For Jack Appel, 101, the Allies’ victory in Europe − made official on May 8, 1945 − wasn’t just vital because otherwise, as he said, “we’d all be speaking German now.”
“World War II was a major, major fight for civilization,” the World War II veteran told USA TODAY this week as the globe marks the 80th anniversary of V-E Day.
“Civilization” is no casual choice of words for Appel, a Brooklyn native now living in Boca Raton, Florida. He was among the first Americans to see the Buchenwald concentration camp, abandoned by the Nazis as the Allies closed in. Appel, who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in Europe during the war, is Jewish.
“Seeing the ovens, it was just unbelievable that any civilization could …” his voice trailed, then he continued, “it was 11 million people total, 6 million of them Jews, and the others political enemies, homosexuals, gypsies.”
Appel, who also told his story in an oral history video for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2015, knew just what he and others had been fighting for. After being drafted, a friend advised him not to say he was Jewish because “if the Nazis capture you, they’ll shoot you.”
Instead, he said he was Catholic, his girlfriend’s religion. During a nearly fatal bout with meningitis early in his deployment that cost him his hearing in one ear, he woke to hear a priest administering Last Rites. That, he believes, helped in what he calls “a relatively charmed life,” one that kept him otherwise safe during the war.
Appel, one of a dwindling number of U.S. World War II veterans who helped liberate Europe and the world from the grip of Nazism, fascism and genocidal hatred, was humble as he reflected on the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.
“There’s hardly a day that goes by without someone saying to me, ‘Thank you for your service,'” he said. “And I am very grateful for that. We knew we were fighting for a purpose.”
V-E Day marks the day Germans, reeling from military defeats and the death by suicide just days before of their leader, Adolf Hitler, surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces.
The Allies − the United States, United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China, among others − fought the Axis Powers − Germany, Italy and Japan. The war was fought in primarily in two theaters, the European (which also included parts of the Middle East and North Africa) and the Pacific. V-E Day was the day the European campaign came to an end.
Even though the Germans had surrendered, the Japanese had not, and so the war in the Pacific theater was still ongoing and would continue into the summer of 1945.
The war, which broke out in 1939, had been costly in Europe, decimating cities and leaving much of the continent in ruins. There were massive military and civilian casualties. And the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews as well as others the Third Reich deemed “undesirable,” including LGBTQ+ people, ethnic minorities and disabled people, in the Holocaust.
Bloody battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa over the winter and spring of 1945 had resulted in heavy losses among American and Japanese forces, but war in the Pacific continued. It wasn’t until the United States used atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing a combined 165,000 people, that the Japanese relented.
“There was a sense of unfinished business,” Peter Donovan Crean Sr., vice president for education and access at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, told USA TODAY. “But it was also a moment of joy and elation and hope,” and a “signal to the world that dawn was beginning to break.”
World War II officially ended on Sept. 2, 1945. As many as 80 million people, about 3% of the world’s population at the time, were killed (including 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust).
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, 250,000 American troops were killed in Europe during World War II. Notable battles involving U.S. forces included the invasion of Normandy, France, later called D-Day, on June 6, 1944; and the Battle of the Bulge in Northern France, Luxembourg and Belgium on Dec. 16, 1944.
More than 16 million Americans served in uniform during World War II. More than 400,000 Americans lost their lives in the war.
According to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans (which cites the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs), there are 66,143 WWII veterans still alive in the United States. Most are 90 years old or older.
“We are at a critical time where we need to take advantage of being able to hear these stories,” said Crean, a retired colonel with 30 years’ service in the U.S. Army. “In the not-too-distant future we will not be able to have that luxury.”
The museum’s Voices from the Front project captures the voices and memories of a host of people involved in World War II, including veterans, Holocaust survivors and people who were working on the homefront, for an interactive exhibit for visitors to ask questions, get answers and “talk” with those people, even after they’re gone.
“It’s so important that we capture their stories now so future generations can learn those lessons and understand the context of the world you’re living in,” Crean said.