"Victory day" was really "Occupation day" for most Europeans.

WW2 in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, when the Western allies and Soviet Russia accepted the unconditional surrender and capitulation of Nazi Germany. To this day "V-day" is thought to be the day where the "good guys" won, Nazi Germany was finally defeated, Europe was liberated from fascism and good triumphed over evil. Nothing could be further from the truth. For starters, he western allies goal was also not to free the whole of Europe from tyranny, because FDR and Churchill had already agreed in the 1943 Teheran conference that Stalin could and would occupy everything but Western Europe. The western allies main goal was to establish that Soviet Russia would not overrun the WHOLE of Europe, and to make sure that at least western Europe would remain free from a Soviet occupation.

Stalin, FDR and Churchill at Tehran in 1943.

By the end of WW2 the fascist German empire was defeated, but it wasn't defeated by the Western allies, but by another fascist empire, Soviet Russia. By the time the western allies invaded occupied France in the summer 1944, the war had already been practically over and done, and the victor was Stalin and Soviet Russia, which occupied eastern and central Europe. But the subject of how the USSR behaved during and after it's victory over Nazi Germany, is a subject which is still unknown to most people in the west. In 1944, while on their way to Berlin, Soviet soldiers raped millions of women and children, their ages ranged from 8-80.

The USSR also deported millions to the Gulag, murdered countless of innocent people simply because they were not Communists and ethnically cleansed tens of millions of people from their ancestral lands and homes.

All of these crimes took place between the years 1944-1945, under the guise of Soviet Russia “liberating” Europe from Germany Yet to this day, useful idiots and Soviet/Russian/Communist apologists maintain that the Red Army "liberated" Europe from the Nazis, when all it really did was to conquer and occupy it.

The only countries in Europe that were truly liberated after WW2 were the ones that the western allies reached, those that had Soviet forces occupying them, simply replaced one brutal, totalitarian, murderous occupation for another.

But unlike the brutal and insane German occupation of most of Europe during WW2 which lasted for 5 year, the brutal and murderous Soviet Russian occupation of most of Europe would last for 47 years. Bibliography: Norman Davies, "No simple victory." Laurence Rees, "World War II Behind Closed Doors." Timothy D. Snyder, "Bloodlands."