Thursday, May 8, marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. The war reshaped Europe and the world from one of fear and conflict into one largely of fairness, competition and international law.

The war in Europe could be said to have begun with the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938, followed by European appeasement allowing Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland, areas of Czechoslovakia occupied primarily by Sudeten Germans.

On Sept. 1, 1939, the Axis powers invaded and conquered Poland, then Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia and Greece and effectively controlled the satellite states of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and, to a lesser extend, Finland.

The United States remained officially neutral, but the Lend Lease Act, passed in March 1941, provided food, oil and war materiel to the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France and the Republic of China — but notably not Chinese communists — in their war efforts against the Axis nations of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, which had established an alliance in 1936 and been joined by Imperial Japan in the Tripartite Pact of 1940.

The rise of fascism, nationalism and militarism 80 years ago did not happen in a vacuum. Historians, philosophers, humanitarians and anti-war activists warned for decades that European tensions and an adherence to blind authority in Prussian-dominated Germany could lead to a charismatic leader taking power. In 1906, Prussian-born conman Wilhelm Voigt dressed up in a Prussian Guard uniform, stopped a group of German Army soldiers in Berlin and ordered them to follow him, then took the 10 men by train to the town of Köpenick, where he arrested the mayor, confiscated 4,002 marks from the city treasury and ordered his men to take the mayor to jail while he quietly escaped.

For decades afterward, authors warned that Voigt’s actions were not an isolated stunt, but an indication that popular acceptance of and deference to militarism could allow terrible things to happen if conditions were right. While we lament political rhetoric online and occasional acts of real-world violence, the conflict we experience now is vastly unlike that of interwar Europe, when uniformed communist and fascist paramilitaries were actively murdering each other in the streets of Italy and the Weimar Republic of Germany, both of which were in the grip of the Great Depression. This economic and social terror caused the public to cry out for order, which the militancy of fascism supplied, first in Rome, then in Berlin.

Just as the Zimmerman Telegram and the sinking of the RMS Lusitania brought the U.S. into World War I, outside forces brought the U.S. into World War II. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaii Territory, aiming to sink the aircraft carriers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which weren’t in port.

The United States declared war on Japan on Dec. 8, 1941, with Germany and Italy declaring war on the U.S. three days later. Japan, which had been at war with China since 1937, followed the attack on Pearl Harbor by attacking Allied colonial possessions throughout the Pacific, decimating the Dutch and British fleets and military installations and threatening to invade Australia.

In the Pacific, the war was slow going, with the Japanese sinking the USS Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 while only losing the light carrier Shōhō. The tide turned in June at the Battle of Midway, when luck, weather, timing and favorable decisions let U.S. torpedo and dive bombers sink all four Japanese fleet carriers.

U.S. Marines island-hopped while the U.S. Navy battled the Japanese Navy on the seas.

In the European theatre, U.S. supplies to the Allies vastly increased. Allied forces engaged the Germans and Italians from British-controlled Egypt, while British and American forces invaded French North Africa, which was controlled by the German puppet state of Vichy France. After Africa, Allied forces invaded Sicily, then mainland Italy. In the East, the brutal and bloody fighting between Nazis and Soviets stalled at Stalingrad.

On June 6, 1944, the Allied forces landed in Normandy, sweeping east across France, then landed in southern France and linked up with the D-Day invaders in the north.

By 1944, Nazi Germany was on the verge of collapse. The Soviets had reached Berlin and the western Allies had crossed the Rhine.

Adolf Hilter died by suicide on April 30, leaving Germany leaderless. German Army leaders preliminarily surrendered to the western Allies at Rheims on May 7, but Soviet leaders demanded a formal, definitive surrender in Berlin on May 8.

After 12 years of conflict and six years of war and between 15 million and 20 million deaths, the war in Europe ended.

The war in the Pacific raged until August, when Japan, facing invasion and suffering from two nuclear bombings, surrendered, ending the war.

The postwar transition of Japan and Germany to economic powerhouses with provisions against military aggression enshrined in their constitutions demonstrated that peoples can change if they dedicate themselves to peace. The world we have was shaped by those who fought against the “banality of evil” and nationalism and militarism eight decades ago, both in uniform and civilian clothes. It takes courage to resist, to stand for justice and to place one’s life on the line for righteousness.

We are in debt to those who did so 80 years ago.