President Harry Truman said: “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” Fittingly, Truman’s observation was itself less than original. He was paraphrasing Kohelet (“There is nothing new under the sun…” – Ecclesiastes 1:9). Truman was an avid student of history, turning to its record for moral clarity and ethical decision making.
A conscientious attention to world history demands we mark today as the 81st anniversary of V-E Day – the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied Forces on May 8, 1945. Germany’s capitulation brought hostilities in the Second World War’s European theater to an end.
On V-E Day, Truman was a new Commander-in-Chief, having succeeded to the presidency upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt less than a month earlier. Born May 8, 1884, Truman was celebrating his own 61st birthday as news of Germany’s unconditional surrender came.
With victory in Europe, Truman turned his attention to bringing the war with Japan to a decisive conclusion. He forced Japan’s surrender by ordering the bombing of two Japanese cities – Hiroshima and Nagasaki – with nuclear weapons: an historic first, arguably constituting a notable exception to Kohelet’s famous assertion.
Whether or not there is truly “nothing new under the sun,” Truman was right: our “debt to history is one which cannot be calculated.”
Rabbi Joseph H. Prouser is the editor of “Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism.” The latest edition of Masorti was published online for the winter of 2025-26. A subscription is $18 per annum.
A conscientious attention to world history demands we mark today as the 81st anniversary of V-E Day – the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied Forces on May 8, 1945. Germany’s capitulation brought hostilities in the Second World War’s European theater to an end.