Europe marks VE Day with Trump on its mind

“Celebration? What celebration? It feels more like a funeral” – the damning words of a former senior Nato figure to describe this week’s ceremonies marking Victory in Europe Day.

The top-level diplomat who spent years at the transatlantic defence alliance asked not to be named in order to speak freely, but why so nihilistic? VE Day was a joint Allied triumph over Nazi Germany; over hatred, dictatorship, the Third Reich’s territorial expansionism and heinous crimes against humanity.

So much blood was spilled achieving that victory. Some 51 million Allied soldiers and civilians died during World War Two, united in a pursuit to rid the world of the scourge of Nazism.

But 80 years on, we’re surrounded by countless news and academic analyses breathlessly singling out Donald Trump as the modern day nail in the coffin of the strong transatlantic bonds forged back then. In Europe, the American president is viewed by many as the slayer-in-chief of decades-old common values; shared visions of security, democracy and rule of law.

But is that accurate, or too simplistic?

To get the full picture on what happened to allied ties after WW2, we cannot omit Russia, then or now.

By 1945, about 24 million Russians and other Soviets had been slaughtered in the war with Germany. Without their sacrifice, as well as that of the other allies, the Nazis would not have been vanquished.

“One thing we need to recognise, though, is Russia was never a true friend of the West,” says Michael Zantovsky, a former Czech Ambassador to Washington and to London.

“During WW2 it was an ally for existential reasons. It needed any help [against the Nazis] that it could get. And it was the same story with western powers, to be fair. They needed the help of the Soviet Union. But Russia did not plan on continuing the alliance after the war. As soon as the threat of Nazi Germany was destroyed, the Soviet Union intended to follow its own objectives.”

Splits appeared the moment Germany was defeated; there was even a disagreement over which day VE Day fell. Western powers witnessed the signing of Germany’s military capitulation in the French cathedral city of Reims, news that broke on 8 May 1945. The USSR wanted its own, separate, signing with surrendering Germany in Soviet-occupied Berlin a day later. Russia marks VE Day on 9 May to this day.

Depending where you are in Europe on VE Day, the mood is varied – particularly this year.

Western Europe welcomes liberty, democracy and an end to the Nazi threat. In the UK for example, multiple VE Day celebrations are planned this year, as with every year.

But people living in central and eastern Europe, such as Czechoslovakia, emerged from Nazi occupation in 1945 only to end up under Communist regimes – whether they liked it or not.

As a result, Ambassador Zantovsky describes his country’s relationship to VE Day as “ambiguous”.

“The western part of Czechoslovakia was liberated by US troops, the rest of the country by Soviet soldiers,” he tells me.

Czechoslovakia was taken over by the Communist Party in 1948 and fully invaded by the Soviet Union two decades later. “During communist times, the West’s role in WW2 was deliberately suppressed and marginalised. We were told we owed our liberty [from the Nazis] to the Soviets.”

Russia marks VE Day with triumphalist military parades – and President Vladimir Putin knows the deep sense of nationalist pride that Russians still feel at defeating the Nazi regime in 1945. It is no coincidence that he publicly labels Ukraine’s leadership “Nazis” as a means of besmirching them in Russian eyes.

For VE Day this year, President Putin called a three-day ceasefire with Ukraine – it’s presumed, because he wants to concentrate, uninterrupted, on showing off Russia’s military muscle in front of a crowd of foreign dignitaries, including President Xi Jinping of China.

The official reason Putin gave for the Ukraine ceasefire was “humanitarian grounds”. Quite the irony, since he’s the one who ordered the invasion of that sovereign country.

That invasion brought back difficult memories for Czechs of their own occupation and suppression. “That’s why we feel so strongly for Ukraine,” says Zantovsky.

“It’s only a few hundred kilometres away. Our sense of security is threatened once again.”

This is why most Europeans are so shocked at President Trump’s apparent respect for, even deference towards, Putin, while simultaneously verbally threatening the territorial integrity of traditionally close allies like Canada and Denmark.

Europe has viewed the US as its closest friend since WW2. Washington poured money into the war-shattered continent in the late 1940s – including West Germany, which was ever thankful to the US for bringing it back into the fold after the horrors of Nazism. The US also gave Europe post-war security guarantees; Nato was founded in 1949.

But this wasn’t American altruism, as Trump implies. It too was a marriage of convenience, of sorts.

Following WW2, the US worried about the spread of communism. It fretted that Europe, with its economy and infrastructure in tatters, was vulnerable both to home-grown communist parties and abroad from an expansionist Soviet Union. By swooping in to help rebuild Europe, the US was gaining a geostrategic foothold on the Soviet Union’s doorstep throughout the Cold War.

The idea of a “West” – made of countries sharing security goals and values – was born.

Might we now be witnessing its death, or gradual strangulation? With no common enemy anymore, the friendship is certainly fraying. In 2025, the president of the United States no longer feels threatened by Russia.

“Shared history served as the foundation for the (transatlantic) relationship for eight decades, but it’s not enough to propel the relationship forward anymore,” Washington’s former Nato ambassador Julie Smith told me.

The war in Ukraine is the biggest conflict in Europe since WW2. With Russia’s economy resolutely on a war footing, it has the potential to spread.

Europe, unlike the US, still feels threatened by Russia. Capitals across the continent have been left speechless and nervous by Trump appearing to blame Ukraine, not Moscow, for the bloodshed.

The televised press conference in the White House Oval Office in late February, where Trump and his deputy, JD Vance, seemingly tried to bait, berate and humiliate Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, was a turning point in European public opinion and politics.

A YouGov poll in March indicated that, 80 years on from VE Day, a large majority of Western Europeans (78% in the UK, 74% in Germany, 75% in Spain) now view the White House as a big threat to peace and security in Europe.

In Europe’s east, the Soviet Union’s former sphere of influence, people fear President Trump’s attitude to Ukraine will only embolden President Putin in his expansionist drive.

If Russia gets US recognition for “crimes of conquest” in Ukraine, says historian and author Timothy Garton Ash, VE Day this year would be better labelled DE Day – Defeat in Europe Day.

And with Trump frequently accusing Europe of free-loading, and taking advantage of the US, there’s a nervousness among leaders across the continent that they could be left alone to defend themselves for the first time since WW2. Boosting defence spending is now a huge topic in European capitals.

The message Berlin has taken from Trump’s first 100 days in office is: “We cannot rely on the US anymore,” says Peter Wittig, Germany’s former ambassador to Washington.

That’s a massive turnaround for Germans, who have been reluctant to rebuild their country’s military might after WW2. Instead, Germany leant particularly heavily on the US for its security. A large chunk of the estimated 100,000 US troops stationed in Europe are based in Germany. The US stores nuclear arms in the country too.

The Trump-shock among normally pro-US German politicians is so profound that it prompted a change in the country’s constitution this spring. Parliamentarians voted to lift Berlin’s long established debt brake – which limited government spending – in order to invest heavily and power up the country’s military going forward.

Ursula von der Leyen, once German’s defence minister, is now the president of the European Commission in Brussels. She is transatlantic-leaning and carefully-spoken, but even she summed up the present situation starkly: “The West as we knew it, no longer exists.”

Still, the pivot away from Europe by the US cannot just be blamed on Trump.

China, not Russia, has been viewed by the White House as strategic threat number one for some time now. In 2012, then-US President Barack Obama said he wanted to focus his foreign policy on Asia, and Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden invested a lot of time trying to shore up China-wary allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Trump or no Trump, concentrating foreign policy on Asia and withdrawing substantially from Europe is unlikely to change, says Ambassador Wittig – whichever political party wins the next US election – especially as there is now a growing reluctance in US public opinion to carry the burden of financing allies.

Wittig calls it “the end of an era – the end of engagement in Europe”.

Despite all the European hand wringing, there is a recognition among the continent’s leaders that, 80 years after VE Day, it is high time they take more responsibility for paying and providing for their own defence capabilities, rather than relying on Washington.

Some also see potential in the relationship reset. Ambassador Zantovsky calls this “an opportunity brought about by crisis, a sense of urgency regarding security that hasn’t existed [in Europe] for the last 30 years”.

Perhaps, but during the Cold War western European societies had younger populations and far more slim-line welfare states. Spending 4% or 5% of gross domestic product on defence was do-able.

Analysts say that’s what would be needed again now to wean Europe off US security support, but it’s unclear if present-day voters would accept the painful compromises needed – in terms of cuts in government spending on health or education for example – in return for boosting their country’s defence capabilities.

This is especially the case in European nations geographically further from Russia’s orbit, where the sense of immediate threat feels less acute.

Mr Garton Ash wonders if there is a transitional path from the current US-led Nato to a more European Nato, with the US still at the table but Europe taking responsibility for its own security.

“We need a new generation of political leaders who are up to the challenge,” says political historian and biographer Sir Anthony Seldon.

“A need can often bring forward the right people,” he added, reflecting on European and US leaders in the aftermath of WW2.

“Something has certainly broken. The future is uncertain. Do we have to go to war periodically to realise how terrible it is, and to force us to work together?”

Eight decades on from the hell they experienced, surviving WW2 veterans would tell you they fervently hope that won’t be the case.