![]() ![]() The Canadian town of Ajax in 2007 dedicated a street to him - "Langsdorff Drive" - and the Royal Navy, which was also spared casualties by his actions, will honor him in a memorial dinner at its base in Portsmouth in December. ![]() "So I hope one will find a way for him to be honored publicly as well."įeted abroad, Langsdorff is largely ignored in Germany even though he would appear to embody the modern army's stated ethos of encouraging personal responsibility and rejecting the blind obedience of the Nazi era. "The affection, gratitude and unwavering trust of many former Spee soldiers in many encounters over the years have made me proud and defined my joy at the rescue of the many men by my father," Nedden said. They were interned in Argentina during the war and many settled there afterwards.Įvery year, hundreds of their descendants gather at his grave in Argentina's National Cemetery in Buenos Aires to commemorate him. ![]() He was lying on Graf Spee's battle ensign.Įighty years on, his daughter, Inge Nedden, 82, is calling on Germany to show greater public recognition of his act that saved a crew of more than 1,000 men from almost certain death. Three days later, he committed suicide, shooting himself in the head in a Buenos Aires hotel room. Her commander, Captain Hans Langsdorff, believed he was facing impossible odds against a superior force beyond the horizon and defied Hitler's order to fight to the last man. The proud ship, which had only four days earlier damaged three British warships in the first sea battle of World War II before steaming to neutral Montevideo for repairs, had scuttled herself in shallow waters. Jets of flame burst from her and a plume of smoke billowed into the reddening evening sky. On Dec.17, 1939, the battle-damaged German warship Admiral Graf Spee (pictured above) limped out of the port of Montevideo into the estuary of the River Plate for what was expected to be a decisive clash with Britain's Royal Navy.īut suddenly, to the amazement of the thousands of spectators watching from the roofs and seafront of the Uruguayan capital, she was rocked by a series of explosions. ![]()
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