REIMS, France (AP) — When Allied forces brought World War II in Europe and the Holocaust to an end 80 years ago this week, AP reporters and photographers were there, chronicling the Nazis’ historic defeat.
Here are excerpts of AP news reports that momentous week:
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EDITORS’ NOTE: On May 7, 1945, AP’s Edward Kennedy witnessed the German surrender in a French schoolhouse, and was the first to announce it to the Allied public, defying authorities who wanted to delay the news.
The news was broadcast unofficially over German radio, but U.S. President Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed to suppress news of the capitulation for a day, in order to allow Soviet leader Josef Stalin to stage a second surrender ceremony in Berlin.
Kennedy published anyway, angering U.S. authorities. Kennedy was called home by AP and later fired. AP issued a public apology in 2012, saying Kennedy “did everything just right,” because the embargo was for political reasons, not to protect the troops. “The world needed to know,” AP’s then-President and CEO Tom Curley said. Kennedy ”stood up to power.”
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REIMS, France, May 7 (Delayed)
FLASH: ALLIES OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCED GERMANS SURRENDERED UNCONDITIONALLY
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Through an iron-faced Prussian general, speaking after he had finished signing the unconditional surrender of the Nazis, Germany today pleaded for mercy for the German people. On the wall behind his back was a huge chart tabulating Allied casualties.
He was Col-Gen. (Alfred) Jodl, chief of staff of the German Army.
He was standing in a room of a red school house in Reims, where Gen. Eisenhower had his advanced headquarters. On a big wooden table in front of him lay four identical documents to which he had just affixed his signature — one each for the United States, Britain, France and Russia. …
Seventeen correspondents were present at the signing and heard Jodl’s plea. After he had signed the four instruments of surrender, and after the military representatives of the four Powers had signed them, Jodl asked for permission to speak. He was told that he might.
He held himself stiffly erect. His voice was low and soft. He said: “With this signature, the German people and armed forces are, for better or worse, delivered in the victors’ hands. In this war which has lasted more than five years, both have achieved and suffered more than perhaps any other people in the world. I express the hope that the victor will treat generously with them.’’
His face was expressionless. So were the faces of the American, British, Russian and French generals who represented the Allies. All had seen the German murder camps and all knew the furious cruelty of German occupying forces.
Jodl finished speaking and sat down. A moment passed in dead silence.
Then the German representatives were taken down the hall to meet Gen. Eisenhower. ….
Again, there was a moment of heavy silence.
Then Eisenhower spoke. He was brief and terse as always. His voice was cold and stern. His steel blue eyes were hard. In a few clipped sentences, he made it plain that Germany was a defeated nation and that henceforth all orders to the German people would come from the Allies. He said they would be obeyed.
Then the Germans filed out. It was over.
Nazi Germany has ceased to exist.
The war had ended.
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The great bells of St. Peter’s Basilica rang out over Rome soon after the Associated Press report that peace had come to Europe, while several Allied capitals proclaimed V-E holidays for today, and Tokyo announced continuation of “The Sacred War.”
Many of the world’s cities went wild at the news, and even neutral capitals were bedecked and filled with celebrating crowds. Masses of people gathered in front of loudspeakers and newspaper offices, which were frantically answering inquiries and rolling out extras.
Only in the unnatural calm of the European fronts was the news reported to have been taken soberly, by soldiers who had seen the fighting taper off in one sector after another for the past two weeks.
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War-scarred London burst into jubilant celebration of the end of the war in Europe today, its millions of citizens unable to wait for the government’s official V-E Day proclamation tomorrow.
Millions surged into the streets, from Buckingham Palace to the sedate East End.
The Picadilly Circus, Whitehall and Westminster areas filled with a laughing, shouting throng. Some old-timers said the scene eclipsed those of the 1918 armistice.
Pubs were jammed, Champagne was brought up from deep cellars and long-hoarded whisky and gin came out from hiding.
The great bells of Big Ben tolled the hours of the historic day.
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In Washington, crowds gathered in Lafayette Square across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House in anticipation of an announcement by President Truman to proclaim Allied V-E Day.
A dispatch from the United States 9th Army front said withdrawal of American troops toward a previously established line of demarcation between them and the Russians had begun, with the first-move evacuation of the Yanks from their bridgehead of the banks of the Elbe River. The Elbe became the temporary line between the Allied armies.
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BERLIN, May 10, 1945:
By HAROLD KING, former Moscow bureau chief
This town is a city of the dead. As a metropolis, it has simply ceased to exist. Every house within miles of the center seems to have had its own bomb. …
The scene beggars description. I have seen Stalingrad; I have lived through the entire London blitz. I have seen a dozen badly damaged Russian towns, but the scene of utter destruction, desolation and death which meets the eye in Berlin as far as the eye can rove in all directions is something that almost baffles description.
Dozens of well-known thoroughfares, including the entire Unter den Linden from one end to the other, are wrecked beyond repair. The town is literally unrecognizable. The Alexander Platz, in the east end, where the Gestapo headquarters were, is a weird desert of rubble and gaping, smoke blackened walls. From the Brandenberg Gate, everything within a radius of two to five miles is destroyed. There does not appear to be one house in hundred which is even useful as a shelter. …
The only people who look like human beings in the streets of what was Berlin are the Russian soldiers. There are two million inhabitants in this town, the Russian authorities told me, but they are mostly in the remoter suburbs. In the center part of the town, you only see a few ghostlike figures of women and children — few men — queuing up to pump water.
If Stalingrad, London, Guernica, Rotterdam, Coventry wanted avenging, they have had it, and no mistake about it.
The Red flag, or rather several red flags, fly on top of the Reichstag which is burned hollow. The Tiergarten opposite the Reichstag looks like a forest after a big fire. There was heavy street fighting here. …
The population and the Red Army soldiers are attempting to clear some of the main streets.
The Russian command has already erected at all main squares and crossings huge sketch maps without which it would be impossible to find one’s way about.
Except for an occasional Russian army car or horses drawing Russian army carts, there is a complete silence over the city, and the air filled with rubble dust.
One sign of life, however, are the interminable columns of displaced persons of all European nationalities who seem to be marching through Berlin in various directions, carried forward by a homing instinct more than any clear idea where they are going. These columns of freed slaves are sometimes a mile long.
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Follow AP’s coverage marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II at https://apnews.com/WorldWarII
