Edward L. Kennedy (June 26, 1905 – November 29, 1963) was an American journalist best known for being the first Allied newsman to report the German surrender at the end of World War II, getting the word to the Associated Press in London before the surrender had been officially announced by Supreme Allied Headquarters. This angered Allied commanders who had imposed a 36-hour news embargo before their official surrender announcement. After being forced stateside, Kennedy was fired by the AP for his actions. In 2012, the Associated Press apologized for this, saying "It was handled in the worst possible way." Breaking the news The documents for Germany's surrender in World War II were signed on May 7, 1945, at 2:41 a.m. local time at General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims, France. The surrender was subject to a time delay to ensure compliance across the entire theater, and was to take effect at 23.01 on May 8. Edward Kennedy, as the AP's Paris bureau chief, had been among a group of reporters hastily assembled aboard a C-47 aircraft, and told only when aloft that they were to cover the official signing. All of the journalists on the plane were asked to pledge that they would embargo the story until SHAEF had issued its own official announcement of the event; Kennedy complied. After the ceremony, however, the public relations officers told the reporters that instead of a few hours of embargo, they were being asked by Eisenhower to hold the news for 36 more hours until after a second surrender ceremony, this one to take place in Berlin, the German capital. The military officials explained that it was deemed important that the surrender be made by the heads of the German Armed Forces, not merely their representatives, and that the Germans formally surrender to the Soviets, as well as the Western Allies, something the Nazis were trying to avoid. After a German radio station in Allied-controlled Flensburg broadcast the news, however, Kennedy believed that military censors must have allowed it. Evading wartime censorship, he phoned the AP bureau in London and reported the surrender. The story moved on the AP wire at 9:36 a.m. EST, mid-afternoon in France. The official announcements of the surrender varied from German foreign minister Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk early May 7, to Winston Churchill on May 8, and Joseph Stalin on May 9 (accounting for