The Real End of WWII, 90 Years Ago
From left: Benjamin Hett and Craig Symonds.
Roosevelt House is pleased to present a special event to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II—exploring the complexities of how, and when, the war actually ended. Convening preeminent naval historian Craig Symonds, international affairs expert Stephen Schlesinger, and Hunter’s own WWII scholar Benjamin Carter Hett, this panel will consider the trickle of events—following VE Day on May 8 of 1945, and V-J Day on September 2—that brought the global conflict to its final conclusion, and ushered in a new era of accountability and possibility. Jonathan F. Fanton Director of Roosevelt House Harold Holzer will serve as moderator.
The acceptance of Germany’s surrender, a month after President Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, was celebrated as a concluding event of the war. The United States and its allies, however, continued to oversee the final phases of the global conflict and create new peacetime initiatives to exact justice and impose safeguards against future aggression.
Those considerations included: the decision of whether to invade, or unleash a new lethal weapon, on Japan; the Nuremberg Trials, charging Nazi leaders with crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; the realization of FDR’s dream of the founding of the United Nations; the fraught Allied occupation of Germany and surrounding countries; the Marshall Plan for Europe and American occupation of Japan; and America’s ongoing grappling with its own racial inequities—which now included a demand for equal treatment by returning Black veterans.
At a time when Americans often hear premature claims of ending wars around the world, please join us for a historic—and yet timely—conversation about the intricacies and realities of what it takes to bring major conflict to a close, and the steps involved in the restoration of peace and justice.
Benjamin Carter Hett earned a J.D. at the University of Toronto and practiced litigation in Toronto before going back to obtain an MA in history, and a Ph.D. in history at Harvard. He has taught at Harvard College and the Harvard Law School and, since 2003, at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of six books, including The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (2018), winner of the 2019 Vine Award for History and named one of the year’s best books by The Times of London and the Daily Telegraph; and The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War (2020), named an editors’ choice by the New York Times Book Review. He is presently finishing a book on criminal policing in Nazi Germany.
Stephen Schlesinger is a Fellow at the Century Foundation, former director of the World Policy Institute at the New School, and former publisher of The World Policy Journal. The author of Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, Schlesinger received a certificate of study from Cambridge University and a JD from Harvard Law School. In the early 1970s, he edited and published The New Democrat Magazine and, in 1972, served as a speechwriter for Presidential candidate George McGovern. He was later the weekly columnist for The Boston Globe’s “The L’t’ry Life,” a staff writer at Time Magazine and, for 12 years, Governor Mario Cuomo’s foreign policy advisor.
Craig L. Symonds is Professor of History Emeritus at the U. S. Naval Academy and former Distinguished Ernest J. King Visiting Professor of Maritime History at the U. S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. The winner of the 2009 Lincoln Prize for Lincoln and His Admirals, his most recent books are Annapolis Goes to War: The Naval Academy Class of 1940 and its Trial by Fire in World War II; World War II at Sea: A Global History; and Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, which earned The Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize. Symonds has also won the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Award (for his 2005 book Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History), the Samuel Eliot Morrison Award for naval literature, and the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
Harold Holzer, moderator, has served since 2015 as the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. A prolific author with more than 50 books to his credit, he won the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Prize for his Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion and was awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship. His most recent book is Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (2024).
