80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Earl of Minto Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, what an honour it is to follow the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in this most apposite of debates. I thank him for moving the Motion to commemorate the final surrender of the malign Nazi forces and their acolytes, which brought to a conclusion such a notable period of this nation’s history. It is indeed, as it was then, a time of celebration, remembrance and deep reflection.

It was 80 years ago yesterday when our great war leader, the roaring lion, stood at this very Dispatch Box and announced to this Chamber—which was at the time the House of Commons—that the evil that had descended upon Europe had been defeated. This was, of course, the culmination of five and a half years of sustained and bitter fighting and unspeakable violence; five and a half years of the British public sacrificing so much in support of the war effort; five and a half years of families—virtually every family—being torn apart.

This week we pay tribute to our forebears who stood firm against the menace of tyranny, who did not and would not flag or fail, and who went on to the bitter end in defence of all of our freedoms. But it is the events of the week leading up to that eventual surrender of the German forces that I would like to reflect upon today.

On 5 May 1945, a Lieutenant S Charlton of the 53rd Reconnaissance Regiment was instructed by his commanding officer to investigate reports of a concentration camp nearby their posting just outside Hamburg. Lieutenant Charlton was the first British officer to arrive at Neuengamme concentration camp. What he uncovered there was demonstrable evidence of the repugnant wickedness of the Nazi regime, a horrifying microcosm of the very reason why it was so vital to overcome the enemy. After cautiously approaching the camp, he found it deserted apart from a lone police officer guarding the entrance. As he was inspecting the barracks, he encountered two former prisoners who offered to guide him through the camp.

Lieutenant Charlton recounted in his report that he stumbled across a building that, at first glance, he believed was a butcher’s shop or a dairy. It was not. Later, the building was found to have been a medical experimentation centre where Dr Kurt Heissmeyer had undertaken live experiments on 20 Jewish children towards the end of 1944. Those children were injected with tuberculosis, operated on and eventually hanged at the Bullenhuser Damm school on 20 April 1945, just weeks before the arrival of British troops and the liberation of Neuengamme. Charlton remarked in his report that the place appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned. He found only rubber gloves and what he took to be a preserved human heart in a bottle.

From the records salvaged from the camp and the testimonies at the later war crimes trials, a more comprehensive account of the horror that occurred at Neuengamme was pieced together. The camp was built in 1938 by 100 inmates transferred from Sachsenhausen. Prisoners were forced to work in weapons factories, in mines, on building sites or on the railways, labouring under the most inhumane of conditions. Evidence collected by the British Army of the Rhine’s war crimes group described the almost complete absence of footwear and the transportation of prisoners too sick to work to the death camps for their ultimate and untimely murder. Overall, it is estimated that at least 42,000 prisoners died at the camp. But since the SS destroyed most of the records, in reality we will never really know how many suffered there.

Neuengamme was just one of the many concentration camps liberated by allied troops throughout 1945. The stories uncovered by brave British, American and Soviet troops, and the testimonies given by those who suffered so terribly, ensured that Nazi war crimes did not go unpunished and guaranteed that they could be shared for all prosperity, if for no other reason than to ensure that such horror was called out so that it should never be countenanced to happen again. As early as 1940, in his “finest hour” speech, Churchill warned of

“a new dark age made more sinister … by the lights of a perverted science”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/6/1940; col. 60.]

He saw clearly the evil of Nazi rule and what it was, and nobly led our nation—along with our stout allies—throughout the storm of war.

It was two days later, on 7 May 1945, that Germany finally capitulated. The Soviet army had already taken Berlin and Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery had accepted the surrender of German forces in north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Facing mounting pressure on all fronts, General Jodl arrived in Reims at the behest of Admiral Dönitz to offer the unconditional surrender of all German forces. The final instrument of surrender was then signed in Berlin the following day, with Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, later a member of your Lordships’ House, signing on behalf of the allies. The war in Europe had come to an end.

Across Britain, church bells rang out in recognition of the enormity of the occasion. Victory in Europe was declared. The British public jubilantly poured on to the streets, as the Minister mentioned, to celebrate their victory over Hitler’s forces of fascism. The victory was momentous, but the cost had been terrible and enormous. Some 383,600 British troops were estimated to have lost their lives. There had been 1.7 million casualties from across the Commonwealth. For many, those bells must have rung hollow.

On this very day 80 years ago, as has just been mentioned, Nazi forces were expelled from the only occupied territory in the British Isles. Throughout the war, the occupied Channel Islands had faced severe repression, with satellite camps of Neuengamme established on Alderney. The liberation of our dear Channel Islands was completed when British soldiers from HMS “Bulldog” and HMS “Beagle” landed on Guernsey and Jersey. Across the islands, the union flag was hoisted and the crowds spontaneously sang the national anthem. Liberation Day is still to this day celebrated in joyous fashion every year on 9 May on those islands.

From the balcony of the Ministry of Health, 80 years ago, Churchill reminded the nation:

“This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole. We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny”.


Those words are ever more pertinent today. War has returned to Europe. An ascendant autocracy threatens sovereign nations, and poisonous ideologies pervade our politics. If there were ever a lesson to be learned, it is that we British can never appease a tyrant. Our Ukrainian brothers and sisters are valiantly resisting invasion—fighting, as we once did, for their homeland and their freedom—and we are there to support their struggle in the shadow of remembrance of 80 years ago.

In these troubling times, we must once again stand firm against tyranny and express great pride in our Armed Forces. The Minister spoke so eloquently about our history and the importance of communal remembrance and reflection. This day, of all days, is also one of celebration of affirmative triumph over almost unspeakable evil. As His Majesty said last night, we must never forget those who delivered that triumph. My Lords, we will not.