‘This is Ed Kennedy in Paris. The war is over, and I am going to dictate: Germany has surrendered unconditionally.’
These are the words that ended World War II in the West, but they ruined the life of the man who spoke them.
‘That’s official. Get it out,’ the then 39-year-old journalist concluded, instructing his colleagues at news agency the Associated Press to send an update by wire around the world in the afternoon of May 7, 1945.
It had been 2:41am in Reims, France, when German envoys signed the act of unconditional surrender inside a red‑brick schoolhouse that served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters.
Among the 17 Allied correspondents ushered in to witness the ceremony was Edward Kennedy, then the AP’s Paris Bureau chief.
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The surrender was subject to a military embargo to ensure compliance across the entire continent, and was initially due to take effect at 23:01 on May 8.
Kennedy, naturally, sought to prepare and file the story of a lifetime as fast as possible.
However, as he and the other correspondents returned to the Hotel Scribe in Paris that day, the embargo was suddenly extended.
Allied military leaders insisted that the momentous occasion be kept secret for another 36 hours until after a second Soviet‑led surrender ceremony in Berlin.
Some believed it was important that the surrender be made by the heads of the German Armed Forces to the Soviets, as well as the Western Allies.
But when Kennedy learned German officials had announced the surrender in a radio broadcast from Flensburg – a city in Allied hands, who would have had to approve the broadcast – he concluded the embargo was political, not a matter of troop safety or national security, as other wartime reporting restrictions had been.
Kennedy was waved off when he told military censors that he could not continue to hold the story.
He paused and thought about it for 15 minutes, and then made the call of his life.
Picking up an unmonitored military phone to the AP bureau in London, he began transmitting a 400‑word bulletin that would change the world forever.
‘Germany has surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies and Russia at 2:41 am French time Monday,’ he began.
‘The surrender took place at a little red schoolhouse which is the headquarters of Gen. Eisenhower.’
‘The surrender, which brought the war in Europe to a formal end after five years, eight months and six days of bloodshed and destruction was signed for Germany by Col. Gen. Gustav Jodl.’
The bulletin was published and spread across the globe like wildfire.
‘The absurdity of attempting to bottle up news of such magnitude was too apparent,’ Kennedy later wrote.
And so, celebrations began a full day before what would be forever remembered as VE Day.
In keeping with the double surrender, ‘Victory Day’ is still celebrated in Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union on May 9.
So Kennedy had a huge part in one of the defining moments of global history, but retribution against him was rapid and ruthless.
Within an hour, Kennedy’s credentials were revoked, and he was expelled from France. AP correspondents were briefly banned from filing copy.
Under pressure from military and rival press officials, the AP publicly rebuked their reporter, suspended him and quietly severed ties a matter of weeks later.
More than 50 of his own colleagues signed a protest letter condemning him for ‘the most disgraceful double‑cross in the history of journalism.’
As we celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, we should take a moment to remember Kennedy
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Kennedy never worked for a major news organisation again.
He edited regional papers in California until he died in a 1963 traffic accident at 58.
At his funeral, Monsignor John Ryan said ‘He gave the world twenty-four more hours of happiness.’
However, it would take nearly seven decades after his firing and over 40 years after his death before the AP reversed course.
In May 2012, then President and CEO Tom Curley issued a formal apology, calling the firing ‘a terrible day for the AP’ and praising Kennedy for ‘doing everything just right.’
‘It was handled in the worst possible way,’ Curley said. ‘Once the war is over, you can’t hold back information like that.’
The agency simultaneously supported the publication of Ed Kennedy’s War, the correspondent’s posthumous memoir, which had struggled to find a publisher.
As we celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day and honour the hundreds of thousands of brave men and women who fought and died for our freedom, we should take a moment to remember Kennedy.
His once‑controversial scoop destroyed his career and upended his life. Kennedy would never know his vindication, dying decades before history would remember his journalistic bravery as a landmark moment in the end of World War II.
That belief that the world had a right to know was a decision that cost him personally, but gave us all an extra day of peace.
Today, a monument to Kennedy stands in Laguna Grande Park in California, with the inscription: ‘He gave the world an extra day of happiness.’
It is often said that in war, the first casualty is truth. Kennedy made sure it wasn’t the last.
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