The Summer of '45

A social history of British civilian life in the months following the declaration of the end of the second world war. On the 8th of May in 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill finally announced to waiting crowds that the Allies had accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and that the war in Europe was over. For the next two days, people around the world celebrated. But the “slow outbreak of peace” that gradually dawned across the world in the summer of 1945 was fraught with