After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe (36 page)

Russian mortar shells burst in the midst of German soldiers and civilians waiting to cross the bridge to the American side of the river and scores of women and children were killed or wounded. Wehrmacht soldiers pushed old women out of the boats in which they were trying to cross the river. Officers, stripped naked, paddled a rubber boat loaded with troops and three women, their baggage and bicycles. A girl drowned in mid-stream after screaming for help. Men swam the river in their vests, climbed up the west bank and were sent straight to the prisoners’ cages, still in their vests.

At noon on 7 May Russian tanks broke through the screen of woods behind the German position. The Red Army was now less than a thousand yards from the riverbank. ‘I stood at the far-end of the broken bridge’, Wellard continued, ‘and watched paratroopers, generals, high-ranking staff officers, nurses and tank-men run across it in a state of wild-eyed panic. German soldiers fought with each other for planks, tubs and other pieces of debris to swim the river on.’ So ended the army Hitler imagined would save the fortunes of the Reich in Berlin.

At 2.30 p.m. the foreign minister of the Dönitz government, Schwerin von Krosigk, broadcast news of the surrender to the German people from Flensburg:

German men and women, the high command of the Armed Forces has today, at the order of Admiral Dönitz, declared the unconditional surrender of all fighting troops … After a heroic struggle of almost six years of almost incomparable hardship Germany has succumbed to the overwhelming power of her enemies. To continue the war would only mean senseless bloodshed … We must now face our fate squarely and unquestioningly.

As he uttered these words, Von Krosigk knew that German army and SS units were battling to wipe out the insurgents in Prague and that fighting was still continuing on the Eastern Front.

The Soviet leadership chose to ignore this announcement. Having told the Western Allies that they regarded Rheims as a preliminary agreement, they relayed no news of it to the Russian people or its soldiers. The Prague offensive – the last major Red Army offensive of the war – had just been launched and would be continued until the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Centre surrendered to them or was destroyed. With this in mind, and aware that substantial bodies of German troops were still holding out in Courland and on the Hela Peninsula near Danzig, Stalin summoned General Antonov to another meeting. He wondered whether some advantage might be gleaned from the Rheims signing nonetheless.

Antonov was instructed to issue an appeal to the German formations still fighting against the Russians. In this communication, to be made by radio and leaflet drop, the Soviets would refer to the Rheims agreement as valid and in force. They would require the Wehrmacht to begin surrender preparations immediately and formally lay down their arms at one minute past midnight on 8/9 May. This was the time designated at Rheims for the unconditional surrender to come into effect and would coincide with the second signing ceremony at Karlshorst, which was to be concluded at 23.00 hours on 8 May. The ploy was devised to save the lives of Russian soldiers but would have only a limited effect.

At Supreme Allied Headquarters at Rheims, the surrender was still under a news embargo. But at 3.00 p.m. Associated Press correspondent Ed Kennedy deliberately broke the agreement he had made. As the Dönitz government had already broadcast news of this, Kennedy decided there was no good military reason to delay his dispatch further. He phoned his agency in London: ‘This is Ed Kennedy,’ he told them. ‘Germany has surrendered unconditionally – that’s official. Make the dateline Rheims, France and get it out.’ At 9.36 a.m. New York time (3.36 p.m. in London and Rheims) the message ran off the teleprinters all over the United States: ‘Germany surrendered unconditionally to the western allies and Russia 2.41am French time today.’

The breach of a news embargo was an unprecedented action for an American war reporter to take and it would have very serious consequences. On hearing of the German broadcast, at 2.41 p.m. that afternoon, Ed Kennedy, increasingly frustrated at the delay, had asked to see Eisenhower’s public relations officer, Brigadier General Frank Allen. ‘The absurdity of attempting to bottle up news of such magnitude was all too apparent,’ Kennedy would later write. But Allen made it clear to Kennedy that their hands were tied on the matter, as the timing of the announcement needed to be decided upon by Stalin, Churchill and Truman, and that a second signing was now to take place in Berlin.

This was too much for Kennedy. Hearing this, he came to the conclusion that the embargo was no longer about military security but was being determined by political factors. Suspecting the influence of the Soviet Union, he decided that Russia had no right to muzzle a story that was in the public interest. He found a back-channel telephone line and dictated 300 words to the Associated Press Bureau for immediate release before the line went dead.

Boyd DeWolf Lewis of the United Press was another of the fifteen reporters chosen by Supreme Allied Headquarters to witness the surrender at Rheims. On the flight from Paris all had solemnly pledged not to file their stories until permission was given. After the signing, the war correspondents were told that they could not be transmitted until the following afternoon (of 8 May) – an embargo of eighteen hours. Lewis said: ‘We were all clear on the reason for this: it was to allow the Big Three to make the announcement and most importantly, in order for the Russians to make sure that the Germans were not just surrendering to the western allies but were surrendering on the Eastern Front also.’

At dawn on 7 May the correspondents had flown back to Paris, their stories written on portable typewriters and cleared by the army censors. Upon landing, Lewis was the first to get to the Army Communications Centre and was thus first in line for the transmission of his story over the radiotelegraph circuits once the embargo expired. Lewis said: ‘It was not simply about “political censorship”. Kennedy also broke the embargo because it was the only way he could beat the United Press and get a scoop for his story.’

Kennedy claimed that running the story would save lives. In fact, the last American soldier was killed in Europe seven hours before he breached the embargo. Lewis emphasised: ‘I must say that never at any time did it occur to me to try an unethical “end run” with the story. Nor can I claim any struggle of conscience, weighing the danger of added war and death (if a breach of agreement blew up the surrender) against the value of a scoop.’

Charles Kiley of the
Stars and Stripes
was also at the Rheims ceremony. He added: ‘As a reporter, I understood Kennedy’s actions – but did not agree with them. For all the talk about “political censorship” he wanted a scoop, plain and simple.’

Kennedy was a ‘wire reporter’ – and he was under constant pressure to beat his fellows. All war journalists understood the pressure he was under. But he chose not to include his editors in his decision to break the embargo – as he filed his dispatch by phone they naturally assumed he was in the clear to do so and that they could immediately publish. And yet Kennedy had always respected embargoes before. After a discussion with General Eisenhower, he had held back from reporting an incident in which General George Patton had slapped two invalided soldiers in a hospital in Sicily. By doing so, and sticking to his word, Kennedy had then seen another reporter break the story several weeks later.

There seems no reason to doubt Kennedy’s own testimony that he believed the second surrender in Berlin to be merely ‘staged’ for political reasons and found this no longer a justifiable reason for embargoing the story. In short it was anti-Russian sentiment – as well as the desire for a scoop – which propelled him to take this action. Kennedy – who had covered the war in Italy, France and Germany – was proud of the contribution made by American troops and deeply distrustful of the Soviet Union.

But this was a huge decision for a war correspondent to take – and one that would cause substantial international complications. Another reporter, Chares Kiley, who would be present at both the surrenders, at Rheims and Karlshorst, was more sympathetic to the Russian point of view. He believed that the embargo was justified and as all the press had signed up to it they should hold to their word. He realised that politics was involved in delaying the announcement – but also understood that the Soviet Union had suffered by far the highest casualty rate of all the allies in the war, some 27 million soldiers and civilians: ‘We knew that the Soviet high command was not present at Rheims,’ Kiley said, ‘and would not accept this ceasefire until the Germans surrendered in Berlin. And we felt that the Russians deserved to have their day.’

The majority of Kennedy’s fellow journalists were deeply angered by his action. ‘I am browned off, fed up, burnt up and put out,’ wrote
New York Times
correspondent Drew Middleton. His paper wrote an editorial chastising the Associated Press for initially boasting of a historic ‘news beat’. ‘If it was a “beat”,’ the
New York Times
wrote caustically, ‘it was only because Mr Kennedy’s colleagues chose to stand by their commitments.’

SHAEF was determined to limit the damage of this disclosure, transmitting a carefully worded message to American news agencies and radio networks:

‘Supreme Headquarters allows correspondents at 16.45 Paris time today to state that SHAEF has made nowhere any official statement for publication concerning the complete surrender of all German armed forces in Europe and that no story to this effect is authorized.’

Alistair Cooke was reporting on the San Francisco World Conference:

‘Within the hour the radio networks were spreading a harrowing turmoil of rumour. The city police, put on the alert at dawn, relaxed again. Before noon [San Francisco time] it was established that the Associated Press had unluckily announced VE Day too early. The American itch to “jump the gun” has never been rewarded with such public humiliation.’

At Supreme Allied Headquarters, British journalist David Walker – following the censorship rules, as all his colleagues had, with the exception of Kennedy – summed up the mood of frustration:

‘This must be the greatest single press fiasco of all time,’ Walker wrote bitterly. ‘While the peace news has been broadcast all over the world, British and American newspapermen’s copy still lies here pending the permission of officialdom. Even in their defeat, the Germans can laugh at us for our confusion, and for those of us who have been abroad on war stories since 1938 and 1939, this is the final humiliation.’

Walker, not really comprehending the full situation, felt that once the story got out, Supreme Allied Command should have authorised it. ‘It is a pity that SHAEF lacked the courage of Lord Nelson,’ he continued, ‘who put his telescope to a blind eye; the only advantage they seem to have over Nelson is that they are more at sea.’

The Associated Press subsequently apologised, its president, Robert McLean, saying the organisation ‘profoundly regretted the distribution of the report of the total surrender in Europe, which investigation clearly disclosed was in advance of authorization by Supreme Allied Headquarters’. The AP’s general manager, Kent Cooper, added that Kennedy should have conferred with his editors about the decision to publish. He had violated a ‘cardinal principle’ of journalism in breaking a pledge to keep the surrender confidential.

In New York celebrations were going on regardless:

‘In Times Square thousands of people, yelling ceaselessly, packed the streets, stopping all the traffic as far as the eye could see. Milling crowds blocked all thoroughfares. Press photographers clambered on to windows to snap the fantastic scene of men and women going wild in the mid-morning sunshine.’

All over the United States radio networks that had first mounted special victory programmes later abandoned them and restored their normal schedules. At noon the CBS announcer began to address ordinary people’s frustration:

‘It’s obviously a fact. But it’s not official. Official is official is official. And there, for all the purposes of absolute definition, goes the day we thought ought to be called VE Day. If the objective of the supernatural powers had been to snarl up the actual end of the war in Europe, so as to save us all the waste of climactic hysteria, nothing could have worked out better.’

For most of 7 May Britain had been starved of news. That morning the press had to remain non-committal.
The Times
predicted: ‘End of war in Europe at hand’. The
Daily Telegraph
tried: ‘Germany’s surrender imminent’. ‘It may be today,’ hazarded the
Daily Mail.
The
Daily Express
, which had run the headline ‘No war this year’ in 1939, played it safe with ‘The last hours’.

People were puzzled and angry as the day went on, complaining at the lack of information, some saying the government had spoiled a chance to rejoice in victory. A
Manchester Guardian
reporter described the confusion:

All day people in London sensed that the end was near. In Piccadilly Circus, in Whitehall and in the Westminster area thousands gathered and waited for hours in the expectancy of hearing the great news. Most of the waiting people were Londoners, but servicemen and women of all nationalities mingled with them.

Buckingham Palace became the focal point. The area outside the massive railings and the royal parks around were thronged with waiting crowds, who seized on every movement within the Palace gates. They saw the red carpet being placed on the balcony on which the King and Queen were expected to appear. The Royal Standard fluttered from the roof of the Palace, the windows of which still carried black-out hoardings, some being bricked up.

When no announcement was made on the six o’clock news the crowds in Piccadilly Circus dispersed quietly, and at half-past six the crowds outside the palace also began to disperse and by seven o’clock only a few people were left.