After examining a series of designs, in 1927 the German Navy examined the speed of the British Navy’s capital ships and decided to build battlecruisers that could outrun anything they could not beat and outshoot anything they could not outrun. This resulted in the development of ships with 11 inch guns and a speed of 26 knots, but at the price of weaker armor. The most likely enemy was believed to be the French Navy, who would support Poland, but conflict with Britain was to be avoided since its navy was too powerful. Raeder intended the ships to strike at any French fleet that blockaded the German ports, since their diesel engines would allow them to cruise for long periods in the North Sea. The Deuschland was the first of this class, and the second, the Graf Spee, was built with slightly thicker armor and was a bit faster. The Graf Spee’s primary weapons were two turrets of three 11 inch guns, and its secondary guns were 5.9 inch guns. Actually, the term pocket battleship was a misnomer, it was simply a very heavily armed cruiser with average armor. British cruisers of the same period had armor that was at least as thick, but much weaker cannon, only 6 inches. The Graf Spee was scheduled to be modified between January 1941 and December 1943 but war had already started. The Graf Spee had joined the fleet in May 1936, and took part in the Spanish Civil War, protecting shipments for Franco.

Admiral Erich Raeder, the head of the German Navy, was an expert on commerce raiding and he believed that the German error during WWI had been to seek battle with Allied ships. Since the German navy was even weaker than it had been during WWI, it was imperative to avoid contact with enemy warships at all costs. The captain of the Graf Spee, Hans Langsdorff, had been a rising young officer during WWI, and his charming personality won him appointment as liaison officer between the Reichswehr and the Reichsmarine. The British captains who were captured by the Graf Spee agree that he had high ideals and was a genuine believer in Nazi party, although he was not a virulent Nazi.

When Germany invaded Poland, the Graf Spee and the Deutschland were the only combat ready major German warships, since the Scheer’s diesel engines were being repaired, the Admiral Hipper had not passed sea trials, and the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were in refit. Realizing that war was approaching Raeder sent the Deutschland and the Graf Spee to the Atlantic in August, 1939. Since the two ships were already at sea when the war started, and radio messages were sent by German HQ listing possible targets, each ship’s captain only had to give a single letter response indicating which target was selected. Each ship had a tanker-supply ship which would meet it at pre-arranged isolated areas. The Deutschland was assigned the North Atlantic, while the Graf Spee operated in the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, but Hitler waited until September 23, 1939 before allowing them to start hunting. Actually, the Deutschland was renamed the Lutzow after it had completed its first cruise and successfully returned to Germany because Hitler did not want to risk a ship named the Deutschland being sunk.

The two ships were ordered to attack the enemy’s merchant ships and to follow international law by guaranteeing the safety of the ships’ crews. Furthermore, each ship received clear orders about enemy ships: “Enemy naval forces, even if inferior, are only to be engaged if it should further the principal task” (meaning the war on merchant shipping). Actually, the German high command originally had hopes of making peace with Britain and France, so the two raiders were not immediately ordered to attack enemy shipping. It was not until September 26 that Langsdorff was finally allowed to attack British ships, but not French ships, so a valuable month had already been wasted. The Graf Spee sank five ships in the South Atlantic in September and October, one ship in the Indian Ocean in November, and two more ships in December when it returned to the South Atlantic. Langsdorff even pretended to be the Scheer in Latin American waters and the Graf Spee in the Indian Ocean in order to spread confusion. Secrecy was maintained by taking the crew of each ship prisoner and then transferring them to the supply ship Altmark every two weeks.

By December 7, nine ships with a total tonnage of 50,089 tons had been sunk, and it looked like Captain Hans Langsdorff would have no problems before returning to Germany in January. The only concern was that repairs to the spotter plane would keep it grounded for the next few days, and his diesel engines needed to be overhauled. However, Langsdorff had been pressing for the relaxation of his orders concerning engaging enemy warships, and he decided on November 24 to seek out enemy ships in order to obtain a notable victory, in the clear knowledge that he was disobeying orders. He believed that this was necessary since another German ship would not operate in that area for quite some time. Langsdorff’s report to Raeder showed that he had begun to believe the hype about the pocket battleship, that it could outfight anything it could not outrun. He then disguised his ship as an Allied battlecruiser, even building a fake turret and second funnel, although he dismantled the disguise on December 12.

When the British heavy cruiser Exeter with two smaller escorts were sighted four minutes before sunrise on December 13, Langsdorff assumed that it was the light cruiser Achilles, the two escorts were destroyers, and that they were guarding a convoy. He had actually been looking for a convoy, since he believed that his ship could quickly overpower a convoy’s escorts, and he could sink several merchantmen before heavy ships could arrive. However, he would have been less confident if he knew that the Exeter’s escorts were the light cruisers Ajax and Achilles, and they were part of a hunting group that was searching for the Graf Spee. The group’s commander, Commodore Henry Harwood, had concluded from the available information that the Graf Spee was within range of Rio de Janeiro, the Falkland Islands or the Plate, and he made an educated guess that it would be the Plate, since it was a vital shipping area. The heavy cruiser Cumberland had been sent to refit but was ordered to be ready to sail on short notice, and he arranged to meet the Ajax and Achilles on December 12, transferring his command to the Ajax.

Actually, Harwood was the ideal British naval officer to face Langsdorff since he had spent a great deal of time in South America, and had lectured at the Senior Officer’s War Course on how to deal with pocket battleships, by attacking with separate divisions of cruisers that would force the enemy to divide his fire. Naturally, he explained this theory to his subordinates when he was hunting the Graf Spee, who embraced these tactics. Most important, he realized that a raider is far from his support network, so you only have to damage him and someone else will finish him off. The Exeter had 8 inch guns and thicker armor than the Graf Spee, but the Achilles and the Ajax were 6 inch gun cruisers. Together, the three ships could fire considerably more than the Graf Spee, especially at close range, so attacking the British ships was a risky proposition for Langsdorff.

Taking advantage of the greater range of the Graf Spee’s guns, Langsdorff increased to full speed in order to narrow the distance and he began targeting the Exeter, while his 5.9 guns engaged the light cruisers. The Exeter sustained heavy damage, losing both of her forward gun turrets, while splinters from one of the nose-fused shells killed everyone on the bridge except for Captain Bell and the torpedo and firing control officers. Aware of the Exeter’s damage, Langsdorff turned his attention to the threat posed by the light cruisers who were firing as one, instead of finishing off the Exeter. However, Captain Bell managed to keep the ship in action, and fired all of its torpedoes at the Graf Spee, although none hit. The Exeter then began an intense artillery duel with the Graf Spee that lasted ten minutes. While the Graf Spee took moderate damage the Exeter had several fires in the ship, and was reduced to only one functioning turret.

The light cruisers also suffered damage, but Commodore Harwood realized that the Exeter could not survive a prolonged battering from the Graf Spee, so he had the light cruisers charge at full speed to narrow the range. This tactic successfully forced the Graf Spee to focus all of its fire on the light cruisers, which saved the Exeter, whose final turret had been knocked out of action. However, the Exeter was saved at the cost of severe damage to the Ajax, while Captain Parry of the Achilles was wounded in both legs. Harwood then ordered both light cruisers to abandon the battle, which had lasted 90 minutes. When it became clear that the Graf Spee would not pursue them, Harwood had the cruisers shadow the Graf Spee. Since the Exeter was in no shape to fight at the moment, Harwood ordered the Cumberland to cut short its refit and rush to the Plate.

Unknown to the British, while the Graf Spee had avoided critical hits, it had suffered enough damage that it could no longer make it to Germany without repairs. In addition, 37 men were dead, and 57 wounded. Langsdorff knew that he could not make the necessary repairs at sea, and he believed that heavier ships were probably in the vicinity. Therefore, he decided to sail for Montevideo, since Uruguay was neutral, and his ship would be interred. Actually, an Argentine port would have been a better choice, especially given the strength of pro-British feeling in Montevideo.

Once Harwood learned that the Graf Spee had anchored in Montevideo, it became a race to see whether his reinforcements would arrive before the Graf Spee completed its repairs, since the Exeter had been sent to the Falklands for repairs. With the naval battle ended, the diplomatic battle commenced, and the British had much more support than the Germans. Eugen Millington-Drake, the British minister, had close ties to the Uruguayan leadership, while the majority of the population was pro-Allies. The Germans found it difficult to arrange for repairs to the Graf Spee, so they had to rely on labor from two German ships, a German owned company and German technicians working for local firms. The British tried to convince the Uruguayan government to limit the Graf Spee to 24 hours of repairs or internment, while Langsdorff pressed for two weeks. In the end, the Uruguayan government resisted the heavy diplomatic pressure exerted by both sides, and granted the Graf Spee three days for repairs, so it had to leave on the evening of December 17.

The Cumberland had arrived on December 14 but Harwood knew that he did not have enough ships to handle the Graf Spee and heavier reinforcements would not arrive until December 20 at the earliest. As a result, he suggested that the British have one merchantman sail each day, since according to international law, any merchant ship leaving a neutral port was given a 24 hour head start over an enemy warship, which gave Langsdorff a limited window in which he could leave. A last-minute attempt to persuade the Uruguayan foreign minister to extend the deadline failed. Both Hitler and Raeder opposed interning the ship in Uruguay but recommended an attempt to break through the British ships and reach Argentina. Langsdorff knew that the Graf Spee would be at a disadvantage since it would be moving slowly, the forward range finder was out of action, and the three forward guns were still not working smoothly. Worse, the shallow waters meant that it was likely that the Graf Spee would become grounded if it had to fight its way past the British, and Langsdorff was well aware that the cruisers would shadow him even if he made to the open sea, which would enable ships like the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and battleship Renown that were known to be in the area to find him. If the ship was grounded in international waters, then the British would be able to capture German secret equipment before it could be destroyed. Finally, there was no guarantee that the Argentine government would be more receptive than the Uruguayan.

After debating the situation with his staff, Langsdorff decided to first destroy all vital equipment and then scuttle the ship just outside the three mile limit on the evening of December 17. His officers managed to persuade him not to go down with the ship. Harwood received a knighthood and promotion to rear admiral. The waterfront on both sides of the River Plate was packed with spectators, roughly 750,000 in total, while the event was covered by an American radio reporter, Mike Fowler, who had originally come to produce programs about local bird life. However, realizing the news value of what was one of the first great media events of the war, he had found a position overlooking Montevideo Harbor.

The crew of the Graf Spee made it to Buenos Aires, where they were interned, destroying the myth that the Argentine government was pro-German. Langsdorff knew that he had made a colossal error in seeking out British warships, he had lost one of the German Navy’s few warships, and he could look forward to spending the rest of the war locked up in Argentina, so he killed himself during the night of December 19.

Despite Uruguay’s neutral status, Harwood was treated as a hero by local crowds, although this paled in comparison with the triumphant spectacle that was staged for the crews when they returned to England. The damage to the Exeter was so severe that it would have been more cost-effective to leave her as a hulk in the Falklands but Churchill refused to accept such a fate for his ‘hero’ cruiser, so it was brought back to England for a year long refit. The Achilles became part of the Indian navy in 1948, and played herself in the film The Battle of the River Plate.

The fate of the Graf Spee shows that the effectiveness of the raiders was limited by Germany’s almost total lack of friendly ports where the raiders could be repaired. In addition, Hitler was mainly interested in the glory of naval victories, and did not understand the value of disrupting British shipping. However, the two raiders proved to be extremely successful. Given the global nature of allied shipping, it was impossible to place all allied merchantmen in convoys, so in early October the British Admiralty and the French navy had divided three battleships and battlecruisers, thirteen light and heavy cruisers and four carriers into eight groups to hunt down the two surface raiders.

Related Movies:

Battle of the River Plate (1956)
Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, starring Peter Finch and Anthony Quayle
During the beginning stages of WWII, the British Navy struggles to protect convoys from powerful surface raiders like the Graf Spee, a German pocket battleship. Two light cruisers and a heavy cruiser finally corner the Graf Spee near the River Plate in Uruguay and although they are heavily outgunned, innovative tactics give them a fighting chance. (please click here to read the review)

Further Reading:

The Price of Disobedience: The Battle of the River Platte Reconsidered. Eric J. Grove. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2000.

It provides a very detailed description of the ship’s development and armament, as well as excellent photos of the captains and ships involved, including the damaged ships after the battle, and the scuttling of the Graf Spee. Although it is a slim volume of 182 pages, it is a thorough look at the Graf Spee’s short but exciting life, and it even briefly discusses the fate of the crew who were interned in Argentina.

The German Navy in World War II-Edward P. Von der Porten, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969.

A good single-volume examination of the German Navy in WWII with a wealth of photos and maps. It provides a good analysis of why the German surface navy was neglected by Nazi Germany, but also shows that there was more to the navy than U-boats, they were just always too few to be effective. The book benefits from the author’s access to many of the surviving senior officers of the German navy, and includes an appendix that compares the tonnage sunk by U-boats and surface raiders with the number of U-boats produced.

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