tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/memorial-day-2015-17261/articlesMemorial Day 2015 – The Conversation2015-05-25T13:28:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/423112015-05-25T13:28:07Z2015-05-25T13:28:07ZVictory in Europe remembered<p>Memorial Day honors men and women who died in military service. It follows hard on the heels of Victory in Europe (V-E) Day. Both commemorations encourage us to reflect on the political and personal meaning of liberation and sacrifice. </p>
<p>As a child, Ned Lebow was a refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe and just old enough to remember VE Day. He is a political scientist who has devoted most of his career to studying the causes of war and ways of preventing it. </p>
<p>Christian Wendt was born in postwar Germany, and knows first-hand the incentives he and his peers had to develop a commitment to democracy and tolerance. He is also a professor of ancient history and has studied the relationship between liberation and democracy in ancient Athens.</p>
<h2>Celebrations in New York</h2>
<p>On Victory Europe Day, 8 May 1945, Ned was a young lad in New York City living in a neighborhood of row houses and apartment buildings with many immigrants. </p>
<p>We were a mix of Jews, Italians, Germans, and other Europeans, most of whom had voted with their feet against Nazi and Fascist regimes. </p>
<p>The German family across the street were anti-Hitler Social Democrats from Hamburg. The breadwinner was a carpenter and his two sons served in the American air force. One was missing in action. </p>
<p>On the morning of VE Day, my mother and I watched through our front window as a staff car pulled up and an officer knocked on their door and disappeared inside. He delivered good news: the missing son had been liberated from a POW camp by the British Army and, with the wounded, had the highest priority for shipment home. </p>
<p>There was a grand street party that night to celebrate victory, with everybody drinking to the good fortune of this family, but also wondering about the fate of overseas relatives and those still engaged in the war against Japan.</p>
<p>For my family and our neighbors the commitment to tolerance, the rule of law, and respect for others transcended national identifications and cultural differences.</p>
<p>Liberation of Europe meant more than the defeat of barbaric regimes and freeing occupied countries and their peoples. </p>
<p>It was a triumph of our values and we looked forward – naively, it turned out – to a world where they would be universally cherished and practiced. </p>
<h2>The ‘liberation’ of Germany</h2>
<p>As to the Germans, like Christian, born in post-war Germany they understood why German president Richard von Weizsäcker described VE Day as <a href="http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/DE/Richard-von-Weizsaecker/Reden/1985/05/19850508_Rede.html">“the liberation”</a> of the country. </p>
<p>Today commitment to the rule of law, toleration of political, religious, and cultural differences is deeply entrenched in Germany, but far from universal or secure as the rise of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30685842">Pegida</a> (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West) and violence against immigrants demonstrates. </p>
<p>Some Germans regard the comments of Weizsäcker (or what they heard about them) as relieving them of any responsibility and even allowing them to portray their countrymen – as novelist Günter Grass partly did – as <a href="http://www.tagesspiegel.de/meinung/portraet-guenter-grass-auch-deutsche-unter-den-opfern/4570368.html">passive victims</a>. </p>
<p>Freed citizens must not become complacent or construct liberation from Fascist or Communist regimes in an illiberal and self-serving way. Liberation is equally a task for the victors; they must remember what they, and especially those we remember on Memorial Day, fought for. </p>
<p>Liberation requires all of us to strive to become truly autonomous, freeing ourselves from problematic and destructive assumptions that are in the way of commitment to tolerance, sacrifice for the good of the community, and respect for the rule of law. This is not a moment in history, but a constant necessity. </p>
<p>Because of its democratic and economic success, Germany risks, in our view, becoming a lazy place where there is no real struggle for liberation from a past of nationalism and racism or the more recent present of self-centered materialism.</p>
<p>But Germany is not unique. </p>
<h2>The growth of anti-immigrant sentiment</h2>
<p>Nationalism is on the rise everywhere in Europe. </p>
<p>The popularity of anti-immigrant parties such as the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/01/marine_le_pen_and_the_national_front_on_the_rise_france_s_far_right_party.html">National Front</a> in France, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24346993">Golden Dawn</a> in Greece, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/life-in-the-land-of-ukip-britain-election/390369/">UKIP</a> in Britain, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/14/sweden-democrats-flex-muscles-anti-immigrant-kristianstad">Sweden Democrats</a> and <a href="http://www.euronews.com/2015/01/16/hungary-s-orban-warns-economic-migration-endangers-europeans/">Fidesz</a> in Hungary (where it controls the government), all testify to this phenomenon. </p>
<p>In Britain and elsewhere, the tragic plight of the Mediterranean boat people has led to an escalation of anti-immigrant rhetoric. </p>
<p>The UK’s second most popular tabloid, the Sun, published a piece by TV personality and regular columnist Katie Hopkins <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/2015-04-18/katie-hopkins-compares-migrants-to-cockroaches-and-suggests-using-gunships-to-stop-them-crossing-the-mediterranean/">calling</a> for the use of gunships against would-be immigrants. Her remarks were <a href="https://www.change.org/p/the-sun-newspaper-remove-katie-hopkins-as-a-columnist">widely condemned,</a> but it is troubling that she found a voice in a national daily. </p>
<p>More vicious anti-immigrant and racist commentary infects the blogosphere. Some right-wing groups have adopted outright the symbols of Nazism or do so in coded ways, as the comedian and activist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala in France has used his “quenelle” or “vaguely menacing hand gesture” (in the words of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/world/europe/concern-over-quenelle-gesture-grows-in-france.html">New York Times</a> to incite support for Hitler and hatred of Jews. </p>
<p>All these events indicate the precariousness of Europe’s liberation.</p>
<p>Freedom of speech must remain inviolate. </p>
<p>But those of us revolted by hate-mongering and troubled by the willingness of mainstream parties and their leaders to legitimize anti-immigrant sentiment by courting votes among this segment of opinion must stand up for our beliefs. </p>
<p>We can do this at the ballot box, but voting is not enough. We must support the rule of law, tolerance and respect for others, whether citizens or not, through our daily practices. Victory brings the same responsibility in this regard for Americans that defeat does for Germans.</p>
<p>This is the best way to remember the victims of Nazi and Fascist tyranny, honor those who gave their lives to oppose them on the front lines and home fronts, and make liberation a living truth, not a fast-fading historical memory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian Wendt receives funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Ned Lebow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On Memorial Day, reflecting on the meaning of the ‘liberation’ of Europe 70 years on.Richard Ned Lebow, Professor International Political Theory at Kings College, London and James O Freedman Presidential Professor Emeritus of Government, Dartmouth CollegeChristian Wendt, Professor of Ancient History , Freie Universität BerlinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/415552015-05-25T12:41:01Z2015-05-25T12:41:01ZRemembering Sherman’s Army<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82352/original/image-20150520-25043-6kh38n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Grand Review of the Union Armies May 1865 </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, 65,000 strong, tightly packed, in a column that ultimately stretched for 15 miles and took over six hours to pass.</p>
<p>Their “glittering muskets looked like a solid mass of steel, moving with the regularity of a pendulum.” </p>
<p>Sherman’s Army marched steadily, firmly, like the hardened veterans that they were, with dignity and discipline. </p>
<p>They marched through throngs of cheering spectators, thousands upon thousands of black and white Washingtonians, crowding the streets and the sidewalks, leaning out of windows and huzzahing. </p>
<p>Their torn and dirty flags were garlanded with flowers, but black streamers hung from the staffs, emblems of mourning for Abraham Lincoln. </p>
<p>The Army of the Potomac had marched the day before, all spit and polish, to great cheers of acclamation, but this day, May 24 1865, belonged to the Western Army, to Sherman’s Bummers. “Bummer” had once been used as an epithet for slackers and thieves, but Sherman’s men took this on as an honored nickname.</p>
<p>They were, in the words of the New York Times, the <a href="http://www.uncpress.unc.edu:8080/browse/book_detail?title_id=514">“glorious veterans…heroes of the greatest march on record,”</a> and their beloved Uncle Billy, General William Tecumseh Sherman, was the man of the hour. </p>
<h2>Parading with the spoils of war</h2>
<p>Spectators uniformly noted that the cheers for the Westerners were even louder and more sustained than those for the Easterners. </p>
<p>Nor did they march alone. Sherman’s Army, famous for making Georgia – and then South Carolina and North Carolina – howl, brought their spoils of war to the victory parade. </p>
<p>Each brigade was led by its respective “pioneer corps,” made up of formerly enslaved men who were put to work clearing swamps and building roads, helping the soldiers as they hacked their way across the Confederacy. </p>
<p>And interspersed throughout the columns of soldiers were scenes designed to bring the story of the march right into the heart of the capital: African-American mothers with their children; mules and donkeys laden down with hams and chickens; soldiers’ pet dogs and raccoons. </p>
<p>The crowd responded to these amusing vignettes with further cheers and gales of laughter.</p>
<h2>The beginning of remembering</h2>
<p>The Grand Review of the Union Armies on May 23-24 1865 was a performance, a victory display of martial power designed to put the final punctuation on the war.</p>
<p>Washingtonians literally swept away the mourning crepe that had draped buildings for the previous five weeks, and greeted the soldiers with open arms and an outpouring of emotion. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82580/original/image-20150521-1020-nrwilm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marching up Pennsylvania Avenue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_review_of_Union_troops,_May_23-24,_1865,_looking_down_Pennsylvania_Avenue_toward_the_Capitol,_05-23-1865_-_05-24-1_-_NARA_-_530486.jpg">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sherman was himself a master of the theatrical grand gesture, as evidenced by the drama of his march, and he embraced this opportunity. </p>
<p>For the Grand Review didn’t just mark the end of the war, but the beginning of the remembering. And Sherman’s soldiers carefully crafted their own narrative of what the march meant to them. </p>
<p>Today, Americans’ cultural memory of Sherman’s March is generally that of the Southern civilians who saw their homes raided and their property destroyed. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PnEZrV_WT44?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Atlanta burning in Gone With the Wind.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a memory that has been shaped most profoundly by Gone with the Wind – both the book and film – and the result is a portrayal of <a href="http://press.umsystem.edu/catalog/productinfo.aspx?id=1999&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1">Sherman as Attila, and his men as Huns or Vandals</a>, bent on vengeance, careless with fire, possibly guilty of war crimes. </p>
<p>But that’s not how Sherman and his men were seen during the Grand Review, and it’s not how they saw themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82581/original/image-20150521-1004-vnzshw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82581/original/image-20150521-1004-vnzshw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82581/original/image-20150521-1004-vnzshw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82581/original/image-20150521-1004-vnzshw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82581/original/image-20150521-1004-vnzshw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82581/original/image-20150521-1004-vnzshw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82581/original/image-20150521-1004-vnzshw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Tecumseh Sherman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Tecumseh-Sherman.jpg">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sherman’s veterans, at least those who spoke and wrote publicly about their experiences, were remarkably untroubled by the war they made against civilians. </p>
<p>They looked at the march not as something that broke the laws of war, but instead as one of the great experiences of their lives. </p>
<h2>The veterans speak</h2>
<p>For Sherman’s veterans, the Georgia and Carolinas campaigns, with their short daily marches, abundant food and lack of fighting, were a lark. </p>
<p>As General Noyes recalled in 1869,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“in this rollicking picnic expedition there was just enough of fighting for variety, enough of hardship to give zest to the repose which followed it, and enough of ludicrous adventure to make its memory a constant source of gratification.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And their reminiscences were often quite funny, even as they told of stealing clothing or wrecking storehouses. They praised Bummers for their endless appetites. </p>
<p>One veteran called the common soldier “an Octopus of Abdomen, whose tentacles reached every hen roost and pig sty.” They were adventurers and rogues, not despoilers and villains.</p>
<p>But to see Sherman’s veterans as emphasizing only the lighthearted aspects of the march is to fundamentally misunderstand what it meant to them. </p>
<p>For all their minimizing of hardships and the horrors of war, they well understood what they fought for, and they believed wholeheartedly that their march, their efforts, had brought the war to an end. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82582/original/image-20150521-982-1i7es5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82582/original/image-20150521-982-1i7es5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82582/original/image-20150521-982-1i7es5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82582/original/image-20150521-982-1i7es5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82582/original/image-20150521-982-1i7es5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82582/original/image-20150521-982-1i7es5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82582/original/image-20150521-982-1i7es5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pulling up the tracks in Atlanta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sherman_railroad_destroy_noborder.jpg">Library of Congress - LC-DIG-cwpb-03391</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They never wavered in their belief that the march was necessary. The Confederacy had brought destruction on itself by tearing apart the Union, they believed, and it was the duty of these soldiers to reunite the nation, by any means at their disposal. </p>
<p>Many of Sherman’s veterans sought to preserve their own memories of the war and the march in order to explicitly counter the pro-Confederate Lost Cause that gained prominence during the late 19th century. </p>
<p>Their efforts were no match for that cultural tide. Only now, as the sesquicentennial passes, can we pause to remember their version of Sherman’s March.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Sarah Rubin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The story of the Grand Review of the Union Armies in May 1865 and of the veterans of Sherman’s March who believed that it was their campaign that helped bring the Civil War to its end.Anne Sarah Rubin, Associate Professor History, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/420812015-05-25T12:10:38Z2015-05-25T12:10:38ZSitting on a scoop: the story behind the V-E headlines of May 1945<p>There’s quite a story behind the story of the end of the fighting in World War II in Europe. As we observe another Memorial Day, it is worth remembering the events of that busy May of 1945, when the Allies achieved victory in Europe.</p>
<p>While much fighting remained to be done in the Pacific, by early May, the military leaders of the Allied forces could see that Germany’s defeat was at hand. So, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) command selected 17 correspondents from the world’s press and flew them to Reims, France, to witness the German surrender on behalf of the rest of the press corps and the people of the world.</p>
<p>There were very few Americans in the group. The ones who were there represented the big wire services and syndicates. In fact, not a single reporter representing a US newspaper was present.</p>
<p>According to the Allied military commanders, the news was to be embargoed, and the reporters were coerced into accepting a deal. In exchange for access to the event, they had to agree to hold the news until the Army said they could release it.</p>
<p>On the flight from Paris to Reims, the SHAEF press officer declared: “I pledge each one of you on his honor as a correspondent and as an assimilated officer of the United States Army not to communicate [the news] until it is released on the order of the Public Relations Director of SHAEF.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82433/original/image-20150520-11417-dxjerd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82433/original/image-20150520-11417-dxjerd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82433/original/image-20150520-11417-dxjerd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82433/original/image-20150520-11417-dxjerd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82433/original/image-20150520-11417-dxjerd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82433/original/image-20150520-11417-dxjerd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82433/original/image-20150520-11417-dxjerd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">V-E Day headline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public Domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It remains unclear what constitutes an “agreement” under such conditions – what were the correspondents supposed to do ? Get up and walk out of an airplane? – but they proceeded to witness the ceremony.</p>
<p>The surrender by the German high command came in the early hours of May 7. Ordinarily, you might expect that the surrender would touch off immediate celebrations.</p>
<p>Not so fast.</p>
<p>The press officer announced that orders had come “from a high political level” to impose a news blackout until 8 pm the next day, when the news would be announced simultaneously in Paris, London, Moscow and Washington. (Turned out, Stalin was insisting on the delay so he could make a show in Berlin.) </p>
<p>In other words, all the correspondents who had been eyewitnesses would lose their scoops. Instead, some desk-bound rewrite man or editor would get all the glory. The reporters protested to the SHAEF press officer, but to no avail. The political leaders had decided.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82441/original/image-20150520-11453-1i5o2bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82441/original/image-20150520-11453-1i5o2bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82441/original/image-20150520-11453-1i5o2bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82441/original/image-20150520-11453-1i5o2bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82441/original/image-20150520-11453-1i5o2bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82441/original/image-20150520-11453-1i5o2bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82441/original/image-20150520-11453-1i5o2bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ed Kennedy’s biography.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among the press corps, one of the most upset was Edward Kennedy – not the late Democratic senator from Massachusetts but a man by the same name who was the chief correspondent in Europe for the Associated Press (AP). Bear in mind, Kennedy was in a special position. He had been burned earlier in the war when he cooperated with military brass. In 1943, Kennedy had agreed to suppress a story about Gen. George Patton and had been scooped by someone else. (I describe the incident in my book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Covering-America-Narrative-History-Journalism/dp/1558499113/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325343692&sr=1-1">Covering America</a>.) </p>
<p>Kennedy also knew that his account of the German surrender could probably reach more people on the planet more swiftly than any other news agency or government, since the AP supplied news stories to thousands of newspapers, radio stations and other customers worldwide. He knew, too, that the AP – then and now – thrives on being first and that AP correspondents had gone to great lengths to be first to deliver the news.</p>
<p>Besides, he figured, no embargo on such a momentous story could hold for that long. (Nor, perhaps, should it.)</p>
<p>He was still fuming when the correspondents were marched back onto the military plane. They were flown from Reims to Paris. Still, the world knew nothing of the surrender. Still, soldiers in Europe kept shooting at each other.</p>
<p>When the press contingent landed, Boyd Lewis of United Press got into the first jeep from the airport to the Hotel Scribe in Paris, which had been serving as the outpost for most of the press corps. When Lewis got to the press center, he tried to tie up all the available telegraph outlets. Next in line was James Kilgallen of the International News Service, who had beaten Kennedy to the hotel by throwing his portable typewriter at Kennedy’s legs, slowing him down.</p>
<p>Kennedy was beside himself. Then he heard that SHAEF had ordered German radio to announce the surrender. Kennedy went to the censors and announced that he was breaking the embargo. Using a telephone, he called the AP bureau in London and dictated the following lead:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>REIMS, France, May 7_Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Western Allies and the Soviet Union at 2:41 am French time today.</p>
<p><em>The surrender took place at a little red schoolhouse that is the headquarters of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower…..</em></p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82435/original/image-20150520-11435-1fdw12c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82435/original/image-20150520-11435-1fdw12c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82435/original/image-20150520-11435-1fdw12c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82435/original/image-20150520-11435-1fdw12c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82435/original/image-20150520-11435-1fdw12c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82435/original/image-20150520-11435-1fdw12c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82435/original/image-20150520-11435-1fdw12c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kennedy couldn’t sit on his scoop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Within minutes, the news was flashed to the world, and wild celebrations began, marking V-E Day.</p>
<p>At SHAEF, the top brass were furious and suspended AP filing facilities throughout Europe.</p>
<p>The rest of the press corps was furious, too. More than 50 correspondents signed a protest to SHAEF Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower, calling Kennedy’s action “the most disgraceful, deliberate and unethical double cross in the history of journalism.” </p>
<p>AP’s president apologized to the nation. AP executives told Kennedy he could keep his job if he admitted he had done wrong. He wouldn’t, and he was fired. (Three years ago, the AP formally apologized to Kennedy, who died in a car crash in 1963.)</p>
<p>What might seem amazing today – aside from the lack of cell phones and other forms of instant global communication that we now take for granted – is how unanimously the correspondents fell in line with the military. </p>
<p>Today, I daresay, US reporters would be at least split about the ethics of holding off on reporting something they knew to be both true and life-saving.</p>
<p>Two weeks later, writing in The New Yorker on May 19, AJ Liebling, the great World War II reporter and press critic, took up the issue of Kennedy’s firing in his column “<a href="http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1945-05-19#folio=056">The Wayward Press</a>. Liebling’s take:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The great row over Edward Kennedy’s Associated Press story of the signing of the German surrender at Reims served to point up the truth that if you are smart enough you can kick yourself in the pants, grab yourself by the back of the collar, and throw yourself out on the sidewalk. This is an axiom that I hope will be taught to future students of journalism as Liebling’s Law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Liebling’s media criticism continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not think that Kennedy imperiled the lives of any Allied soldiers by sending the story, as some of his critics have charged. He probably saved a few, because by withholding the announcement of an armistice you prolong the shooting, and, conversely, by announcing it promptly you make the shooting stop. Moreover, the Germans had broadcast the news of the armistice several hours before Kennedy’s story appeared on the streets of New York… The thing that has caused the most hard feeling is that Kennedy broke a "combination,” which means that he sent out a story after all the correspondents on the assignment had agreed not to. But the old-fashioned “combination” was an agreement freely reached among reporters and not a pledge imposed upon the whole group by somebody outside it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In my journalism classes at Boston University, I teach “Liebling’s Law” as a cautionary tale about what can happen when news organizations get too cozy with governments and forget to put their audiences first. Seventy years later, it’s a lesson worth remembering. </p>
<p><em>For more on Kennedy, see his <a href="http://lsupress.org/books/detail/ed-kennedys-war/">memoir</a>, Ed Kennedy’s War: V-E Day, Censorship, and the Associated Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42081/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher B. Daly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As we commemorate Memorial Day, the drama behind the headlines announcing Germany’s surrender in World War II.Christopher B. Daly, Professor of Journalism, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.