In late 1939 the German pocket battleship Graf Spee engaged three ships of the Royal Navy off the coast of Uruguay in the Battle of the River Plate. The German ship was damaged in the exchange, and could not have been repaired in time, so its commander decided to scuttle it in relatively shallow water in the river near Montevideo.
The hulk of the battleship has been considered a danger to navigation in the decades since, and attempts to raise the pieces of the wreck were eventually undertaken. As part of the process, the gigantic bronze eagle from the stern of the ship was brought up from the depths.
The eagle is a masterpiece of National Socialist iconography, and perches upon a huge graven swastika. After it was brought to light, the Uruguayan government faced the problem of what to do with the artifact. Obviously, the public display of the fearsome swastika could not be permitted. A tentative plan was decided upon: the eagle would be melted down and recast as a dove of peace. However, there has since been significant opposition to that plan by those who see the eagle as an important historical artifact, and want it to be preserved in a museum. As a result, it has been granted a reprieve, at least for the time being.
When I went looking for a photo of the eagle to accompany this post, I discovered that most photos had the swastika covered or cropped out of the picture. It seems that our politically correct masters in the 21st century share the Nazis’ view of the swastika — the Hakenkreuz — as a symbol imbued with potent, mystical powers. To gaze upon it is dangerous, for it may turn the mind of the unwitting viewer away from the light and into the realm of darkness. Under no circumstances should ordinary citizens be allowed to see it!
Below are two recent articles about the eagle of the Graf Spee, both translated by Gary Fouse. The first is from Uruguay:
“Conserve the eagle of the Graf Spee in a museum”
Signatures collected to avoid the Graf Spee eagle being transformed into a dove: More than 17,800
June 17, 2023
Montevideo (Uypress) — The announcement by President Luis Lacalle Pou on the conversion of the Graf Spee eagle into a dove of peace generated mixed opinions and provoked a group of citizens to collect signatures on the Change.org platform under the title: “Conserve the Graf Spee eagle in a museum,” which has surpassed 17,806 signatures.
“We consider the transformation of the Graf Spee eagle to be inappropriate. The eagle should be conserved in a museum. History should be remembered in order not to commit the same errors. New generations are prone to forgetfulness and recidivism. Remembering the bad, keeping in mind the symbols that represent them is an enormous responsibility for society, both locally and globally,” the petition states on Change.org.
The publication already has more than 17,806 people who have signed, and among the comments, appears one from the actor and comedian Diego Delgrossi. “It is part of the history of Uruguay and a stage in world history. We do not have an excess of material from that period. We do a disservice to history.”
The second article is from the Berliner Zeitung in Germany:
Uruguay: The fight over the Imperial Eagle of the Graf Spee continues
The 350-kilo bronze eagle from the stern of a German warship was actually to be melted down. Now, apparently, there will be no dove.
June 19, 2023
The stern eagle of the German ironclad ship Admiral Graf Spee from the Second World War will now apparently not be transformed into a dove of peace. On Friday, Uruguay’s president, Luis Lacalle Pou announced the 2.80 meter-high and 350-kilogram bronze eagle with a swastika and oak leaf wreath would be melted down. But now he has decided differently. On Sunday, he announced to the press that there is no agreement on the handling of the eagle.
After a years-long legal battle, a court had recently awarded the eagle to Uruguay. Now the Uruguayan artist Pablo Achugarry was to prepare a dove that would have served as a mold for the transformation. A symbol of violence would become a symbol of peace, so the idea went. However, there was much opposition to the plan to melt down the historic eagle from the public and also Lacalle’s own party. “I still believe it is a good idea. But a president must listen and represent,” Pou said, according to the daily newspaper El Pais.
Bronze eagle of Admiral Graf Spee recovered in 2006
At the start of World War 2, the Admiral Graf Spee was sailing in the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic and had sunk nine British merchant ships there. The Royal Navy was hot on her heels and was finally able to catch her off the coast of Uruguay. Somewhere off the sea resort of Punta del Este in December 1939 came the first great sea battle of the Second World War between the Graf Spee on the one side, and the heavy cruiser Exeter as well as the light cruisers Ajax and Achilles on the other side.
Heavily damaged, the Graf Spee fled to the port of Montevideo, but was given insufficient time there to repair the ship. Captain Hans Langsdorff had the ironclad ship scuttled in River Plate off Montevideo and shot himself that same evening. The crew crossed over into then-still-neutral Argentina while some men remained in Uruguay. Plans to raise the wreck have been postponed over the decades in view of the difficulties. According to media reports, the Imperial Eagle was recovered in 2006.
Perhaps they could send it to Ukraine. Lots of admirers there, and it would be the perfect backdrop in one of the ukrainian fuhrer’s numerous mansions for snorting lines of coke from.
All hilarity aside, it is a historical artifact from a participant in a significant naval battle. It is sacrilegious in the extreme to destroy it, even if one disagrees with the ideology that created it. And this desire to destroy nazi symbols as if they are the most evil regime ever to exist because only they killed jews is typical of someone who is historically illiterate.
Why the DNC would happily display it along side its altar to Stalin.
When I was a child, Col. Custer was a hero, if a dead one.
What is rarely mentioned concerning Custer’s Last Stand is that the army was equipped with obsolete (in the mounted infantry concept) single shot Sharps rifles, whilst the Indians had repeating rifles. Thus the result was inevitable.
Graf Spee was a long range commerce raider built solely to strangle Britain’s extensive merchant fleet, a task at which it proved very successful. Politically, it also announced to the world that Germany was back!
German (Nazi) Socialism was a religion, a replacement for the despised Christianity and the bent cross was one of its icons. Nazism split the world into winners and losers, and Christians were losers and to be exploited mercilessly Jews were dangerous predators to be exterminated, dangerous because they were clever and cunning and tribal and in the distorted Nazi ideology, very threatening.
The Nazi Party did not surrender, it hid itself in South America, and morphed into a very successful Red/green supposedly centre left but authoritarian (Social Democrat) party; an iron fist hidden in multiple layers of touchy-feely camouflaged armour.
Yes, they still rule Germany, and thus the EU, they are also the current driving force behind the Democrat party, and are still waging war in the Ukraine.
The Swastika is reviled, but it carries a lasting message: Nazism works because it is inclusive in a way that communist socialism is not. The Nazis gave the people bread, the communists used bread a a weapon. Nazism (and the swastika) made German socialists feel special….
The Battle of the Little Bighorn has fascinated me since I was a child. And the reputation of Custer has gone 180 degrees since that time as well, although I think the pendulum is starting to swing back just a little in that regard.
I have been to the battlefield numerous times and I live not far from Ft Lincoln where he and the 7th Cavalry were stationed prior to riding out to the valley of the Little Bighorn.
The Springfield carbine in 45-70 was a very potent rifle for it’s era, and well suited for the cavalry who had the new Colt SAA revolvers for mounted fighting as well as their sabres, and the carbine was for long range accurate fire from dismounted position and was powerful enough to kill the horses of their opponents. The major problem was its cartridge case which was made from very soft brass or copper and the extractor would tear through it if fouled from heavy firing, leaving a difficult to manually extract case stuck in the chamber.
Custer had been called away to Washington to testify in a corruption case and this left Major Reno in charge of getting the unit ready for the campaign, for which he dropped the ball. Reno, and Captain Benteen both despised Custer, and this would play a major role in the loss of the battle when they refused to support him as directed, in Benteen’s case ignoring a direct order, and for Reno, a dereliction of duty and drunkenness on the field of battle. Both Reno and Benteen and the majority of their commands survived the battle after being surrounded and besieged for several days, and to me this demonstrates that Custer had sufficient soldiers for the plan of battle but failure to support meant that he was able to be defeated in detail when Reno prematurely broke of the attack and Benteen disobeyed a direct order to proceed directly to the battlefield with the extra packs of ammunition, choosing instead to move at a relaxed pace and then staying with Reno’s men with his command instead of proceeding to Custer’s command as ordered to.
The issues with the rifles, and the lack of sabres which had been left behind to reduce noise and weight on the march did not become a problem until the battle had already broken down into individual skirmishes where the stuck cartridges and lack of effective hand to hand weapons became of life and death importance.
I don’t know if the results were inevitable; as in all things chance and random twists of fate played a huge role in the eventual outcome. If his soldiers hadn’t came across some indians snooping around packs of supplies which they had been sent back to recover after the approach march, causing Custer to move up his attack to the 26th instead of the 25th, he would have only been one day from the arrival of Gen Sheridan with substantial reinforcments. If Bloody Knife hadn’t had his brains spattered all over the face of Maj Reno by a lucky shot, causing him to panic and order a botched and unnecessary withdrawal, if Custer had taken along the sabres or perhaps put Benteen’s company under his direct command and one of his loyal officers’ companies in Benteen’s scouting role… If, if, if…
Such details history turns upon.
The quirks of history that left the Graf Spee under the waters of the River Platte are almost as unbelievable and improbable. And it could have just as easily gone the other way with it’s escape at any number of points.
The impulse in the globalist era is to automatically reject any kind of nationalism and especially ethnic nationalism. I don’t believe that the jury is out on whether or not that’s a bad thing. If Schicklgruber had stopped with the annexation of Czechoslovakia, he would’ve gone down in history as the greatest chancellor since Bismarck. Most germans and indeed most europeans weren’t sorry to see him dispossess the jews who were universally seen as a parasitic class, and the dirty secret of history is that many governments throughout europe and even America helped or were at least indifferent to the confiscation of jewish assets and the expulsion thereof. But in the aftermath of WW2 only the germans take the blame because in my opinion it’s useful in completely discrediting ethnic nationalism. I believe it will take at least several hundred years before enough time will have passed to make any informed judgment about the value and desirability or lack thereof of the relative merits of nationalism ethnic or otherwise, socialism, crony capitalism, and multiculti. In the meantime, destroying historical artifacts just because they happen to represent a controversial era or individual or ideology which is no longer in vogue is a crime against future generations.
And I apologize for the LN length post.
Custer was an idiot who got his command smashed not due to its equipment but by employing tactics which only an egomaniac might consider. As the advanced guard of one column, Custer ignored that an entire column had, unknown to him, been smashed by the united Indians numbering some 10,000.
Yet he took his 600 men and divided them into THREE groups and decided to attack. Custer’s command was cut off, encircled and cut to pieces. RENO and Benteen had the good sense to run like hell for high ground and dig in. They survived, Custer choose to attack. We all know what happened to Austin’s hero. There had been many fights and the repeating rifle did not decide them, Benteen and Rebo’s survival prove that point.
Some years back, I was at an airshow at Duxford (former RAF/USAAF base near Cambridge). Afterwards I went for a drink and food in the pub near the station before returning to London, and got into conversation with a couple of Germans, one of whom had flown F-104 Starfighters with the West German Luftwaffe.
I asked why they thought the Nazis had made so little use of their capital ships, especially in the North Atlantic. They said that Hitler never trusted the Navy as it had its own traditions, predating Nazism, whereas he regarded the Luftwaffe, and the U-Boats, as his creation.
I’m not convinced about your comparison of Nazism and Communism. Communism, at least in theory, is internationalist, so should be inclusive; the dissident poet Yevtushenko, in “Babi-Yar”, got away with identifying with the persecuted Jews, although after the premiere of Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony (1962), which quotes Yevtushenko’s poem, the composer was compelled to add lines praising the Soviets’ role in defeating fascism.
Nazism is not inclusive; it excludes those who are not of the “Volk”, the results of which you, as a Jew, must understand in a way I can barely apprehend.
I don’t know why this swastika scares them so much. I have a book with knitting patterns for Russian folk mittens for winter – almost all with one or another swastika.
Russia has also adopted a number of idiotic laws. Some time ago, there was Kafkaesque absurdity when a pensioner was fined for displaying a swastika because he posted a photo from the 1945 Victory Parade with the downed German banners.
My Dad, a steward on a merchant ship (he joined the RAF later) and some of his crewmates were in a bar in Montevideo; so were some from the “Graf Spee”. Voices were raised, insults hurled, and a fight broke out; the police put them all in prison overnight.
I’m quite proud to be the son of a jailbird!
I think the eagle should be preserved.
Every country has memorials dedicated to its sons who died in war.
Only we Germans internationalize our memorials.
The memorial in Laboe was dedicated to the sons who died at sea. Now it is dedicated to all seafarers who died at sea.
I remember a quote by General de Gaulle: If you want to know the character of a country, just look at how it treats its soldier after a lost war.