A Story of Two Isles - the Falklands - part 7 - World War 2

So now that the World War 1 part is over, I can go back to my more lighthearted self to continue telling you some boring events continued happening until the Argentine-British war, in a not so boring way. I tend to do that, when history is kind of slow, I lighten the mood up, but when it´s really interesting, I don´t make a single joke so I don´t take you from the edge of your seats. Bear with me on that ;). In 1922 the argentinian government of Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear decided to reject all the correspondence to and from the Falklands with the objective of adding actual pressure to the diplomatic claim. I like to imagine they drew the word "SPAM" on a big barrel and did letter throwing competitions into it from various distances, and did wagers and such. The island governement hired steamships from Montevideo to deliver those letters. The private company who owned them is not mentioned but let´s say for the sake of fun that it was "Fed-Forwarded Anyway Byatch-Ex". The British protest arrived later, they had to drink their tea first. But the argentinian government alleged that the policy was not an official one and by 1928 has re-established delivering letters to and from the islands, clarifying that it doesn´t mean renouncement of the rights or the claims to the island in any way. So in response, in 1933 the british postal office emmited a series of stamps with commemorative motifs about the islands. Argentinian postal office had a fit of rage and considered the letters that used those stamps as "lacking postage", leaving the recipient paying the "fuck you penalty fee". The matter was taken to the Universal Postal Office whose official reply was "Kids, please stop fighting", but over the next years both governments would go on releasing stamps which portrayed the Falklands as part of their respective territory, like the oldest facebook wall fight ever. Both governments continued issuing their respective stamps for a long time and several diplomatic protests on both sides were fruitless but, the start of World War Two flexibilized the adamantine british posture a bit. Clearly the british and the United States governments were trying to make friends, or at least, trying to not make more enemies. The argentinian government took advantage of this and denounced the falklands occupation several times in international forums. United states tried to build a common policy for the South American block, which argentina viewed as an opportunity to get the whole block into diplomatic agreement about the falklands. In the second year of the forum, on June 1940, argetina made its claim again. In that year, the Foreign Office made a document called "Proposed offer by His Majesty's Government to reunite Falkland Islands with Argentina and acceptance of lease", in which a Shared government of the Falklands was proposed, but the details remain in the dark.

Now I´m going to summarize the small role that the Falklands played during World War 2. It is smaller than in the first one, but the context is not less interesting. In the spring of 1941 the german fleet reflected the inconvenients it encountered by entering the war without being fully re-equipped. Aside from the submarines, few naval units remained that could really bother britain in its home territory. On the other hand, Germany was not going to make the same mistake it did during the first world war by letting the submarines act all alone and receive the full weight of the enemy attention. So the Kriegsmarine organized "corsair raids", which were basically armed merchants masked to appear harmless. They had to be masters of disguise, waving false flags, false ship names and going to the lengths of even attaching fake chimneys to avoid correct identification by the allies. But their real power laid in them being as destructive as a cruiser when used properly. They mounted 150mm guns, light and heavy machine guns, torpedo launcher tubes, mines and one or two recon hydroplanes(Arado Ar. 196), they received the official denomination of Auxiliary Cruisers. Parallel refueling and ammo refilling fleets were organized so that they could stay more than a year at sea without reprovisioning. In that context is when Germany started making use of the Heavy Cruisers of the Deutscheland class. One of them, named Admiral Graf Spee, in honor to Maximilian Von Spee(the first world war commander and hero, remember him?) is the one that we will give our focus too in this story. These cruisers were called "Pocket Drednaughts by the navy because they were made to comply with the restrictions imposed on germany for shipbuilding by the Treaty of Versailles, without actually complying with them. The treaty restricted germany´s ships to a maximum of 10.000 tonnes, and that gave the allies a weight advantage for their ships and a theoretical edge on how many guns their ships could carry. The Deutscheland class heavy cruisers respected that weight, but they had a superb top speed of 28 knots(52 km/h) and were so packed with guns that there were only a few handful of french and british ships who were both fast enough and packed enough punch to catch them and sink them. During a two month period, the Admiral Graf Spee heavy cruiser and its supply ship, the Altmark did a series of successful raids all along the Atlantic Ocean, sinking a total of 9 allied ships totalling more than 50.000 tons, living up to the name of its predecessor, and prompting the allies to give hunt to it, and its sister ship the Deustcheland. The Falkland Islands Defense Force was called out to man the gun positions and signaling posts just as the war started for the british in 1939. And when the Admiral Spee attacked and sank the 10.000 ton merchant ship Doric Star, it still managed to send a cry for help over the radio, so the allied moved their ships from the falklands over to the River Plate, because they believed it to be the next destination of the german heavy cruiser. They were not wrong, because after reuniting with the Altmark to offload the prisioners of their last two merchant sinkings, Admiral Graf Spee´s commander Langsdorff set his course to Montevideo, Uruguay, hoping to catch some more merchants off guard. It is to be noted as well that one of their hydroplanes was scuttled because it broke beyond repair, so they were situationally half blind . At 5:30 am of december 13th, 1939, the scouts of the Admiral Graf Spee saw two masts at starboard, which they mis-identified as convoy escorts. But sadly for Langsdorff, they were from a heavy cruiser, class Exeter. It was followed by two more light cruisers, the Ajax and the Achilles. He could have tried to run, but the mis-identification robbed him of precious time, and he decided to fight instead. Allied Commodore Henry Harwood spread his fleet in two to divide the fire from the german cruiser´s six powerful 280mm guns. In the first half hour, the Admiral Graf Spee managed to make three impacts at long range to the Exeter, which disabled its two frontal turrets, destroyed its command bridge and started several fires over the ship. The Ajax and the Achilles hurried to shorten the distances to draw fire away from the wounded Exeter. This promted Langsdorff to think that the two light cruisers were going to use their torpedos on him, so he drew a smoke curtain. That brief truce enabled the Exeter to withdraw, but then as soon as the Admiral Graf Spee emerged from the smoke, it started firing again at it, but from its rear guns. The german cruiser concentrated again its salvos on the Exeter and forced him to withdraw a second time. Then, the german ship hit its target on the Ajax light cruiser as well, and trashed its rear guns. At that moment the combat ceased and the Admiral Graf Spee retreated further north into the River Plate, while the damaged british ships remained in place, doing repairs but fully alert to prevent any attempts to flee from the germans. During the course of the battle, the germans had received more than 70 shots that killed 36 of their men and wounded more than 60, including commander Langsdorff, which had sharpnel wounds but continued to steer his ship from the bridge. Langsdorff decided to moor at Montevideo port to make repairs and evacuate the wounded. Most impacts were superficial and did only minor damage but the fuel purifying plant, necessary for the correct engine functioning was destroyed. After docking, the wounded were moved to local hospitals, the dead were buried and the few allied prisoners who were still captive at the german ship were released, but the repairs to the ship would take a couple of weeks. The british intelligence services then put themselves on a mission to convince Langsdorff to surrender by sending a series of fake messages that knew that were going to be surely intercepted by the germans. In reality, the only additional ships that could have blockaded the german heavy cruiser were the carrier Ark Royal and the battlecruiser Renown, but they were 4600 km away, which would prevent them to intervene in the short term. Langsdorff however, believed the british fake messages and discussed his options, which were to try to run the british blockade and request for asylum in Buenos Aires, or to scuttle his ship in the River Plate. He didnt have enough clean fuel to try to run for Germany. In the end, opted to scuttle it because he knew that even though Uruguay was a neutral country, it was in good terms with Great Britain and could be persuaded to let british intelligence officers into the ship given the right incentive. Uruguay had given the germans only 72 hours before they would be forced to leave the port, so they destroyed any sensitive equipment, distributed all remaining munitions througout the ship and set it to explode in the preparations to deliberately sink the ship. On December 17th, 1939, the Admiral Graf Spee sailed to deeper waters into the River Plate and the charges were detonated. The crew was picked up by an argentinian towing ship while more than 20000 people bore witness to the black smoke columns that engulfed the former flasgship of the Kriegsmarine. Two days later and after learning the ruse the british played on him, admiral Langsdorff shot himself on his hotel room in Buenos Aires. He was dressed in his ceremonial uniform and laying on top of the combat flag of the ship. The rest of the Graf Spee´s sailors were transferred to Argentina, where they remained for the rest of the war. Since the ship was scuttled on shallow waters, many parts of it have been recovered since then, like the eagle in the picture who once stood vigilant on top of the ship´s stern.