Friday marks the seventieth anniversary of Victory in Europe, or V-E, Day, when the Allies accepted Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender after six long years of war. No one should have savored that day in 1945 more than Winston Churchill, the wartime British prime minister. Yet he was to a considerable degree despondent.

Churchill’s road to May 8, 1945 was arduous. He became a political pariah in the 1930s, partly for warning against the rise of Nazi Germany, and then became premier in May 1940 and led Britain as it stood alone against Germany as it, supported by Russia, dominated Europe, with the United States neutral. Fortune turned only after Soviet Russia became an ally after invaded by Germany. Then America became an ally after Pearl Harbor. And then there were three and a half years more of war.