A Letter from the Publisher: Apr. 29, 1985

Long before President Reagan unveiled his plan to visit a West German military cemetery as part of his commemoration of V-E day, TIME's editors had begun preparing a special section on the 40th anniversary. Among the stories well under way was one on the events leading up to Nazi Germany's surrender and another on Europe's triumphs and failures during the past four decades, both designed to help put into perspective a period that still stirs powerful feelings. As the furor over the President's plans intensified, stories were added on the cemetery at Bitburg and the death camp at Bergen-Belsen, as well as on the controversy swirling around the trip itself. The task involved staff members on both sides of the Atlantic. White House Correspondent Laurence I. Barrett interviewed Administration members for their views. In Bonn, Bureau Chief William McWhirter spoke to officials and diplomats to piece together the West German side of the story. Meanwhile, correspondents throughout Europe interviewed historians and politicians, diplomats and economists, industrialists and cultural personalities.

Many of the reporters were able to draw on their own experiences. Washington Economic Correspondent Gisela Bolte was an eight-year-old German refugee sent from Bonn to Thondorf, in what is now East Germany, when first the Americans, then the Soviets, liberated the village. "The Americans were spit and polish," says Bolte. "They drove jeeps and trucks, while the Russians pulled in on tarpaulin-covered horse-drawn carriages." London-based Reporter Frank Melville, who slogged up the Italian peninsula with the 1st Canadian Division, spent V-E day in the town of Pescara, on the Adriatic coast. "The sun shone so brilliantly that it seemed to salute the first day of peace," he recalls. "Some buddies and I drank wine and thanked God to be alive." Gertraud Lessing, who reported from Vienna, was a university student there when she was drafted into a civilian air raid-warning unit. Her job: interrupting radio programs to announce the approach of Allied bombers. Because of the broadcasts' cuckoo-call signature, she was known as the "Voice of the Cuckoo." International Editor Karsten Prager, who edited part of the special section, was a refugee in the Western-occupied zone of Germany in 1945. "The memories of that time of hopelessness and fear are vivid," he says. "And sometimes it is difficult to comprehend how far Europe has progressed since then."

The vivid memories and deep scars of that war underlie the emotion-charged events that are detailed in the opening story by Senior Writer Ed Magnuson. For him, the piece is an event in itself: it is his 100th cover story for TIME, a total that no other TIME writer has ever approached.