Implacable Foes : Oxford University Press : 9780190931520 : 0190931523 : 22 Aug 2019 : May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day--shortened to "V.E. Day"--brought with it the demise of Nazi Germany. But for the Allies, the war was only half-won. Exhausted but exuberant American soldiers, ready to return home, were sent to join the fighting in the Pacific, which by the spring and summer of 1945 had turned into a grueling campaign of bloody attrition against an enemy determined to fight to the last man. Germany had surrendered unconditionally. The Japanese would clearly make the conditions of victory extraordinarily high. Following V-E Day, American citizens understandably clamored for their young men to be shipped back from Europe and longed for a return to a peacetime economy. Politics intruded upon military policy while a new and untested president struggled to control policy. The challenge of defeating the Japanese had come to seem nearly insurmountable. American casualty rates during the