When the Allies celebrated Victory in Europe (VE) Day on May 8, 1945, the British army commander Bernard Law Montgomery cautioned his troops, “We have won the German war. Let us now win the peace.”
Months earlier than Germany’s unconditional give up in World War II, the “Big Three” Allied powers—the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union—met on the Yalta Conference to debate Germany’s future. They all needed to keep away from a repeat of what had occurred after World War I, when a postwar financial collapse in Germany fueled nationalist resentment and the rise of the far-right Nazi Party.