Edward Kennedy's Long Road to Reims: The Media and the Military in World War II

Abstract

In May 1945, journalist Edward Kennedy famously bypassed military censorship to break the news of Germany's surrender. No action by an American correspondent during World War II proved more controversial. Disaccredited by the Army and denounced by many of his colleagues, at year's end, Kennedy's career at the Associated Press was over and his reputation in a shambles. Historians have considered the episode a rare instance of an otherwise cooperative media defying military censorship. However, reconstructing Kennedy's career reveals just how fraught media–military relations actually were during that war, and it calls into question the conventional wisdom that the media's relationship with the military was generally amicable during the war, only to break down a generation later in Vietnam.

Notes

Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism, A History: 1690–1960, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 757.

Drew Middleton et al. to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, 8 May 1945, RG 331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 85A, Box 44, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (henceforth NARA).

“Ed Kennedy's War,” AP Corporate Archives 4, no. 2 (July 2012): 2.

See Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Pulitzer Wanted for Reporter Who Broke Story on Nazi Germany's Surrender,” Washington Post, November 23, 2012. For other recent interest in the Kennedy story, see Nu Yang, “Journalists Campaign to Award Posthumous Pulitzer to Edward Kennedy,” Editor & Publisher, November 9, 2012 and Christophe Remy, Reims, 7 mai 1945 – Le Grand Secret (Nancy, FR: ERE Production and France Télévisions, 2015), which refers to the surrender story as “le scoop du siècle.”

Such characterizations of the Kennedy surrender story include Michael Emery, Edwin Emery, and Nancy L. Roberts, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 9th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999), 40; Mott, American Journalism, 757–58; and W. David Sloan, James G. Stovall, and James D. Startt, The Media in America: A History, 4th ed. (Northport, AL: Vision Press, 1999).

Joseph T. Mathews, Reporting the Wars (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957).

Michael S. Sweeney, The Military and the Press: An Uneasy Truce (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 110.

Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-maker from the Crimea to Iraq, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 363.

Ibid., 364.

John James Briscoe, “The Kennedy Affair” (Master's thesis, University of Missouri, 1949).

Robert W. Desmond, Tides of War: World News Reporting, 1940–1945 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1984), 401–412.

Kennedy's first substantial account was “I’d Do It Again,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1948, 36–41. A lengthier account is included in Ed Kennedy's War: V-E Day, Censorship & the Associated Press, ed. Julia Kennedy Cochran (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), 151–187.

Documents concerning the planning of the press component of ECLIPSE and its precursor TALISMAN are located in RG331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 82, Box 4, NARA. The final press plan is ECLIPSE Memorandum No. 16 (n.d.).

Operation JACKPLANE was detailed in SHAEF PRD, “Standing Operating Procedure #2,” April 30, 1945, Thor Smith Papers, Box 6, Folder 3, Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, KS. Curiously there is no mention of JACKPLANE in the SHAEF records at NARA.

Kennedy, “I’d Do It Again,” 37.

Allen to SHAEF Chief of Staff, memo, 12 May 1945, RG331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 6, Box 10, NARA.

Kennedy, “I’d Do It Again,” 39.

Ibid.

Merrick to Warden, memo, 7 May 1945, RG331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 6, Box 10, NARA.

Morton Gudebrod, written statement, 12 May 1945, RG331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 6, Box 10, NARA.

“Conference between Col. Hill and Brigadier General Allen,” transcript of telephone call, 7 May 1945, RG 165 War Department Special and General Staffs, Entry 499, Box 58, NARA. Several hours later, Allen concluded that the news agency as an organization had not been involved. He thus lifted the suspension on all but three AP personnel—Kennedy, Gudebrod, and London bureau chief Robert Bunnelle, who had relayed the message to New York.

See Kingsbury Smith (INS European General Manager) to Eisenhower, 9 May 1941, RG 331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 6, Box 10, NARA.

Drew Middleton et al. to Eisenhower, 8 May 1945, RG 331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 85A, Box 44, NARA.

“Complete Text of SHAEF Official Transcript of Meeting of Accredited Allied War Correspondents,” cable, 8 May 1945, Edward Kennedy Papers (henceforth EKP), Box 3, Folder 23, Associated Press Corporate Archive New York, NY.

AP London Bureau to Kennedy, cable, 7 May 1945, Box 5, Folder 40, EKP.

Quoted in Smith to Eisenhower, 9 May 1945, RG331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 6, Box 10, NARA.

Cooper to Kennedy, cable, 8 May 1945, Box 5, Folder 41, EKP.

Marshall to Eisenhower, cable, 8 May 1945, RG165 Records of War Department General and Special Staffs, Entry 499, Box 58, NARA.

“Statement by Brigadier General Frank A. Allen, Jr. to Accredited War Correspondents at SHAEF,” 9 May 1945, Thor Smith Papers, Box 6, Folder 6, Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, KS.

Ibid.

“President of AP Regrets Peace ‘Beat’,” New York Times, May 11, 1945.

Col. H. L. Allen to Kennedy and Gudebrod, Letter Order #1036, 14 May 1945, RG331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 6, Box 10, NARA.

Allen to Surles, cable, 14 May 1945, RG331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, Entry 6, Box 10, NARA.

“Troop Ship Brings Former Prisoners,” New York Times, June 5, 1945.

Cooper to Members of the [AP] Board of Directors, memo, 7 June 1945, Box 1, Folder 13, EKP.

Cooper to Kennedy [ca. 1945], Box 1, Folder 13, EKP. This was attached as an appendix to the confidential memo to the AP Board of Directors dated 7 June 1945. There is no record of its ever being sent to Kennedy.

Ibid.

Julia Kennedy Cochran, “Prologue,” in Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, xxiv–v. See also “Front Line bios” folder in World War II file, Vertical File Series, Associated Press Corporate Archive, New York, New York (henceforth APCA).

Kennedy to John Evans, 24 September 1937, Box 1, Folder 2, EKP.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 20.

Kennedy to John Evans, cable, 9 December 1940, Box 1, Folder 5, EKP.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 71.

Ibid., 74.

See Kennedy to Cooper, 30 May 1941, Box 1, Folder 5, EKP. For Cooper's worries, see Cooper to Kennedy et al., cable, 9 April 1941, Box 1, Folder 5, EKP and Cooper to AP Bureau (Athens), cable, 22 April 1941, Box 1, Folder 5, EKP.

Kennedy to Ralph Ingersoll, 30 September 1941, Box 1, Folder 5, EKP.

“Minutes of Meeting…to Hear Grievances against the Censorship” [ca. 1941], Box 6, Folder 59, EKP.

Kennedy to Ralph Ingersoll, 30 September 1941, Box 1, Folder 5, EKP.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Kennedy to Major General Russell L. Maxwell, 12 December 1941, Box 1, Folder 5, EKP.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 90.

Cooper to Kennedy, 29 January 1942, Box 1, Folder 6, EKP.

Kennedy to Cooper, 29 March 1942, Box 1, Folder 6, EKP.

Cooper to Kennedy (via Robert Bunnelle in London), cable, 24 February 1943, Box 1, Folder 7, EKP.

For more on the controversy over the appointment of Darlan and subsequent political censorship, see Richard Fine, “‘Snakes in Our Midst’: The Media, The Military and American Policy toward Vichy North Africa,” Journalism History 27, no. 4 (2010): 59–82. For more on the tangled political situation in French North Africa, see Arthur Layton Funk, The Politics of TORCH: The Allied Landings and the Algiers Putsch, 1942 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974).

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 104.

Morton to Alan J. Gould, memo, 7 December 1943, AP Subject File, Box 61, Patton Folder, APCA.

Harry C. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), 396.

Eisenhower to Patton, 17 August 1943, reprinted in Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower The War Years: II, ed. Alfred E. Chandler Jr. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 1340.

Ibid.

Kennedy to Glenn Babb, 11 December 1943, AP Subject File, Box 61, Patton Folder, APCA.

Ibid.

Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower, 403.

“L’Affair Patton: Charge,” New York Daily News, 14 December 1943, clipping in AP Subject File, Box 61, Patton Folder, APCA.

“Untitled-Article 6,” New York Times, November 22, 1943.

“Headquarters Denies Reprimanding Patton,” New York Times, November 23, 1943.

Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower, 450.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 111.

R. B. Chandler, the publisher of the Mobile (AL) Press Register, was especially pointed in his criticism. Chandler's paper had editorialized on November 24 regarding the initial suppression of the story: “Here the American people have a flagrant example of how war news is withheld from them. Here is an illustration of the hush-hush that can be practiced—and is practiced—under a wartime censorship arbitrarily administered.” The Press Register praised Pearson's courage in reporting the story and added: “This country's mothers and fathers did not watch their sons march off to war with the expectation that these soldiers would be cuffed about, slapped, and abused by commanding generals after falling ill or wounded.” “Drew Pearson's Story about Patton Is Confirmed after a False Denial,” editorial, Mobile Register, November 24, 1943, 6, AP Subject File, Box 61, Patton Folder, APCA.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 113–14.

Ibid., 114.

Ibid., 120.

Early in his tenure at AFHQ, Tupper seemed as invisible to correspondents as did Major Major in Joseph Heller's Catch-22. “When months went by without a sight of him,” Kennedy wrote in his memoir, “word spread that there was no General Tupper.” However, when Tupper did finally surface to supervise arrangements for press coverage of ANVIL, “the result had almost every correspondent howling,” according to Kennedy, because he had little understanding of the way in which reporters worked, nor of the need to treat them impartially. Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 130.

Tupper to Gammell (AFHQ), cable, 28 August 1944, WO204/5426, National Archives, London, UK (hereafter cited as NAUK). Tupper identified the correspondents as Kennedy, Carleton (Bill) Kent of the Chicago Times, Graham Hovey of INS, and Philip Jordan of the (London, UK) News Chronicle. In Ed Kennedy's War, Kennedy wrote that he left the press camp with Jordan and Philip Wynter of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, and that Hovey and Kent joined them later on. In this case, Kennedy may have been conflating two separate episodes.

Maj. General T. S. Airey, G-2, AFHQ to Information, News and Censorship (INC) Division, AFHQ, memo, 27 August 1944, WO204/5426, NAUK.

Tupper to Gammell, cable, 28 August 1944, WO204/5426, NAUK.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 134.

Lt. Col. Kenneth Clark to Kennedy, Jordan, Hovey, Kent and Wynter, memo, 7 September 1944, WO204/5426, NAUK.

Ibid.

Memo from Lt. Col. Kenneth Clark, 14 September 1944, WO204/5426, NAUK.

Tupper to Chief, INC, AFHQ, memo, 19 September 1944, WO204/5426, NAUK.

Tupper to Chief, INC, AFHQ, cable, 16 September 1944, WO204/5426, NAUK.

McChrystal to Burnham, cable, 17 September 1944, WO204/5426, NAUK.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 145.

Ibid.

“United Press Men Sent False Cable,” New York Times, November 8, 1918. Ironically, the newsman who sent the cable was Roy Howard, then the president of the United Press.

The sequence of events leading up to Bell's report were reconstructed by New York Times editor Edwin James in a cable to the Times’ publisher Arthur H. Sulzberger sent on 8 May 1945 and included by Sulzberger in a letter he sent to Robert McLean on May 10, 1945, Box 1, Folder 10, EKP.

A full account of the false surrender story is contained in James T. Howard, “How the Nation Got Its False Peace Report, PM, 30 April 1945, clipping in Robert McLean Papers, Box 24, Folder 343, APCA.

Virgil Pinkley, “Eisenhower on Censorship,” Editor & Publisher, April 21, 1945, Robert McLean Papers, Box 19, Folder 255, APCA.

For additional expressions of this view of media military relations from a variety of perspectives, see Frank Aukofer and William P. Lawrence, America's Team: The Odd Couple—A Report on the Relationship between the Media and the Military (Nashville, TN: Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, 1995); Daniel Hallin, “Media and War,” in International Media Research: A Critical Survey, ed. John Corner, Philip Schlesinger, and Roger Silverstone (New York: Routledge, 1997), 206–31; William V. Kennedy, The Military and the Media: Why the Press Cannot Be Trusted to Cover a War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993); and Peter Young and Peter Jesser, The Media and the Military: From the Crimea to Desert Strike (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).

Andy Rooney, interview with the author, New York, NY, September 22, 2008.

Pentagon Rules on Media Access to the Persian Gulf War: Hearing Before the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate 102nd Cong. 21 (1991) (testimony of Walter Cronkite, special correspondent and member of the board, CBS, Incorporated).

Charles C. Moskos and Thomas E. Ricks, Reporting War When There Is No War: The Media and Military in Peace and Humanitarian Operations. (Chicago: Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, 1996), 8.

Douglas Porch, “‘No Bad Stories’: The American Media–Military Relationship,” Naval War College Review 50, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 85.

Sweeney, The Military and the Press, 6.

For notice of a compliant press, see, among others: Knightley, The First Casualty, 275ff; Mary Mander, Pen and Sword: American War Correspondents, 1898–1975 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 88–90; and Michael S. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 213–217.

Cooper to Harris, letter, 26 July 1946, AP Subject Files, Box 79, APCA.

“AP Man Restored as Army Writer,” New York Times, July 22, 1946.

T. M. Storke to Cooper, n.d., Box 2, Folder 15, EKP.

Cochran, “Epilogue,” in Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 192, 201.

Knightley, First Casualty, 364.

Kennedy, Ed Kennedy's War, 187.

Kennedy to Cooper, letter, 30 August 1944, Box 1, Folder 9, EKP. Thanks to Valerie Komor and Francesca Pitaro, the archivists at the Associated Press, for their interest in and invaluable support of this project.