VE Day Trivia
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49 free VE Day trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
VE Day looks simple from a distance: Germany surrendered, the war in Europe ended, and on 8 May 1945 people poured out to celebrate. Up close it is stranger. The surrender was signed twice, in two countries, a day apart; the man who authorised it had been head of state for barely a week; and the ceasefire took effect at an hour so late that half of Europe still keeps a different date. These 49 questions follow the day from Hitler's bunker to the Buckingham Palace balcony: the generals and admirals who signed, Churchill's broadcast and his walk to a second speech, the two princesses let loose in London, a US president with a personal reason to remember the date, the riot in a Canadian port, the Soviet parade with its thrown-down flags, and how the day has been kept since, from Russia's 9 May to the 50th, 75th and 80th anniversaries. Play it straight through, use it as a round for a pub or classroom quiz on the anniversary, or print it for a VE Day tea. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds something the headlines left out.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How did Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, with their parents' permission, mark VE night in London?
Mingled incognito with the crowds
Mingled incognito with the crowds: 'We stood outside and shouted, "We want the King",' Elizabeth later recalled, calling it one of the most memorable nights of her life.
Q 02Whom did Hitler marry in the Berlin bunker less than 40 hours before they both took their own lives?
Eva Braun
Eva Braun had joined Hitler in Berlin against his orders; he married her in a civil ceremony in the small hours of 29 April 1945, and both were dead by the next afternoon.
Q 03Which personal milestone did President Truman celebrate on VE Day, 8 May 1945?
His 61st birthday
His 61st birthday fell on the day itself; in his broadcast he said he only wished 'that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day', his predecessor having died less than a month before.
Q 04Why does Russia celebrate Victory Day on 9 May rather than 8 May?
Moscow was already past midnight
Moscow was already past midnight when the surrender took effect late on the evening of 8 May Central European time, so the Soviet government announced victory on the 9th.
Q 05In which French-ruled territory did a victory march at Sétif on 8 May 1945 end in bloodshed and reprisals?
Algeria
Algeria's marchers at Sétif carried banners against colonial rule; police tried to seize them and shooting broke out, and the repression that followed is remembered as a turning point on the road to the war of independence.
Q 06Germany's first surrender was signed at 02:41 on 7 May 1945 in a schoolhouse in which French city?
Reims
Reims hosted the signing in the red-brick schoolhouse that was Eisenhower's headquarters, though he left the signing itself to his chief of staff; the building is now the city's Surrender Museum.
Q 07How did the UK government fit VE Day's 50th and 75th anniversaries into the holiday calendar?
Moved the May bank holiday
Moved the May bank holiday: in 1995 and again in 2020 the early-May Monday off was shifted to 8 May itself, which in 2020 was a Friday.
Q 08Which New York landmark saw the biggest US VE Day celebrations, then its largest-ever gathering on VJ Day?
Times Square
Times Square already held half a million people when its news 'zipper' flashed Truman's announcement of Japan's surrender; within three hours the crowd had swollen to some two million.
Q 09On which London street did Churchill tell a cheering VE Day crowd, 'This is your victory'?
Whitehall
Whitehall heard him from the balcony of the Ministry of Health; when he told the crowd 'This is your victory', it shouted back, 'No, it's yours!'
Q 10In which bay, aboard a US battleship, was Japan's formal surrender signed on 2 September 1945?
Tokyo Bay
Tokyo Bay was the setting, aboard the battleship USS Missouri, where Japanese officials signed the Instrument of Surrender on deck; Truman then declared 2 September the official US V-J Day.
Q 11Whose first-ever radio address told Japan the war was lost on 15 August 1945, the UK's VJ Day?
Emperor Hirohito
Emperor Hirohito broke the precedent of imperial silence with a recorded message in court Japanese so formal, and so indirect about surrender, that many listeners were unsure what he had announced.
Q 12Which field marshal took the German surrender for Denmark and north-west Germany in a carpeted tent on 4 May 1945?
Bernard Montgomery
Bernard Montgomery first turned down an offer to surrender only the army group being cut off by the Soviets, then took the full surrender at 18:30 on the Timeloberg hill near Lüneburg.
Q 13Down which London road did VE Day crowds surge to reach Buckingham Palace and call for the King?
Q 21When Stalin made 9 May a working day again in 1947, which holiday got the day off instead?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day became the day off under the December 1947 decree that sent Soviet workers back to their jobs on 9 May; Victory over Japan Day, 3 September, had lost its holiday earlier that year.
Q 22At what time on 8 May 1945 did Churchill's broadcast allow Britons 'a brief period of rejoicing'?
3 pm
3 pm in London was 9 am in Washington, where Truman went on air at the same hour; Churchill allowed 'a brief period of rejoicing', then warned that Japan 'remains unsubdued'.
Q 23What did NKVD troops throw down beside Lenin's Mausoleum at the end of the 24 June 1945 Victory Parade?
Captured German standards
The Mall
The Mall filled from Trafalgar Square to the Palace, where the King and Queen answered the crowd from the balcony and, at one point, brought Churchill out beside them.
Q 14Which British islands, freed by the Royal Navy on 9 May 1945, still mark that date with a public holiday?
Jersey and Guernsey
Jersey and Guernsey were freed a day after VE Day: the German surrender was signed early on 9 May on the quarterdeck of HMS Bulldog, with a rum barrel for a table, and Alderney's garrison held out until the 16th.
Q 15Whom did Hitler's will name Reich Chancellor, a post he held for barely a day before his own death?
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels's one official act as Chancellor was a letter asking the Soviet commander in central Berlin for a ceasefire; it was refused, and he died in the bunker complex the same day.
Q 16What else was 20 April 1945, the day Soviet guns began shelling Berlin and did not stop until the city surrendered?
Hitler's 56th birthday
Hitler's 56th birthday brought his last trip above ground, to pin Iron Crosses on boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth in the Chancellery garden, as the 1st Belorussian Front's guns opened up on the city.
Q 17Which capital saw the last major military operation of the war in Europe, fought from 6 to 11 May 1945?
Prague
Prague's own uprising began on 5 May, and the Soviet offensive to relieve it ran three days past VE Day; the Army Group Centre troops facing it were trying to fight west to surrender to the Americans.
Q 18Sent to seek a west-only surrender, which general instead signed Germany's full capitulation on 7 May 1945?
Alfred Jodl
Alfred Jodl signed only after Eisenhower threatened to close Allied lines to surrendering Germans and resume bombing; at Nuremberg the tribunal sentenced him to death.
Q 19How did President Truman's 9 am broadcast on VE Day describe Germany's surrender?
A victory only half won
A victory only half won: 'Our victory is but half-won,' Truman said, since 'the West is free, but the East is still in bondage'; Churchill's broadcast likewise allowed only 'a brief period of rejoicing'.
Q 20What sentence did the Nuremberg tribunal hand the grand admiral who had succeeded Hitler as head of state?
10 years
10 years in Spandau Prison was the sentence; he served every day of it, was released on 1 October 1956 and titled his memoirs 'Ten Years and Twenty Days'.
Captured German standards, among them the banner of Hitler's SS bodyguard division, were thrown down beside the mausoleum on a day so wet that the flypast had been cancelled.
Q 24Which news agency's Paris bureau chief broke the 36-hour embargo on the surrender, making it front-page news on 8 May?
Associated Press
Associated Press man Edward Kennedy was stripped of his accreditation and eventually fired; in 2012 the agency's president apologised, calling it 'a terrible day for the AP'.
Q 25In which Canadian port did VE Day celebrations on 7–8 May 1945 turn into a looting rampage by thousands of servicemen?
Halifax
Halifax's naval commander had let thousands of his sailors ashore for the night while the liquor stores stayed shut; a Royal Commission under Justice Roy Kellock laid the blame squarely on him.
Q 26Which French city marks 8 May twice, for VE Day and Joan of Arc lifting its siege the same day in 1429?
Orléans
Orléans marks both at once: Joan of Arc rode into the besieged city on 29 April 1429, and nine days later the English abandoned a siege begun the previous October.
Q 27What is the 9 May march begun in 2012 called, in which Russians carry portraits of relatives who served in the war?
Immortal Regiment
Immortal Regiment processions were dreamed up by three journalists who noticed fewer veterans each year; since 2012 they have been held in cities as far apart as Washington, Dushanbe and Berlin.
Q 28The EU's Europe Day shares 9 May with Russia's Victory Day; which 1950 statement does it commemorate?
The Schuman Declaration
The Schuman Declaration proposed pooling French and West German coal and steel so that war between the two would be 'not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible'.
Q 29Whose 1938 Buckingham Palace balcony appearance did George VI echo by inviting Churchill out beside the royal family?
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain had stood there beside the King and Queen on his return from Munich in 1938; seven years on, a crowd shouting 'We want the King!' saw Churchill given the same place.
Q 30From which city's radio station did Germans first hear, on the night of 1 May 1945, that Hitler was dead?
Hamburg
Hamburg's Reichssender interrupted its programme to announce the death and introduce the new head of state, who claimed Hitler had died a hero defending the capital.