{"version":1,"tree":{"n":"html","c":[{"n":"head","x":"\n ","l":"\n ","c":[{"n":"title","x":"Desconocido","l":"\n \n "},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../stylesheet.css"]]},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../page_styles.css"]]}]},{"n":"body","a":[["class","calibre"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"| ","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Siguiente","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articlenextlink"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/article_5/index_u27.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/index_u13.html\", \"frag\": \"article_4\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_6\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Anterior","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articleprevlink"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/article_3/index_u14.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"The very few","a":[["class","calibre8"]]},{"n":"h1","x":"Britain’s second-world-war veterans are dying out ","a":[["class","calibre9"]]},{"n":"div","x":"The country celebrates the last big anniversary with the generation that beat Hitler","a":[["class","calibre19"]]},{"n":"p","x":"may. 08, 2025 02:57 ","a":[["class","calibre10"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img1_u32.jpg"],["title","Britain's King Charles III (C-L) and Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales (C-R) speak with Second World War veterans during a tea party at Buckingham Palace"],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_6/article_4/images/img1_u32.jpg"]]}]},{"n":"div","x":"“And what did you do in the war?”","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"W","a":[["data-caps","initial"],["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"INSTON CHURCHILL ","l":"was clear. “My dear friends,” he said on May 8th 1945, standing on a balcony in Whitehall to address the cheering crowds below. “This is your hour.” Victory, he said, did not belong to one group. It was not one party or class that had led Britain “from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell”. All Britons had. This was a “victory of the great British nation as a whole”.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"In one sense, it still is. This week, Britain celebrated Victory in Europe (","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"VE","l":") day again. It was a well-rehearsed mix of fly-bys and bunting and cream teas, and all the things that Britain does so well. Across the country pomp and ceremony were on display, as were poppies: almost 30,000 at the Tower of London alone. Soldiers marched, the king and queen waved from their balcony, crowds waved flags below. In some ways it was better than the original: in 1945, in joyful, drunken, ration-stricken London, the beer ran out in many pubs.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Beer was not in short supply this time. But veterans were. Some still, just, made it: silver-medalled and silver-haired. They were watched by the world as they shuffled by with sticks, or were pushed in wheelchairs. Many of those who enabled Britain to “stand alone” now cannot stand. “The few” are now vanishingly few. At this 80th anniversary there were not many veterans. But it is probably the last big anniversary at which there will be any.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Churchill told Britain the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"VE","l":"-day celebrations were for “the great British nation as a whole”. But that nation has almost all gone. Not culturally—the second world war infuses Britain still. It exists in films and plays and books; in “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters and in the politics of Brexit. Its sheer familiarity makes it feel almost fresh. But in that sense films and photographs mislead. The start of the second world war is closer to the Charge of the Light Brigade, in the mid-19th century, than to today. The first world war is closer to the Battle of Waterloo.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Those who saved Britain from the “jaws of death” have themselves, now, mostly perished. At the very least, their absence will change the remembrance celebrations at which they—frail, fragile, revered as religious relics—have been at the heart. “When that direct, human, living link with the past is broken,” says Sir Max Hastings, a historian, “something will have gone.” What Britain has long called “our” finest hour is becoming “their” finest hour.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Like religious relics, veterans and other witnesses seemed to bring something more than merely mortal to the events. Though—then and now—it is their mortality that is so affecting. Churchill described Britons as fighting “undaunted by odds”. But the odds were so very daunting. Of those who flew in Bomber Command—most of whom were only in their teens or just out of them—one in two were killed.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"Now they are almost all gone. This does not just affect Britain. Around the world, the heroes of the last world war are dying out. In France, the last decorated hero of the resistance died in 2021. In Norway, the last member of Telemark—a sabotage mission—died a few years before that. There are still some survivors of Auschwitz. But across Europe, countries are having to rethink how to commemorate the dead when no witnesses remain.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"And, indirectly, to rethink how they live as well. Modern Europe was built not just in the ashes of the second world war but also in response to it. It was a different, more moralising time. Churchill began his history of the war with “The Moral Of the Work”, spelling out, in capital letters: “","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"IN WAR: RESOLUTION. IN DEFEAT: DEFIANCE. IN VICTORY: MAGNANIMITY. IN PEACE: ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"GOODWILL","l":".”","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"On the 80th ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"VE","l":" day, the European project feels fragile. Brexit has split it, anti-semitism once again mars it and war has returned to it. But things were not easy in 1945 either. And as Churchill said in another ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"VE-","l":"Day speech, that should not “prevent us from celebrating”. Not then, not now. And this time, with ample beer. ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"■"}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, ","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"sign up","l":" to Blighty, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/blighty"],["rel","nofollow"]]}]}]}]},{"n":"div","x":"\n","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]},{"n":"p","x":"This article was downloaded by ","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre16"]],"c":[{"n":"strong","x":"calibre","l":" from ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"a","x":"https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/08/britains-second-world-war-veterans-are-dying-out","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/08/britains-second-world-war-veterans-are-dying-out"],["rel","calibre-downloaded-from"]]}]},{"n":"br","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"br","l":" | ","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"feed_6/index_u13.html\", \"frag\": \"article_4\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-xQvX3JSyyUS4yAvbblzwf5","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_6\"}"]]}]}]}]},"ns_map":["http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"]}