MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Europe marks 60 years since WWII

Prince Charles wore naval uniform as he laid a wreath before London's monument to the dead of both World Wars, while U.S. President George W. Bush paid tribute to American lives lost in the 1939-45 conflict at a cemetery in the Netherlands.

"On this day, we celebrate the victory they won and we recommit ourselves to the great truth that they defended: that freedom is the birthright of all of mankind," Bush said at Margraten, Europe's third-largest cemetery for America's war dead. He was joined in the event by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder also attended ceremonies in their countries to mark the close of World War II in Europe.

Thousands of people, including Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, traveled to a former Nazi death camp in Austria to mark its liberation. Russian veterans gathered in Moscow to prepare for celebrations on Monday to be attended by dozens of foreign leaders, including Bush.

Russia paid the heaviest price of any nation for Adolf Hitler's aggression, losing some 26 million soldiers and citizens. Around 6 million Jews were murdered during World War II, which cost some 50 million lives in total. China and Poland also suffered massive losses, as did Germany, Japan, Britain, France, the United States and many other countries. By comparison, some 10 million people perished in World War I, the previous most bloody conflict in Europe.

In Berlin, Schroeder and German President Horst Koehler attended a cathedral service ahead of a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial to victims of Nazism and war. Most Germans consider Hitler's defeat to have liberated them as well as the rest of Europe from the terrors of Nazism.

But hundreds of supporters of an extreme-right party planned to protest the "cult of guilt" they say was imposed on the nation after Germany's surrender. Berlin police stepped up security ahead of the National Democratic Party march which gathered several hundred young men in black with shaven heads, some carrying flags in red, white and black -- the colors used by the Nazis and imperial Germany. Organizers said they expected up to 4,000 marchers.

In London, meanwhile, World War II veterans and hundreds of other spectators watched Prince Charles place a wreath of blood-red poppies at the Cenotaph memorial in honor of some 260,000 Britons who died fighting Nazi Germany and her allies -- mainly Japan and Italy.

Queen Elizabeth II will lead national commemorations on July 10, which has been named Britain's main day of commemoration, and some veterans expressed disappointment at the modest scale of Sunday's Victory in Europe Day event at the Cenotaph.

"We are all disappointed that the queen and the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) are not here, when we arrived we looked around and thought that this was a nonentity," said 83-year-old former Royal Air Force Cpl. Leonard Hamer.

Further north, in the central city of Birmingham, people brought picnics to a street party, evoking memories of the massive street celebrations that broke out across Britain on May 8, 1945, the day an armistice was signed in Berlin.

The Nazi capitulation was signed the day before in Reims, France, a week after Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. World War II raged on in the Pacific until Japan's surrender on Aug. 15.

At the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Chirac laid flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier watched by troops from the many nations that united to crush Hitler. They included Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and the United States.

Jets flew over the graceful tree-lined Avenue des Champs-Elysees, streaking the sky with red, white and blue smoke -- the colors of the French flag.

At the former Mauthausen death camp in Austria, thousands took part in a ceremony to remember some 100,000 inmates killed by the Nazis there. It was the last big Nazi death camp still operating when the U.S. Third Army's 11th Armored Division arrived in early May 1945.

About 6,000 of the camp's victims were Spaniards, enemies of fascist Spanish leader Gen. Francisco Franco. Spain's Zapatero paid tribute to them at the camp Sunday.

"As prime minister of the government of a democratic Spain, I want to pay homage, remember and express my admiration for all Spaniards who suffered in this concentration camp in its fight for freedom and dignity," Zapatero said.

Poland's main V-E Day celebrations took place Saturday in the western city of Wroclaw. On Sunday, Prime Minister Marek Belka paid homage to soldiers who fought in WWII in a ceremony before Warsaw's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Belka also referred to Monday's ceremonies in Moscow. For Poles, the end of Nazi oppression marked the start of decades of often brutal Soviet rule.

"A ceremony in Moscow will pay homage to all soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition," Belka said. "We want to believe that honest words of truth will be spoken there, about heroism during the war but also about betrayal and enslavement of the postwar years."