1945. Associated Press Breaks Allied News Embargo on German Surrender

Controversy and Criticism Over Associated Press Scoop

"The Associated Press journalist Edward Kennedy (Sam Goldstein / AP)" (source)

From Newsweek, May 14, 1945, pp. 80-82:

Kennedy of AP Scoops Whole World but Writers Call Him Double Crosser

As a veteran Associated Press man put it: "The Old Lady certainly came back." But for nerve-racking hours he couldn't be sure.

The horrendously wrong V-E Day report out of San Francisco on April 28 (Newsweek, May 7) still was a raw memory on Monday this week when the London Printer in the AP's tense New York office coughed out this flash: "Allies officially announced Germany surrendered unconditionally."

Glenn Babb, the AP's foreign news editor, hesitated until succeeding bulletins bore out the flash, then ordered: "Let it go."

The AP desk's reaction was duplicated in newsrooms throughout the country, but one minute after the flash at 9:35 a.m. (EWT), the AP sent a bulletin that mollified fears. It read:

BY EDWARD KENNEDY

REIMS, FRANCE, MAY 7—(AP)—GERMANY SURRENDERED UNCONDITIONALLY TO THE WESTERN ALLIES AND RUSSIA AT 2:41 A.M. FRENCH TIME TODAY.

Adds to Kennedy's bulletin unfolded the details swiftly, simply, and convincingly (see page 31). But news editors, still groggy from the ten-day-old AP boner, still almost numb after a month's record of war news, now were jittery. International News Service and United Press, twitting AP only ten days before, could help with no official confirmation. Nor would Washington, London, or Moscow. Supreme Allied headquarters in Paris angrily suspended AP's sending privileges.* These later were restored for all AP men except Kennedy. But no one denied the facts in Kennedy's story.

'Get It Out': With fingers crossed, news editors extraed the from coast to coast. Radio stations interrupted programs, but labeled the report unofficial. The AP continued to have its jitters, but stood pat—convinced its 39-year-old veteran correspondent had the biggest beat in history.

But on Tuesday, 54 irate correspondents at SHAEF charged Kennedy with violating a pledge not to break the news until SHAEF cleared it. His beat, their petition to General Eisenhower said, was the "most disgraceful, deliberate, and unethical double cross in the history of journalism." Official Washington shared this view.

Earlier, Roy Howard, head of Scripps-Howard newspapers and himself the victim in the UP's premature Armistice flash in 1918, had protested the AP's punishment in a telegram to President Truman. He was wiring, Howard said, "as a correspondent in the last war who was personally pilloried and whose organization was unjustly condemned for doing a legitimate reporting job."

From Paris, Relman Morin, Kennedy's AP colleague, said most of the correspondents at SHAEF had congratulated Kennedy on his beat—even though it was at their expense. Here's how it came about, as Morin told it:

Kennedy returned from Rheims with 1,500 words of his story cleared by a field censor. He wrote the rest in Paris and filed it with SHAEF. Then Paris began to buzz with the news. When the Germans broadcast it from Flensburg, Kennedy went to the censors and demanded they free his story. His argument: There no longer was any question of military security and SHAEF could hold him to no considerations of political censorship. Turned down on his demand, Kennedy bluntly warned the censors he would try to get the story out.

Then he telephoned it to the AP's London Bureau. "This is official, get it out," he barked. Censors in London cleared it as a routine relay.

Too Many Headlines: The Brooklyn-born Kennedy quit the study of architecture at Carnegie Tech to take up newspaper work twenty years ago. He went to Paris for the AP in 1935 and his newspaper odyssey since has taken him through the Spanish civil war, the conquests of Yugoslavia and Greece, the North African battles, Sicily, Italy, and back into France.

His beat this week climaxed ten days of the biggest news breaks since the war began. News editors could remember nothing like the week before V-E Day. It had been one of cumulative surrenders in which, for instance, the fall of Rangoon, the invasion of Dutch Borneo, President Truman's first Cabinet appointment and veto (upheld), and the anthracite-coal walkout could get but secondary headlines.

Radio's Part: In Europe, news was made as well as broadcast by radio during the momentous week preceding the V-E announcement. It was Radio Hamburg that carried the news of Hitler's death and Admiral Karl Doenitz's succession. Four days later, Bill Downs, CBS correspondent, broadcast from the same studios.

The radios of the Allied and neutral capitals in Europe played the week's news with composure and, unlike American networks, waited for official confirmation of victory before going all out.

In the United States elaborately planned V-E programs—in the making since D-Day—remained on the shelf as news came in fragments throughout week. Only extra news programs indicated the growing excitement over the German piecemeal collapse. Then on Monday the networks and most of the independent stations carried the AP flash. Morning schedules were hashed, but by mid-afternoon the networks had resumed commercials while newsrooms waited on tenterhooks. Don Goddard of NBC voiced radio's dilemma when he said on Monday morning: "We are staying on the air expecting some kind of an announcement from some headquarters somewhere."

When the official announcement finally came, all networks and stations hauled out their special programs—which now served only as a weary anticlimax to the rumors of the preceding ten days.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

* Another AP worry: The Chicago Sun's London bureau reported that virtually all London papers began a boycott of AP news as of Sunday. London and AP sources refused comment; the United Press carried nothing on the boycott.

1943. "Proletarian Opera Is Staged With Czars' Pomp and Show"

The Reopening of the Bolshoi Theatre

"Portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin hang on the front of the Bolshoi Theatre in Soviet times" (source)

From Newsweek, October 11, 1943, pp. 34-36 (originally from a report by Bill Downs in September 1943):

Moscow First Night

Proletarian Opera Is Staged With Czars' Pomp and Show

What was probably the most brilliant social event since the start of the war took place in Moscow last week—the reopening of the Bolshoi Theater, which had been damaged by German bombs. Bill Downs, Newsweek and CBS correspondent, attended and sent this account of what a first night looks like in a Communist country.

Although I expected to see something extra special at this opening, I was startled to observe what a dressing-up had been achieved. The theater has an exceptionally large stage. The parterre and loges have been completely recarpeted, and all the seats have been done in brand-new red plush. Designed inside in European style, six tiers of balconies run entirely around three sides. The front of these balconies displays shining gilt. The ceiling has been done in light blue and decorated with gigantic figures of the nine muses—all of them plump, Russian-looking women, who are a little bit incongruous and give a strip-tease effect to the roof.

The Russians like perfume—men use eau de cologne extensively in barbershops. The soft lights, red plush, glowing gilt, and perfume gave the setting a nineteenth-century atmosphere. It was nineteenth century until I looked at the new Bolshoi curtain printed in a red and gold design. The most prominent features are various dates of the development of the socialist state—1871, Paris Communes; 1905, First Revolution; 1917, October Revolution.

Next to the stage on each side are the former royal boxes, in which the family of the Czar used to sit before the revolution. These boxes are now reserved for the highest Soviet officials.

Throughout the performance of Glinka's "Ivan Sussanin" the audience looked constantly at one of the boxes, which was empty, and it was amusing, looking through opera glasses at the opening chorus number, to see 100 men and women singing the stirring opening number and constantly rolling their eyes to make sure that Stalin was not there. There had been rumors—as there always are at such events—that the supreme commander-in-chief might attend. However, he didn't show up.

"Ivan Sussanin" was originally called "A Life for the Czar," but the title was changed several years ago. The lead was sung by Mamilhailoff, whose tremendous bass voice sounds as if it comes out of the bottom of a barrel. Many critics consider that he is the best Russian basso since Chaliapin. He's hampered by the fact that he just can't act.

The other star performer was the current darling of Moscow ballet, Olga Lepeshinskaya. She got the biggest hand of the evening dancing a brief ballet number in the brilliant second act, where it is easy to see how Russia got its great tradition for this type of dancing.

During the first intermission reporters went in search of diplomats to find out who was attending. The diplomats did not prove difficult to find. They left a trail of their personal police which led to a private reception room where the theater had laid out a buffet supper. There is nothing quite so complete as Russian hospitality.

However, the high spot of the opening for the audience was in the men's smoking room. I was walking past there when I heard someone say: "Peevo." Several others took up the cry. I followed, and sure enough there were bottles and bottles of peevo—beer to you.

It was the first time I had seen it on public sale since I had been here. The Bolshoi opening was truly a success.

1943. Moscow Hosts Concert of American Music

"Rhapsody in Red"

"The statue of a ballerina, holding a hammer and sickle, could be seen atop the building at No. 17 in this 1943 photo" (source)

 From Newsweek, July 19, 1943, pp. 79-80:

Rhapsody in Red

On the Fourth of July Moscow helped celebrate our Independence Day with a gala concert of American music. Newsweek and CBS correspondent, Bill Downs, attended, and the following is his report of the historical event:

Moscow critics are trying to decide whether the first concert of all-American music in the history of the Soviet Union had greater musical or political significance. The political facet was distinguished through the attendance of Maxim Litvinoff, United States Ambassador William H. Standley, and Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, the British envoy. Musically, the concert was distinguished for the first public playing by a Russian orchestra of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" Also, Shostakovich arranged "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" in a way that was surprisingly straight, simple, and tuneful for all his modernism, but exceedingly short.

Moscow's staid Conservatorium—which represents to the Russian capital what Queen's Hall meant to London and what Carnegie Hall means to New York—had one of its biggest audiences of the war. But it was not a long-haired crowd. There were a lot of youngsters—Russian versions of the hepcat, who looked about the same as American jitterbugs. Obviously, this was the first time many had attended the Conservatorium. Alexander Tsfasman, who leads the best-known band, has as faithful a following as any swing master in America. Incidentally, "swing" has not yet entered Russia's musical vocabulary. But this can be expected as a musical postwar development, for the Soviet citizen dotes on American dance tunes.

It was an expectant audience when Nathan Rachlin walked to the podium. Rachlin, a popular conductor, is considered new school. However, his style is exceedingly distracting. His conducting nears caricature, with great shakings of the head, gruntings and groanings audible in the first half-dozen rows of the audience, and heroic posturings which one American defined as "University of Southern California cheer-leading school of conducting."

The musical commentator of the evening announced the first piece as Roy Harris's "When Johnny Comes Marching Home—With Victory." That "With Victory" is a good indication of how the ordinary Russian is thinking these days. The State Symphony Orchestra swung bravely into the Harris composition, but it soon became evident that his dissonances and difficult rhythms made it more of a struggle than a pleasure. The audience was a little puzzled but applauded vigorously, and the commentator next announced three American folk songs, whereafter on walked the dark and buxom Natalia Schpiller.

She is one of Russia's best sopranos, and her high and flexible voice proceeded to bring down the house with excellent interpretations of "Weeping, Sad, and Lonely" and “Old Folks at Home." The Russian translations were exceedingly good. The mood of the Negro spirituals is easily understandable and adaptable to Russian artists and audiences, whose most-loved folk song is the "Volga Boatmen." The last "folk song" turned out to be the last war waltz, "Till We Meet Again," but no one cared particularly whether it was a folk song or not for the arrangement and Schpiller's singing left the audience shouting for more. 

The first half of the program was completed by the orchestra's playing Samuel Barber's "Overture to the School for Scandal." Now everyone was much more at home. Barber's phrasing is surprisingly like Shostakovich's—and anything approaching him is OK with the Russian audiences.

Jazzhounds in the audience sat up expectantly after intermission, for Tzfasman's band moved in among the regular symphony with clarinets and saxophones. They probably were the first saxophones ever played in the Conservatorium, The youngsters gave loud cheers and applause when Tzfasman himself appeared to play the piano part. The "Rhapsody" was all in all worthily performed with a not unpleasant slowing down in many parts, giving Rachlin's interpretation of Gershwin's moodiness and contrasting with the sophisticated polish usually applied in America.

Then came the Shostakovich arrangement of "When Johnny," etc., followed by an entirely too operatic and formal presentation of Kern's "Ol' Man River" by the opera baritone Panteleimon Nortsoff. The Soviet audience, generally familiar with Robeson's singing of the riparian epic, didn't like it much. But the first playing of Walter Piston's ballet suite "The Incredible Flutist" drew almost as much applause as the "Rhapsody," although there were murmurs from some youngsters who expected to hear all jazz.

All in all, American music stood the test of a critical Russian audience who turned out on America's Independence Day to hear the latest developments in musical culture from the United States.

1943. Foreign Press Preview Soviet Film "The People's Avengers"

"Partisans in Action"

Soviet partisans in the forest near Polotsk, Byelorussian SSR (source)

 From Newsweek, August 30, 1943, pp. 80-82:

Partisans in Action

The obscure paragraphs at the end of Russian communiqués—those dealing with the incredible Red guerrillas—have come to life on the Soviet screen. Here Bill Downs, Newsweek and CBS correspondent in Moscow, tells how the Partisan film was made. It probably will be shown soon in the United States.

Moscow—The foreign press has just seen a preview of "The People's Avengers," a new documentary which promises to make cinema history. It is surely the best war film that has been produced by the Russians.

This story of Soviet guerrillas was made by sixteen cameramen sent behind the German lines early this spring. They stayed from two to three months, shooting thousands of feet that covered every phase of Partisan life. Two of them were killed in accidents getting to and from Guerrilla land—and one liked the place so much that he sent his films back but decided to stay himself. So intent was the government on doing a good job that the director, [Vasiliy Belyayev], took a camera and went along—and the composer, Dmitri Astradantseff, likewise went behind the lines to get the spirit of the thing for his excellent accompanying music.

The film covers guerrilla life from Karelia to the Black Sea. It ranged from the Leningrad district through whole Partisan-controlled districts in Byelo-Russia; from actual scenes of bridges being blown up in the Ukraine to raids on German headquarters on the Kuban. For an hour and a half it practically makes guerrillas out of the audience. And for the first time the world is given a clear picture of what the word Partisan means—what kind of people the guerrillas are.

There are kids of 12 and 14, grandfathers over 60, and women of all ages. There are shocking views of villages ruined after visits by German punitive expeditions, followed by the guerrillas' revenge. There are such human touches as a woman darning a sock and using a grenade for a darning egg. Memorable episodes show the surprisingly quiet and uneventful way in which a sniper's bullet kills a German railroad sentry, and the execution of a traitor by a calm three-man firing squad. 

But the film's greatest moment is a full-scale attack on a town by a large detachment of Byelo-Russian Partisans, using captured German artillery and weapons flown in by plane.

The cameramen who came back were full of stories of their adventures. Since most guerrilla operations are conducted at night, the photographers had to beg for daylight operations which they could film. One, somewhere in the central sector, got more than he bargained for. A guerrilla leader placed him behind a bush overlooking a village and told him to wait. Then the guerrillas attacked the other side of the village and drove the Germans straight toward him. Several machine-gunners at his side waited until the Germans were almost atop the camera before they fired and killed them. But that was all the luck the cameraman had that day. He had forgotten to open his shutter and the film was a blank.

The film gives only the nicknames of the Partisan leaders—their real names will be revealed after the war. I asked the director if it wasn't dangerous to show their faces, in case the film fell into enemy hands. He replied: "We got permission of all the Partisans before the pictures were taken. Their attitude was: 'Send the Germans a marked copy—then let them come and get us'."