure that aggressors have no opportunity to advance on their ambitions,” he said.
Also speaking at the reception, European Economic and Trade Office head Lutz Gullner said that V-E Day is “of utmost importance for us, as Germans, to remember and to learn from history.”
On this day, people primarily honor the many lives lost, he said.
“However, we should also draw our lessons from this experience,” he said. “It is our duty to ensure that this never happens again. Upholding the truth is part of this.”
That means pushing back against “the distortion of historical facts, revisionism and political instrumentalization,” he said.
William Yang (楊?暐), a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that Lai has “repeatedly shown his preference for weaving historical events into his narrative.”
“He believes Taiwan’s history and current challenges present a convincing case to show other democratic countries the importance of maintaining alliances in the face of global democratic backsliding,” he added.
V-E Day commemorates the unconditional surrender of Germany’s military forces to the Allies on May 8, 1945.
For months after V-E Day, the war continued in the Asia-Pacific region, ending after the US dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Victory over Japan Day commemorates the surrender of Japanese forces on Aug. 15, 1945, which effectively ended World War II.
The Republic of China (ROC) previously only commemorated the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was marked on Sept. 3, 1945, when Japan delivered a letter of surrender to the ROC government, which was based in Chongqing at the time.
The ROC was based in China when the Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937. It officially declared war against Japan, Germany and Italy in 1941, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
The ROC government, led by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), relocated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Chinese Communist Party, which established the People’s Republic of China in Beijing that year.
Taiwan’s military announced in March that it planned to hold art exhibitions and a concert, among other events, to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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