For millions, many of them Americans, May 8, 1945, is an overwhelmingly vital date. It was the occasion for the unconditional surrender of Germany in World War II and set the stage for the capitulation of Japan less than five months later. This year is triggering many 60th anniversary celebrations regarding the ending of the war.

But while many consider this a tremendous occasion, there are other views that are not nearly as favorable by people we might expect to share our elation.

For example, on May 9 there will be a massive celebration in Moscow, an event due to be attended by many dignitaries including U.S. President George W. Bush and dozens of other heads of state. But as Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post properly points out:

“Not every European country will be represented … because not everybody feels quite the same way about this particular date. In the Baltic states, for example, May 1945 marked the end of the war but also the beginning of nearly a half-century of Soviet Union occupation, during which one in every 10 Balts were murdered or deported to concentration camps and exile villages. The thought of applauding the same Red Army veterans who helped ‘pacify’ their countries after 1945 was too much for the Estonian and Lithuanian presidents, who have refused to attend.”

While Adolf Hitler’s heinous reign in Germany was ended, the Soviet Union’s vicious Josef Stalin continued purging anyone he and his staff considered even remotely likely to oppose their bloody rule. He even wiped out former “anti-Nazis” for fear they would turn on him. One need not spend a great deal of time in Poland to realize that while World War II officially began in September 1939 with Germany’s invasion and occupation of Poland, the Poles generally consider the Russians far more villainous because of their wartime blood-lettings and their postwar slaughter of innocents. For them, 1945 was just the beginning of another period of disaster.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has not helped things with his recent declaration that “the geopolitical catastrophe of the century” was not the Soviet Union’s rise but its collapse.

“The old ideals were destroyed,” Putin said during his annual state-of-Russia address, adding that “the development of Russia as a free and democratic state” is now his highest priority. But with his long Soviet background in terror tactics, Putin still would prefer “the old days.” He has a lot of support among his countrymen, too. A large number of new Josef Stalin statues have been commissioned to commemorate the end of the war. This for a man reputedly responsible for the deaths of nearly 25 million of his own people?

So should the 60th anniversary observances in Moscow be treated as appreciatively, even reverently as they will be? Should President Bush go out of his way to glorify the events in which he will take part? Shouldn’t Bush and others be insistent on a movement to pay respects to the victims of Stalin? Concludes Applebaum: “… a war anniversary is purely a symbolic event. Each commemoration helps all of us remember what happened and why it happened and each commemoration helps us draw relevant lessons for the future. To falsify the record — to commemorate the triumph of totalitarianism rather than its defeat — sends the wrong message to the new and would-be democracies in Europe, the former Soviet Union and the rest of the world.”

Little wonder so many Europeans have such a vastly different view of the May celebrations regarding World War II. For far too many, the war’s “end” was only a beginning and extension of the ghastly reign of Stalin terror.