The Mistake at the River Plate

The Mistake at the River Plate:
How clashing German Naval ideology decided the fate of the Graf Spee



Drake Campbell



Resting at the bottom of the River Plate is a ship wreck that marks the end of one of the greatest naval engagements in modern history. The Graf Spee was once the pride of the German navy, a marvel of engineering, and a considerable threat to British merchant traffic. The ship sits at the opening of the Montevideo harbor under the supervision of the Uruguayan government. The ship sank mostly intact and recent efforts at salvage have brought attention to her shallow grave. (See Figure 1)


Uruguayan businessman Alfredo Etchegaray has been salvaging pieces of the wreck since 1998 and selling the artifacts despite protests from officials in Berlin; the German government’s wishes are that the ship be salvaged and the artifacts placed in a museum instead of sold to the highest bidder. As of March 2010, Uruguayan officials have indefinitely placed the wreck off limits and perform daily sweeps of the area.
With the Graf Spee returning to newspaper headlines, the history behind the wreck has been brought back to public attention. Why was the ship scuttled outside the harbor? Why were the British so determined to get rid of the Graf Spee? How did all of this happen in the first place?
Historians who have written about the Graf Spee tend to place much of the blame solely on the decisions of German Officer Hans Langsdorff, the captain of the Graf Spee. While historians such as Eric Grove and Richard Woodman provide creditable evidence to this possibility, many of the decisions made by the Captain during the event were based on orders given to him by the Admiralty and Adolf Hitler in Berlin. Orders given by Commodore Henry Harwood of the British Royal Navy must also be taken into account when discussing the topic. If not for his daring tactical gamble and the bravery of the men at his command, the damage taken by the Graf Spee may not have been so severe. The German defeat at the Battle of the River Plate was not the fault of Hans Langsdorff; it was the failure of German Naval strategy and the success of British tactics and political pressure.


The Armistice of 1918, which ended World War I, stated that the German fleet was to be interned until Allied powers could decide its disposition. After the Armistice, the German fleet was to report to Scapa Flow to be divided amongst the Allies at a later date. The German Admiralty, however, did not want these modern ships to be in the hands of the Allied nations, particularly the United Kingdom. While the Treaty of Versailles was being debated in May of 1919, they put a plan underway to purposely sink all the ships or scuttle them around Scapa Flow. On June 21, 1919, at 10:30 in the morning, German Admiral Ludwig von Reuter set this plan into motion by signaling the fleet, “Paragraph eleven. Confirm.” This was the signal for the crews to scuttle the fleet, the result of which left a graveyard of ships dotting the anchorage. This action left Germany without a navy and set a precedent for German captains.
The Treaty of Versailles limited the German navy to six pre-Dreadnought battleships for costal defense and six light cruisers. According to the agreement, these ships could be replaced after twenty years, but the replacements could be no larger than 10,000 tons displacement. The German Admiralty needed ships that had enough firepower to fight heavy cruisers in the event of war with France, but they were forced to comply with the limitations placed on them. The answer to this issue came during Oberbefehlshaber der Reichsmarine Hans Zenker’s command of the fleet in 1924 with the Deutschland class, or what would later be nicknamed Panzerschiff or pocket battleship.
In order to meet the displacement requirements placed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, several different engineering and design innovations were used in the construction of the ship. Instead of using heavy rivets to keep the armor plates attached to the hull or body of the ship, dock workers wielded each plate together, fusing them into place. The use of eight diesel engines, in lieu of coal or oil burning ones, saved roughly another 550 tons and also gave the ship a longer time at sea without refueling thereby increasing its range of operation. Despite their advantages, the engines required a large cooling system because of the large amount of heat they produced; however, the cooling system was an issue since the vibration of the engines frequently caused the system to leak.
The pocket battleships were fitted with two main turrets each with three, eleven- inch, forty-five caliber guns located on the bow (front) and stern (back) of the ship. These guns fired a 670 pound shell that had an effect range of about 30,000 yards, or seventeen miles. The Deutschland class vessels also had two quadruple torpedo tubes and held two seaplanes with a catapult to launch them and a small crane to retrieve them. All these features forced the ships to be lightly armored in order to comply with treaty restrictions.
Lack of protection made the ships vulnerable to two types of surface ships: battleships and heavy cruisers. If engaged by a battleship, with its slow speed but devastating large guns and heavy armor, they could only hope to outrun the floating fortress. A heavy cruiser, however, could match speed with a pocket battleship, not allowing them to stay out of the effect range of the smaller but powerful eight inch guns. In a scenario such as this, it could cripple, if not destroy, the ship; consequently, it was necessary that they avoid any enemy vessel larger than a light cruiser whose armaments were not thought to be able to do any structural damage to the ship.
When Zenker was relieved of command for political reasons in 1928, the job of creating Germany’s new navy was given to Admiral Erich Raeder. Admiral Raeder had an advantage when he took office in 1929: the rise of the Nazi party gave him the power of expanding the Navy. After Hitler came to power, he decided to modernize and expand the navy. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 between Great Britain and Germany allowed the Hitler to build up to 35 percent of the tonnage the Royal Navy possessed. The British parliament though the Germans could not easily posse a threat, even with more ships. This allowed Raeder to implement a strategy to cripple the effectiveness of the British at sea.
Plan Z, a naval construction plan developed by Raeder, was a buildup of a balanced yet unique navy made to wear down the British. The plan was created during the 1930’s, but was not brought to the attention of Hitler until near the end of the decade. The strategy called for U-boats and light cruisers to harass shipping across the world, effectively preying on British merchantmen. This would force the Royal Navy to start a convey system that would require larger ships to accompany the merchant vessels. Dispersing the main fleet in this fashion would allow the pocket-battleships and super-battleships to focus on overwhelming these ships. This plan of attack left the British with no choice but to devise a new strategy or build naval units to respond to the predatory tactics of the German fleet.
Hitler agreed to the plan in mid January of 1939, but instead of the build up that would take about ten years, the project would have to be done in six years. The fact that Hitler did not approve of the plan until this time, minimized any hope of it being successful. The disagreement in naval policy between Hitler and Raeder began at this point.
Raeder understood that he could not wage an effective naval war against the British with the current ships at his disposal; he had learned from the mistakes of trying to keep a navy numerically equal to the British from the Battle at Jutland. The German navy could not in large numbers escape the North Sea without passing the United Kingdom. The Germans during the Battle of Jutland were able to sink more British ships, but were unable to break out of the North Sea, forcing the large navy to remain in port. Hitler, in contrast, wanted his navy to battle the British on the high seas in combat. The problem with his proposal was that his navy, though technically powerful, was outnumbered three to one. Raeder’s plan of building a navy was attack the life lines of the weakening British Empire as it was the only effective way to deal with the main strength of the Royal Navy, its numerical advantage in ships.
When Hitler invaded Poland, starting war with the British, he forced his naval staff into a war for which it was unprepared. The original plan was for the Graf Spee and her sister ships to be dispatched to begin merchant warfare as soon as possible. This would have forced the Royal Navy to use resources in their attempt to find the German raiders. Despite this tactic being well supported by the German Admiralty, Hitler did not fully agree with this plan because of his desire to sink British warships. It is his wishes, not those of the German naval high command, that are reflected in the orders given to the captains of the pocket battleships.
On August 2, 1939, a set of orders was given to all merchant raiders stating the rules of engagement. It explained which ships could be stopped and which were to be left alone. One passage in the orders reveals the disagreement between Hitler and Admiral Raeder: “Enemy naval forces, even if inferior; are only to be engaged if it should further the principal task.”
This single sentence permits the attacking of British naval ships as long as they were deemed inferior to the raiding ship and suspected of protecting a convoy of merchant ships. As German Admiral Karl Doenitz stated after taking command of the Navy:
Once Germany was committed to war against the United Kingdom, her whole naval effort was directed against British shipping and sea communications. If this campaign failed to achieve decisive results, then Germany’s defeat, whatever form it might happen to take, became inevitable.

On September 30, 1939, the British cargo liner Clement was steaming from New York to Brazil and was on its way to make its last stop before a few weeks rest. Its captain was below decks when the ships third mate called him back to the bridge. What looked like smoke from a warship was closing on them. At the time, the captain assumed that it was the HMS Ajax, since the crew had been their guests just a few weeks earlier. It was not until the ship drew within a few miles that the captain realized that the ship closing was a German surface raider.
Captain F.C.P. Harris quickly ordered that the confidential books describing convoy routes and radio frequencies be destroyed and that the radio operator send a “RRR”. This was the standard distress code for merchant ships. It provided the position, identifying ship numbers, and which surface raider is attacking to other ships in the area and eventually the Royal Navy. Any ship or port listening on a 500 kHz distress frequency could hear this transmission. Knowing this, Captain Hans Langsdorff of the Graf Spee fired a warning shot across the ship’s bow and to have his seaplane fire machine gun rounds down on the deck of the cargo ship.
Langsdorff took all the sailors of the Clement on board the Graf Spee which was camouflaged as the Admiral Scheer. Captain Harris was then brought up to the bridge where Langsdorff saluted him, shook his hand, and apologized in English, “I am sorry, Captain, but I have to sink your ship. We are, you see, at war.” He then proceeded to fired two torpedoes, over twenty-five 5.9- inch shells, and five 11 inch shells at the Clement before the ship sank.
First Sea Lord Admiral Pound had been waiting for reports of surface unit activity from the Kregsmarine; the sinking of the Clement began the hunt for German surface raiders. On October 1, he cancelled the recall of two destroyers to Scapa Flow, and sent them back towards the South Atlantic under British Admiral Lyon. Lyon deployed his cruiser divisions while the battleships Resolution and Revenge, along with the aircraft carrier Hermes, were stationed near Jamaica. Force K, which consisted of the battleship Renown and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, left the home fleet and headed to the South Atlantic. British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill; contacted the French Ministry of Marine on October 5 in order to create a joint search effort for the pocket battleships.
These reactions to surface ship raiding were working exactly as German naval staff had predicted. Raeder’s strategy of merchant raiding had the Royal Navy tying up resources trying to locate a single ship in the vast South Atlantic. To make their effort even more difficult, Langsdorff was advised to try to deceive the British by having the merchant ships report incorrect information at all times. This was done on several occasions, forcing the British to guess the number of active raiders. At this point in the war, German intelligence was far better than that of the British; this inferiority became evident when they suspected multiple raiders in area.
The location of the hunting groups (See diagram 2) near South America also became an issue which Commodore Henry Harwood quickly discovered. The short fuel range of his ships presented a problem and made it necessary to have good diplomatic relations with the governments of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. Keeping good relations with these counties also allowed the British to make much needed repairs with out threat of internment. The British controlled Falkland Islands were of great importance as well since, they served as another re-fueling point.

The British Admiralty looked at the problem as one of strictly numbers. The German navy had possibly only a third of the ships that the Royal navy possessed and much of the fleet consisted of submarines (U-boats). This meant that the British could wage a war of attrition, if necessary, trading ship for ship in order to eliminate the German surface fleet. They could also call on the help of the Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India to provide naval assistance. Due to the great importance of finding these surface raiders, New Zealand provided one light cruiser Achilles to aid in the search, and she joined Harwood’s command on October 26.
Harwood decided to increase patrols of the River Plate area, understanding the great importance this route held to the British war economy. Realizing this also made the area a prime target for a surface raider like the Graf Spee, he ordered that if any of his ships sighted a pocket battleship, they were to stay out of range and shadow it until nightfall. More ships would then converge and attack the target with torpedoes using the cover of darkness to avoid the ship’s heavy guns.
Since October 17, 1939 Langsdorff sank four ships operating under the orders given to him by Admiral Raeder. However the time at sea had placed a strain on the cooling system of the diesel engines. Therefore he planned to sail back to Germany during January 1940. But first Graf Spee was to head to the Indian Ocean and attack merchant ships sailing from India in order to evade and confuse the joint British and French hunting groups.
The last target of the Graf Spee during the month of October was the cargo ship Trevannion. But before the ship was boarded and explosive charges were placed, the captain was able to send a full distress call. This gave the Royal Navy an exact position and was the first solid intelligence received as to the location of the surface raider. Aware of the the radio transmission, Langsdorff and Raeder decided to have the ship sail to the Indian Ocean to evade British hunting groups sailing towards the area.
The Africa Shell became the first and only victim of Langsdorff in the Indian Ocean. The empty ship was on its way to pick up more gasoline when she was stopped by the Graf Spee. The sinking of the cargo ship was the only prize on the trip and was seen as a waste to effective life of the diesel engines. To make matters worse, harsh weather around the Cape of Good Hope took its toll on both the ship and her crew. Nevertheless, Langsdorff and his crew disguised the ship as a British battle-cruiser to provide an opportunity to conduct emergency repairs on the ship’s diesels engines.
The British, at this point, lacked solid evidence as to where the Graf Spee was operating. Reports of the Africa Shell suggested the possibility that a third pocket battleship was present in the Indian Ocean, so the bulk of the hunting forces focused around the Cape of Good Hope. On December 2, 1939, new intelligence gave the British hope: Blue Star liner Doric Star, homeward-bound from New Zealand, had been raided and sunk by the Graf Spee. Luckily for the British, the captain of the vessel was able to send an RRR message that reached the Admiralty the same day. Langsdorff again deduced what the transmission contained and quickly ordered the ship westward where they intercepted the Australia-bound Tairoa. Langsdorff sank this cargo ship and successfully prevented its distress call, but Port Chamlers, a British listening post, reported that a ship had been sunk near the same area thereby revealing his position.
Despite this intelligence, the Graf Spee was already over a thousand miles away from the distress call by the time the British were able to muster a force to intercept her last known position. These actions caught the attention of Admiral Lyon and Commodore Harwood causing them to question the ship’s destination. If the Graf Spee was to strike a serious blow to British shipping, it was plausible she would attack near the River Plate. Harwood began preparing his forces for engaging the pocket battleship in anticipation of her taking this line of action.
Reaching South American waters, Langsdorff intercepted his final prey on December 7; the Streonshalh was raided without sending a distress call and was sunk. Information of a four ship convoy was found on the Streonshalh log which stated it was protected by an auxiliary cruiser. With his victory almost palpable, the captain ordered his Arado seaplane to search for the convoy. After days of searching, the plane’s engine gave out on December 11, leaving Langsdorff to spot for ships using only his telescopes.
Attacking a convoy, as stated earlier, was an acceptable target of opportunity for the pocket battleships as long as they did not attack ships that could do considerable damage. By seeking to engage the convoy in battle, Langsdorff was exploiting this exception in hopes of pleasing the Fuhrer. He had followed the orders of his superiors to until this point; however, sinking a British warship offered more glory for his crew and for Germany. Eric Grove suggests Langsdorff disobeyed orders and placed the Graf Spee in the battle solely to achieve this superficial goal. It is clear in the order given to him, that he was encouraged to bend the rules if the opportunity arose. A member of Langsdorff crew, F.W. Rasenack, explains that it was the pride instilled by the German captains that influenced his decision.
Our Captain […] had arrived at the conclusion that a ship like ourself operating alone from her base must never approach too close to a coast nor enter waters which could be controlled from bases on land. All the German ships which had done so in the First World War had found such an approach had always been the beginning of the end. Up till now in all our movements our Captain was faithful to his principles, although the possibilities of finding [enemy merchant] ships in the middle of the ocean were few. For him above all the safety of the ship was his first consideration. Only now as he was seeking the opportunity of a successful finale before setting out on his return did he go all out and risk everything.

The need to satisfy Adolf Hitler, not just the desire for fame, was a driving factor in the decisions made by Langsdorff. Though not a member of the Nazi party himself, Hitler’s rise to power had allowed him to find command in the Kriegsmarine. This certainly played a role in his decision to pursue a British convoy. Raeder would later write that the real error was being seduced by the idea of battle. Be that as it may, he had successfully forced the British to tie up powerful ships and fuel looking for the Graf Spee across two oceans.
Harwood had been right to suspect that Langsdorff planned on attacking merchant ships near the River Plate. On December 12, he informed the captains of the Ajax, the Achilles and the Exeter of his plans for battle. If they met the pocket battleship during the day or night, his forces were to break up into two divisions. The Exeter would sail straight towards the enemy, attempting to draw fire as the Ajax and Achilles got in range to attack with their smaller guns. This flanking maneuver had never been attempted in naval history. With this plan in place, the column of ships sailed south from Rio towards the River Plate in hopes of finding the Graf Spee.
The first rays of sunlight had begun to crest over the horizon at 0552 on the morning of December 13, 1939. The lookout aboard the Graf Spee spotted smoke from what looked like a convoy. Langsdorff headed to the lookout position with his intelligence officer to try to identify the ships off in the distance. Both men agreed that the smoke was coming from what looked to be two destroyers, a sign that suggested the information about the convoy had been correct. Langsdorff ordered his men to report to their battle stations and prepare for combat.
Black smoke appeared on the horizon for the Exeter as well. Not knowing the identity of the ship, Captain Bell ordered the Exeter to sail towards the smoke. What he discovered as they drew nearer was the battle-ready Graf Spee. At 0617, before he could ready his own turrets to fire, an eleven inch shell hit mid-ship killing three and injuring several others on the bridge. Bell quickly ordered the Exeter to return fire, marking the beginning of the Battle of the River Plate. This action would last less than two hours, but for sixty-four sailors of the Royal Navy, it would be their last. To better understand the decisions made by each commanding officer, it is important to examine the personalities of both Langsdorff and Hardwood.


Langsdorff, as described by a colleague, was a calm and well balanced person. His service in the Battle of Jutland earned him the highest military honor by the German Military, the Iron Cross during the First World War. Under both the Imperial Navy and the Kriegsmarine, Langsdorff had been responsible for torpedo boat flotillas. Since these boats had little armor, protecting the men under his command was a difficult task during battle. The sense of protection he acquired from this position greatly influenced his decisions regarding his crew and ship. The limitations that the Graf Spee had in combat only exasperated Langsdorff’s concerns. This knowledge was a key factor in the coming engagement.
Commodore Henry Harwood, was a career officer and considered an expert in his knowledge of the Panzerschiff or pocket battleship. His long service in the Royal Navy started in 1905 at the age of fifteen, and he spent much of his service on smaller ships in the fleet. This gave him great understanding of the limitations of these ships and how to deploy them. Having served in the South American area since the end of World War I, he was fluent in Spanish and well experienced in trade routes. While working as a part of a divisional tactician at Greenwich, he conducted a series of studies involving how to deal with a ship like the Graf Spee. Consequently, Harwood’s plan of attack was devised roughly three years before he tested it in battle.
The reported damage to the Exeter demonstrated to Captain Perry of the Achilles the power that the Graf Spee possessed. “I remember a rather sickening feeling in the pit of my tummy as I realized we were in for an action in which the odds were hardly on our side. Luckily there wasn’t much time to think about that.”
Langsdorff had wasted no time placing accurate damaging fire on the surprised Exeter. The devastating firepower of the eleven inch guns was causing massive damage to the ship’s superstructure (upper decks). The Exeter proceeded to turn west to close the gap between the German ship on the left, while the Ajax and the Achilles closed the range from the north-east. This forced Langsdorff either to concentrate on the heavy cruiser racing towards him or to try firing at all three targets at once. Langsdorff decided to focus his main guns on the Exeter and his secondary guns on the closing light cruisers.
The accurate gunnery of the Germans quickly became an issue that Harwood and his officers had to neutralize. While the Exeter was able to take several hits from the big guns of the Graf Spee, the Ajax and the Achilles would not be able to survive a prolonged firefight. In order to attempt to throw off the calculations of the German gunners, Harwood ordered his ships to “follow the splashes.” This tactic involved sailing the ship towards the misses of the enemy in hopes that they would not fire in the same place twice. This forced the Germans to make educated guesses on how to lead their target, thus lowering the chances of inflicting damage.
By 0636, the Exeter had suffered a large amount of damage from the withering fire from the Graf Spee. Even so, she became enough of a threat for Langsdorff that he attempted to get distance between the crippled ship and himself. Leaving the Exeter by turning away has been considered to be one of Langsdorff’s major mistakes. Historians Eric Grove and Richard Woodman agree that any glory that Langsdorff was looking for evaporated when he retreated under the cover of smoke. Despite criticism of his decision, there are two alternate explanations for why he disengaged Exeter. The first is that continuing the engagement would have caused further damage his ship. Another possibility is that he considered that he had beaten his opponent and did not want to cause anymore loss of life.


The Ajax and Achilles had been able to avoid much of the heavy fire from the Graf Spee to this point in the battle. The gunnery directory, or DCT, of the Achilles was then struck by an eleven-inch shell killing or injuring everyone in the area. Lieutenant-Commander R.E. Washbourn, in spite of sustaining a severe head injury, continued to man his post. If that were not difficult enough, he was forced to fire the guns by sight or without the assistance of equipment.
At roughly 0700, the Exeter began to limp back towards the Falkland Islands; all wireless communications aboard had been destroyed. This left only the light cruisers to engage Langsdorff. Harwood now realized that his only advantage in the battle had just been taken out the equation and the concentrated fire of the eleven-inch guns of the Graf Spee far outclassed what firepower he posed. “We might just as well be bombarding her with a lot of bloody snowballs…”
Nevertheless, the Achilles continued to fire her six-inch guns thanks to the efforts of Lt. Cdr. Washbourn. Help finally arrived via the British Seafox airplane. Through radio communication, they were guiding the fire of the Achilles as best they could by calling out hits and misses. In part due to their efforts, Washbourn was able to score a direct hit on the damaged Arado Seaplane.
Damaging the Graf Spee was the main task for Harwood. The Exeter had the heaviest guns in the group with eight-inch guns that fired a 256 pound shell and had an effective range of twelve miles. The Ajax and the Achilles conversely held six-inch guns that fired 112 pound shells with an effective range of eight miles.
The power of the guns being fired by the Graf Spee outclassed anything that Harwood had at his disposal. The only hope he had of doing crippling damage to the pocket battleship was to strike with torpedoes. Both ships released torpedoes at Langsdorff. Having been the commander of torpedo boats himself, Langsdorff was able to locate and avoid each attack negating Hardwood’s last resort.
At 0725, the Ajax received a direct hit from the Graf Spee, putting her back turret out of action. With less than 20 percent of main gun ammunition left in both ships’ magazines, Harwood made a smokescreen and pulled his ships out of range of Langsdorff. Although the Graf Spee had received only super-structure damage, her crew had taken heavy casualties. With sixty-one wounded during the engagement, the well being of Langsdorff’s men outweighed chasing down the damaged Ajax and Achilles. Had he given chase to Harwood instead, the Graf Spee’s longer range guns may have prevented the light cruisers from shadowing him and relaying his position back to the Royal Navy.
The damage sustained to the Graf Spee did not prevent her from sailing, but if she planned on returning to a German port, the harsh winter of the North Sea could have made the passage home considerably more dangerous. Much of the ships deck equipment had been destroyed during the engagement, leading Langsdorff to make the decision that sealed the fate of the notorious ship. The Graf Spee’s action report shows the decision was to make steam to Montevideo, Uruguay.
The Captain expressed this opinion with certainty, and ordered the Navigating Officers to check whether Montevideo or Buenos Aires was the best harbour for the purpose. The Navigating Officer advised Montevideo, considering the shallow water of the Indio Channel (possibility of fouling the engine cooling water with mud). The Captain agreed with this proposal. The strong dependence of Uruguay on England from a political standpoint was not known to him to the full extent.


The battle with the British having concluded, Langsdorff drafted a signal to Berlin. In it he described the battle and the Graf Spee’s action damage. The log of the pocket battleship read;
The Captain signaled his desire to enter Montevideo at the same time he reported on the battle to the Operations Department. He understood that it would be impossible to sail out again, and thought the ship would be interned. Before he ran into Montevideo he received the answer from Operations. “Agreed, Commander-in-Chief”. (Adolf Hitler)

Harwood shadowed the ship until it reached the mouth of the harbor; there he stopped the Ajax and the Achilles and signaled for the heavy cruiser Cumberland to replace the crippled Exeter. Harwood knew if he came too close to the port, Uruguayan officials might give extended protection to the German pocket battleship. The signal sent to Commodore Harwood from Admiral Lyon read;
Foreign Office have instructed HM Minister, Montevideo to use every endeavour to get Spee interned. Arguments to be used are (A) if ship is seaworthy, Hague Convention does not permit repairs and she must leave after twenty-four hours or be interned, (B) if she is not seaworthy same is true, as there is wide support for the view that no offshore facilities or extension of time may be granted for repairs and damage sustained in action. Foreign Office have added for Minister’s own information that if Uruguayan authorities will not accept these arguments we should prefer that the ship remains four or five days.


The funeral for those that died on the Graf Spee was on December 15, 1939. Langsdorff had been given a seventy-two hour period until he was required to leave port. In a long letter to the German Ambassador, Langsdorff stated his protest against being allowed such a short stay in port at Montevideo. He used examples of the Hague Convention that allowed for ships to stay in harbor to make repairs in other locations. He also referenced a specific example in which the British cruiser Glasgow lay in a South American port for several weeks while carrying out repairs. Langsdorff had only requested fifteen days in order to make the necessary repairs for his ship to be seaworthy. However, the growing number of British ships gathering at the mouth of the port lying in wait for him to sail out was by far Langsdorff’s main concern.
While Langsdorff was busy trying to keep his ship in port, Harwood and the British were rushing ships to the mouth of the River Plate; in case the Graf Spee made a valiant last stand. Not knowing the extent of the damage to the ship or how much ammunition it still held, the plan was to hold the ship in port until the battleship Renown and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal arrived to deliver the final blow to the pocket battleship. The problem was that these ships were thousands of miles away near the Indian Ocean. Despite the predicament they were in, the British ambassador Millington Drake was cleverly able to convince German Intelligence that the battle group was already in position.
On December 16, Harwood was signaled from London that, due to his courageous engagement with a far superior enemy, he was to be promoted to Rear Admiral effective December 13, 1939. After thanking his crew for their actions in battle, he continued to prepare for the possible second engagement with the pocket battleship. The next day was the last day for the Graf Spee to stay in port before being interned. What unfolded on December 17, would live forever in infamy.
Langsdorff explained his predicament of being cornered in Montevideo. Raeder and Hitler had similar yet different views on how Langsdorff was to proceed with the Graf Spee. The ship was not to be interned in the port since it would take it completely out of the war and out of the control of Germany. Hitler wanted Langsdorff to attempt to breakthrough the British blockade. It was possible, if the British did have the large force they claimed, to take at least one ship out with him. Raeder agreed with this option, but he suggested that Langsdorff scuttle the ship if he could see no way of breaking through the blockade in order to deny the British a propaganda windfall.
With what he thought were insurmountable odds of breaking out of Montevideo and no possible way of avoiding interment if he decided to stay, Langsdorff was left with a precedent started in 1919 at Scapa Flow: scuttling his ship. To make the news worse, after spending the entire day of December 16 dismantling vital equipment and preparing explosives in the engine rooms, word came from the German embassy in Rio de Janero that the Renown and Ark Royal had just docked. Langsdorff continued with his plan of scuttling the ship on the morning of December 17.
Crowds packed on the docks to see what was to become of the pocket battleship. Langsdorff weighed anchor, and taking only a skeleton crew he sailed out of the port and out into the mouth of the River Plate. Seen by a crowd on the docks of Montevideo and a United States news crew, Langsdorff sailed towards Argentine waters, stopped, and completed preparations to scuttle the ship. Tug boats from a German owned company took the crew off the ship and brought them to Buenos Aires. At 1954 that evening, the time explosives on the Graf Spee detonated. The ship was ablaze for three days and, like Admiral Reuter before him, Langsdorff thought he had denied the British the victory.
Hitler was furious with Langsdorff’s decision and held him completely responsible for the loss of the Graf Spee. Raeder, however, did not look at this result in such a harsh light. In his autobiography, Raeder does not question Langsdorff’s fighting spirit, but his inability to follow his orders. He also states that this was not the first time that Hitler issued different orders to officers, trapping them between following the oath they had sworn to the Furher and the naval strategies of Raeder.
Langsdorff, being unable to live with the sacrifice of his men and his ship, laid out a flag on his hotel bed in Buenos Aires. Notes were left to his parents and his wife telling them to be “proud in his grief.” Finally, during the early hours of December 20, 1939, Captain Hans Langsdorff sat on the Imperial Naval Flag of Germany and shot himself.
This was a major relief for the British in the early part of the war. Not only was the Royal Navy able to take the Graf Spee out of the war, they had the Germans do it for them and had not lost a single ship. The Exeter sailed back to England and was welcomed home by a huge crowd, as was the Achilles in New Zealand.
The Battle of the River Plate is seen today as a David versus Goliath story. It also is seen as battle that should never have happened if Langsdorff had simply followed orders. As a historian, it is important to look not just at the decisions that were made during the events, but how these decisions were influenced. Langsdorff was attempting to accomplish both merchant raiding and finding glory for the German navy. In the end, the conflicting wishes of Adolf Hitler and Eric Raeder sealed Langsdorff’s fate.
Captain Hans Langsdorff not only cared deeply for the lives of his men, but his actions also protected merchant sailors and spared Harwood further casualties. Harwood used the weakness of the pocket battleship to his advantage. Knowing that his ships were unable to inflict fatal damage to the Graf Spee, he did enough damage to the ship to force it to seek port. In the end he also exploited the weaknesses of the entire surface fleet of the German Navy. With no ports to safely operate from, German ships were brought into battle and had to sail back to Germany for repairs.
Once the pocket battleship was chased into Montevideo, Millington Drake was able to bluff Langsdorff into thinking he was completely outmatched if he attempted to breakthrough the British forces supposedly lying in wait for him. The British used this weakness of their opponents to defuse the power and technical advantages that the German surface ships possessed.
Currently, the wreck of the Graf Spee is hidden by the murky water of the River Plate; its current state of decay is only an educated guess. The story of how this German merchant raider ended up outside of the Uruguayan port of Montevideo will always remain a significant chapter in the naval history of World War II.


Bibliography
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Roskill, S.W. The British Navy at War, 1939-1945. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1960.

Raeder, Erich. My Life. Translated by Henry W. Drexel. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1960.

Ireland, Bernard. Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996.

Many authors. Jane's Fighting Ships of World War II. New York: Military Press, 1989.

Walters, S.D. The Royal New Zealand Navy. Wellington, New Zealand : Historical Publications Branch, 1956. Accessed January 25, 2012. http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2Navy-c4.html.

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Secondary Sources

Pope, Dudley. The Battle of the River Plate. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1956.

Grove, Eric J. The Price of Disobedience. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000.

Woodman, Richard. The Battle of the River Plate: A Grand Delusion. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008.

The Local: Germany’s news in English “Nazi wreck puts Berlin at odds with salvager”. published March 12, 2010, http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100312-25831.html

Andreas Hillgruber, England's Place In Hitler's Plans for World Dominion. Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 9, 1974

History Learning Site (UK) “The Battle of the River Plate” Chris Trueman, published date not shown, http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_of_the_river_plate.htm