AP's Edward Kennedy Was the Man on the Scene Who Broke the Surrender Story

Same Source as the previous V-E Day entries.

Edward Kennedy, then AP's  chief of bureau in Paris, was present at the surrender and was first to report the end of the war in Europe to the United States and the world, bypassing the Allied political embargo.

The news was broadcast unofficially over German radio, but U.S. President Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed to suppress the news of the capitulation for a day, in order to allow Russian dictator Josef Stalin to stage a second surrender  ceremony in Berlin.

Kennedy published the news anyway, angering U.S. authorities.  The military suspended AP's ability temporarily  to dispatch any news from the European theater, and Kennedy was called home and later fired.

AP issued a statement saying, "Kennedy did everything right," because the embargo  was for political reason, not to protect the troops.

"The world needed to know," AP's  then-president and CEO Tom Curley said.    Kennedy "stood up to the power."

--GreGen