By Orlando Oramas Leon
Chief correspondent of Prensa Latina in Uruguay
The remains of the Graf Spee remained buried for 67 years, including her insignia: a bronze eagle with a swastika in its talons, two meters long and weighing 400 kilograms.
The fate of this symbol of fascism has been a matter of controversy, most recently sparked by a proposal by President Luis Lacalle Pou to turn the eagle into a dove.
But this initiative was so rejected that the President had to back down.
It is about the saga of the Nazi battleship that sailed the waters of the La Plata Estuary and whose crew left descendants on both banks of the La Plata River, little to imagine that this story would resonate decades later in Uruguay would find.
THE STORY OF GRAF SPEE
The Admiral Graf Spee was launched on June 30, 1934, when Adolf Hitler was in power and in 1918 a gun ban came into effect for defeated Germany, a restriction by which her ships could not exceed 10,000 tons.
German naval engineers introduced innovations in design with the Deutschland class, whose ships were considered “pocket battleships”.
The Spee joined the fleet in 1936 and two years later Hans Langsdorff took command with the captaincy he obtained in support of the Franco dictatorship in Spain.
In August 1939 he sailed towards the South Atlantic with 44 officers and 1,500 seamen. It had the task of sinking enemy merchant ships in the event of hostilities, which the Third Reich was not long in coming.
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Hitler and the Graf Spee was given the green light to attack. In a matter of weeks, nine British merchant ships sank to the bottom, including the Doric Star and the Tairoa, which managed to radio their position before submerging. The British Army then began the hunt.
Langsdorff already knew that there were at least 15 British Crown warships between the Falkland Islands, the Atlantic coast from the Río de la Plata to Rio de Janeiro and South Africa. Including the three ships he would face at the mouth of the world’s widest river: the cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter.
The Battle of the Río de la Plata was one of the most famous of World War II. The Ajayax and the Exeter took heavy hits from the German guns, inflicting 72 casualties on the British detachment.
However, the German battleship lost 36 crew members and another 60 were wounded. Its captain decided to enter the port of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, a country that declared itself neutral in the conflict.
From then on, the fate of the Spee was closely linked to the active intervention of the British Ambassador Eugen Millintong-Drake. Under British pressure, President Alfredo Baldomir’s government issued a 72-hour ultimatum to the German ship, whose death in the naval battle was buried in that capital’s northern cemetery.
With no other choice, Captain Langsdorff decided to drop anchor and head for the port of Buenos Aires, knowing that the British fleet would be waiting for him en route. In addition, the ship Cumberland was already in the estuary, and the battleship Renown and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal were very close, while the Dunster Grange approached at full speed.
But the German had a card up his sleeve. Halfway up the Langsdorff River, his crew boarded the German freighter Tacoma, bound for the Argentine capital. Shortly thereafter, the Graf Spee exploded and the detonation could be seen from Montevideo.
On December 20, 1939, Hans Langsdorff committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in his room in an Argentine Navy barracks. He died when the last Graf Spee flag was flying.
Crew members of this ship lived and had descendants in Argentina and Uruguay, whose insignia, the eagle with the swastika in its talons, was rescued in 2006 by a team led by diver Héctor Bado and businessman Alfredo and Felipe Etchegaray, who claim to enter Uruguay the right to sell this and other remains of the battleship.
THE PIGEON THAT WAS NOT
At the center of the conflict is the eagle as a Nazi symbol and the concern that it could fall into the hands of admirers of the Third Reich for their cult. Germany agrees that the sculpture goes to a museum, but President Luis Lacalle Pou went further.
The ruler announced his decision to melt down the historical piece and turn it into a dove as a message of peace. He unveiled it alongside Uruguayan sculptor Pablo Archugarry, who decided to volunteer for the initiative.
“Three years ago it occurred to us that this symbol of violence could virtuously transform itself into a symbol of unity and peace, such as a dove,” Lacalle Pou said at the time.
The ruler made the proposal a day after missing the ceremony at which the Uruguayan state acknowledged its responsibility for carrying out crimes against humanity, such as the murder of the so-called Muchachas de Abril, riddled with bullets by the dictatorship became.
Thousands of citizens in the capital and the metropolitan region also lacked access to drinking water.
The reactions to the initiative of the head of state were not long in coming.
“At the worst point of the water crisis and the day after his embarrassing absence from the acknowledgment of the victims of state terrorism, Luis Lacalle Pou lets us talk about the Graf Spee eagle,” wrote the representative of the Breite Front. Pablo Ferreri.
Between improvisation and smoke. With the eagle and the dove, we distract ourselves from important issues,” added the former Undersecretary of State for Economy and current coordinator of the Montevideo Municipality Investment Commission.
But beyond the political deductions, historian Alejandro Giménez summed up the opinion of many on the subject.
“There are icons, and while they hurt us, it’s good that they remain so that future generations will be motivated.” Nazi ideology is forbidden, but there are elements that can sometimes appear. “More than censoring them, you have to show them to be able to talk about them,” he said.
For Giménez, “history must always be preserved and shown” in order to be able to tell the new generations why the events took place and to stimulate thought.”
Lacalle Pou’s idea didn’t survive 72 hours. “I think there is an overwhelming majority that doesn’t share that decision and if you want to make peace, you have to first create unity, which obviously didn’t create it,” he admitted.
However, the chaos is not over yet. It remains to be decided what to do with the historical sculpture that the Avatar brought to Uruguay. The Graf Spee’s eagle has returned to a naval shed for the time being, where it will remain hidden even from the eyes of historians.
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