It's fitting that former enemies and inheritors of former regimes got together today in Moscow for what may be one of the last big World War II commemorations that can include numbers of walking veterans. Quite right, too, that the country that suffered the greatest number of casualties be the host. It's hard to see how Germany could have been defeated without the Red Army's determination. Click on the stamp at left for an example of the Soviet-era heroic gigantism prevalent in the USSR (from StampRussia).
That other Ally that withstood alone on the Western Front, Great Britain, is of
course personified by its wartime leader, Winston Churchill. His voice, his profile, his very pugnaciousness, stood for so much in the years before the US entered the war. From the British Postal Museum Archive.
Marching in Moscow for the first time today was the United States, which not only saved the Brits from the Germans, but had to fight off the Japanese throughout the Pacific. The cartoonist Bill Mauldin, beloved of the foot soldiers but mistrusted by the brass for the scruffy image he gave to GIs, is portrayed in this US Postal Service stamp.
Rounding out the Big Four was China, but not the China of Communist Beijing. Nationalist China, under
Chiang Kai-Shek, was at the table with its Soviet, American, and British allies. No more Soviets at the Kremlin these days, and the Nationalists had to watch the ceremony from Taiwan. From StampsOfChina.
Finally, France, which though not a member of the wartime Big Four, did manage to stay in the big power league thanks to the sheer will power of then General De Gaulle. Thanks to French postwar leaders managing to overcome their hatred of Germany for outrages like Oradour (hundreds of men, women, and children killed in cold blood, the entire village burnt to the ground), we have a united Europe today. Stamp from Timbres-de-France.
Okay, world leaders, well done in the war memorial category. Now please work together on that even bigger goal: saving the planet from its multiple non-military threats. It's a much harder target to zero in on.