VICTORY '45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders. By James Holland and Al Murray. Atlantic Monthly Press. 288 pages. $28. Most wars begin with a unilateral act. Americans fired “the shot heard round the world” in Lexington in 1775, the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. To call off a war, however, the belligerents must agree to terms and conditions, a collaborative and convoluted process. In the popular imagination, World War II concluded in 1945 with the deaths of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Europe, and the atomic bombings of...