In summer 1939 Europe trembled on the brink of the second great war in a single generation. Six years earlier Adolf Hitler had taken power in Germany with the avowed aim of overthrowing the Peace of Versailles—the treaty ending World War I—and leading a resurgent Reich to its “rightful” place in the international order. Britain and France had reacted with a policy of appeasement, countenancing his aggressive initiatives in the hope that each concession would be the last necessary to satisfy Hitler. The futility of this hope became incontrovertible in May 1939, when Germany began to subject Poland to the same sort of denunciations that had preceded the annexation of Czechoslovakia, and in June a British spokesman emphasized that his nation stood by an earlier commitment to defend Polish independence.
These developments were of extreme interest to Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, chief of Germany’s minuscule Kriegs- marine, who had recently launched a great building program predicated on Hitler’s assurance that he could count on peace with Britain until 1944. Hitler reassured Raeder that the Polish crisis would not lead to an Anglo-German conflict; he had the situation well in hand. Just in case the situation should get out of hand, Raeder obtained Hitler’s approval to send two pocket battleships and 18 U-boats into the Atlantic, where they could commence war on trade—the Kriegsmarine’s only offensive option—immediately upon the outbreak of war. The Graf Spee steamed on 21 August, the Deutschland three days later.
“Pocket battleship” was the English name for a uniquely German combatant that until 1940 the Germans called “armored ships” (Panzerschiffe) and, thereafter, heavy Cruisers. Conceived in the mid-’20s, these vessels represented the interwar navy’s attempt to produce the most formidable platform possible under the 10,000-ton displacement, 11-inch gun limitations forced on Germany at Versailles—ships that, like the U.S. frigates of the War of 1812, could outrun anything they did not outgun. Even with the weight-saving innovation of welded construction, the Panzerschiffe actually displaced 12,100 tons (standard load) rather than the publicized 10,000; but that was close enough to pass muster, and otherwise their design achieved its objectives. While the ships’ dimensions approximated those of big cruisers, with six 11-inch guns and a maximum speed of 26 knots they were more powerful than the biggest cruisers—which carried at most 8-inch guns— and at least three knots faster than the swiftest battleships. Three units were commissioned between 1929 and 1936: the Deutschland, the Admiral Scheer, and the Graf Spee. The only Allied ships superior to them in both armament and speed were the British battlecruisers HMS Hood, Renown, and Repulse.
The sailings of the Graf Spee and the Deutsch- land bracketed the last of Hitler’s diplomatic thunderbolts: the conclusion of a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, a coup he expected to deter Britain and France from fighting for Poland. But this time Hitler had miscalculated. The Western powers finally stood firm. On 3 September 1939, 48 hours after Germany invaded Poland, they declared war. Even then, he continued to hope for reconciliation. Not until 26 September did he authorize the pocket battleships to attack British shipping.
The Deutschland returned home in November, having accounted for three merchant ships. The Graf Spee, commanded by 45-year-old Kapitan zur See Hans Langsdorff, attained more impressive results. Between 30 September and 7 December, she sank nine British merchantmen, totalling 50,089 tons. Yet the raiders’ impact could not be measured solely in terms of ships sunk. They also tied down a vast array of Allied naval assets, occupying the attention of 8 Anglo-French hunter groups including 4 battleships, 4 battlecruisers, 6 aircraft carriers, and more than 20 cruisers.
Late in November, Langsdorff concluded that the condition of the Graf Spee’s engines necessitated her return to Germany. First, however, he hoped to achieve a spectacular success; captured documents revealing British merchant routes led him to believe such a prospect beckoned off the River Plate. At the same time, the Kapitdn reasoned that, since the Graf Spee was homeward bound, the importance of avoiding damage had diminished and that he need no longer obey his orders to abstain from engaging warships. He also decided on the tactics he would employ upon encountering enemy cruisers. Rather than exploiting his big guns to outrange an opponent, he would close at full speed to overwhelm him. Otherwise, a faster ship might escape and become a shadower.
The consequences of these decisions began to unfold approximately 250 nautical miles off the coast of Uruguay at 0552 on 13 December, when the Graf Spee sighted three ships identified as the 8-inch-gun cruiser Exeter and two destroyers. Her floatplane had broken down two days earlier, so the report could not be confirmed by aerial reconnaissance. Assuming that the enemy vessels were screening a merchant convoy, Langsdorff sent the Graf Spee surging toward them; but there was no convoy, and the Exeter’s consorts were the 6-inch-gun cruisers Ajax and Achilles. All belonged to Force G, one of the British hunter groups, and the Ajax wore the flag of group commander Commodore Henry H. Harwood, who had cannily ordered them to concentrate off the Plate following receipt of raider reports from the Graf Spee’s seventh and eighth victims.
Although the British ships were identified correctly by 0610, Langsdorff did not turn away. Neither did Harwood. At the onset of the action, opened by the Graf Spee’s guns eight minutes later, the range fell rapidly. Then, at 0637, apparently alarmed by the accuracy of the light cruisers’ fire and the threat of the torpedoes the Exeter had begun launching, Langsdorff gave way, turning 115° to port and transforming the engagement into a running battle to the west, it lapsed at 0740, when Harwood dropped out of range with the intention of renewing the contest after nightfall.
If battles were scored like boxing matches, at that moment the Graf Spee would have been well ahead on points. She had disabled the Exeter, silencing all three of her 8- inch turrets, and damaged both the Ajax and the Achilles, the former seriously. In return, she had taken 20 hits, the most troubling of which cut off steam to the plant that purified her lubricating and fuel oil. Convinced that his ship was unfit to face the North Atlantic without repairs, Langsdorff shaped course for Montevideo. The Graf Spee anchored there around 2350.
Under international law, a belligerent warship could remain in a neutral harbor only long enough to be made seaworthy. Langsdorff requested permission to stay 15 days. After sending a team to inspect the Graf Spee, the Uruguayan government gave him 72 hours—that is, until 2000 on 17 December. As indignant as he was over this ruling, Langsdorff quickly perceived that by entering port he had placed himself in a lose-lose situation. The longer he remained, the stronger British forces outside would be when he emerged. The 8-inch-gun cruiser Cumberland joined Harwood’s light cruisers off the Plate the day after the battle, and the battlecruiser Renown and carrier Ark Royal were on the way.
Circumstances offered Langsdorff three options: accept internment; try to break out into the Atlantic; or scuttle. A fourth alternative—a dash to Buenos Aires—represented only a respite. Hitler ruled out internment, and Langsdorff concluded that the odds against a successful breakout were prohibitive. Even should the Graf Spee, already low on ammunition, fight her way through the British cruisers and shake off their attempts to shadow, it was doubtful her diesels could stomach unpurified oils long enough to reach Germany. A sense of humanity also influenced LangdorfPs reasoning. Earlier he had told captured skippers he was proud the Graf Spee’s operations had not cost a single merchant seaman his life. Now, in confidential addresses to his ship’s divisions, he promised, “I will not let us be shot to pieces ... by an overwhelmingly superior force. To me a thousand young men alive are worth more than a thousand dead heroes.” His decision, endorsed by Berlin, was to scuttle.
On the afternoon of 17 December a skeleton crew moved the Graf Spee outside Uruguayan territorial waters, and at 2200 she was wracked by the first of a series of explosions that reduced her to a ruin. The entire crew then proceeded upriver in chartered Argentine craft to Buenos Aires. Langsdorff hoped that Argentina might view his men as shipwrecked mariners and, as such, exempt from internment. But on the 19th he learned that everyone would be interned. His duties to his ship and his crew had ended.
Langsdorff spent that evening in the Senior Officers’ Mess at the Buenos Aires Naval Arsenal. To his companions he seemed “animated and gay.” The gathering broke up around midnight. Langsdorff returned to his room and wrote letters to his parents, his wife, and the German ambassador. In the last, he explained, “It was clear to me that [the decision to scuttle] might be misinterpreted ... as being attributable partly or entirely to personal considerations. Therefore I decided from the beginning to bear the consequences involved in that decision. ... I am happy to pay with my life to prevent any possible reflection on the honor of the flag.” Then he spread the Graf Spee’s battle ensign across the table before him, and fired a pistol at his temple.
For further reading: Sir Eugen Millington-Drake, The Drama of Graf Spee and the Battle of the River Plate (London: Peter Davies, [19641); Dudley Pope, Graf Spee: The Life and Death of a Raider (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1957); Martin Stephen, ed. Eric Grove, Sea Battles in Close-up: World War 2 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988).