Richard Overy
Professor of History at the University of Exeter
Credit: Richard Overy
The Liberation of Europe in 1943–45 from the menace of German occupation and oppression was a defining moment of the last century. That liberation required a colossal military effort, almost unimaginable today. Allied armies from the west, east and south slowly drove back the Axis forces until by 1945 they decisively destroyed German military power in Germany itself. The German armed forces surrendered on 7 May.
Liberation Route Europe is a unique organization dedicated to keeping alive the memory of that momentous victory and the terrible cost in lives and treasure that it demanded, not only from those powers engaged in the fighting, but from the people and cities in the path of the advancing armies who were bombed or shelled or starved by the circumstances of the war. Tracing the path made by the Western Allies from the prelude to D-Day in 1944 to the final invasion of Germany in March 1945 is to follow a route of campaigns and battles that hung in the balance on many occasions – the defence of the narrow Normandy beachhead in June, the crisis at Arnhem in September, the Battle of the Bulge in December when Hitler ordered one last surprise assault against the Allied line. The Liberation Route recaptures those key moments and shows just what an exceptional effort was involved in crossing northern Europe against a determined foe.
Liberation was also the language used by the Soviet Union as the Red Army stormed across Eastern Europe. Here at least the genocidal German regime was defeated, but liberation meant something different for the peoples brought suddenly under the rule of Soviet-sponsored dictatorships. Here liberation in the same sense as the West was postponed until the 1990s. The liberation that mattered in shaping the development of the continent after the war was the liberation of northern and western Europe. This laid the foundation for today’s European Union and the reconciliation of the peoples of Europe. Liberation Route Europe is not only about reconstructing the key historical moment when freedom returned, but a way of reinforcing the ideal of a united and peaceful Europe in the present.
