In his 1949 memoir "Eastern Approaches," British officer Fitzroy Maclean wrote of standing on top of Belgrade's fortress and watching the Nazis retreat across the Sava River, leaving the capital to the Red Army and Yugoslav partisan guerrillas.
The date, Oct. 20, 1944, became Liberation Day. It was marked initially with military parades, but once Yugoslavia split with Josef Stalin's Soviet Union in 1948, these were abandoned in favor of memorials for those killed.
On Thursday, guns, tanks and planes will be back in the city, now the capital of Serbia, for a Liberation Day parade held four days early to accommodate the guest of honor: Russian President Vladimir Putin, en route to a summit in Milan.