Breakout of the Admiral Graf Spee

5 August-29 September
1939: ‘The Curtain Lifts’

In his first War Directive, dated 31 August 1939, Hitler
stressed the importance of leaving ‘the responsibility for opening hostilities
unmistakably to England and France’, adding that should either country begin
operations against Germany, German forces should simply hold the frontier and
do nothing to compromise the defeat of Poland. Specifically, however, ‘The Navy
will operate against merchant shipping, with England as the focal point . . .’
In fact contingent operations had already begun in late July, placing German
naval forces in a position to respond to any hints that Britain might rally in
support of Poland and to remove key units from the remote possibility of any
enforced British blockade.

Secretly therefore, on 5 August, the German naval tanker Altmark,
commanded by Kapitän zur See K.H. Dau and loaded with stores, food and
ammunition, left Wilhelmshaven. The following day, in brilliant sunshine, she
passed through the Strait of Dover, word of which was passed to the Admiralty,
a first twitch of the curtain as it lifted upon the drama. The Altmark, a grey,
black-funnelled tanker, was not a German-registered merchant ship, instead she
flew the distinctive ensign of the Reich Service and was government owned. She
doubled the South Foreland and Dungeness, then headed west, out of the Channel
and across the North Atlantic, bound for Port Arthur on the Texan coast. Here
she was to load 9,400 tons of diesel oil, ostensibly consigned to Rotterdam,
but in truth to be held ready to operate in support of the Admiral Graf Spee.

The Panzerschiffherself was recalled from torpedo-firing
exercises for a dry-docking on the 17th. While her bottom was cleaned and
anti-fouled she was topped up with operational stores and a team of cypher
decoding specialists from the B-Dienst service joined the ship, with some
officers of the German naval reserve – men whose normal service in merchant
ships had acquainted them with British trade routes, the nature of
British-flagged shipping to be found on them and the familiarity to distinguish
rapidly the identity, type and even the name of ships the Admiral Graf Spee
would encounter.

Meanwhile, to augment this, on 19 August five U-boats sailed
from Kiel, with a further nine leaving Wilhelmshaven; they had all been
allocated ‘waiting positions’ in the North Atlantic.

Then, in the late afternoon of the 21st the Admiral Graf
Spee, under the command of Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff, slipped seawards
from Wilhelmshaven, heading north, to pass by way of the Iceland Faeroes Gap
into the vast wastes of the Western Ocean. Two more U-boats, one of which was
U-30 commanded by Kapitänleutnant zur See Fritz-Julius Lemp, and a second
fleet-tanker, the Westerwald under Fregattenkapitän Grau, followed. She was
intended to operate in support of Kapitän zur See Wennecker’s Deutschland,
which left on 24 August and headed for a station off Cape Farewell, the
southern tip of Greenland. Should any reaction emanate from London as events
east of Germany unfolded, a show of muscle along Britain’s vaunted sea frontier
might achieve a similar climbdown as had the Führer’s blandishments at Munich,
but Hitler had taken no such precautions in the events leading to the Munich
Crisis of 1938. In the operational orders issued to Langsdorff and Wennecker on
4 August it was clearly stated that: ‘The political situation makes it appear
possible that, in the event of a conflict with Poland, the Guarantor Powers
(England and France) will intervene’, and the Luftwaffe had been ordered to
take advantage of any ‘favourable opportunities to make an effective attack on
massed English naval units, especially on battleships and aircraft carriers’.

By the 25th, as the hours were counted down to the invasion
of Poland, Norddeich Radio had transmitted a warning to all German merchant
ships, alerting them to the possibility of war. The danger of British
interception of German merchantmen on the high seas was critical. Two days
later a second message followed, urging all merchant shipping to reach the
Fatherland within four days, failing which they should head for a neutral or
pro-German friendly port.

However, alarmed by intelligence, the British began seeking
assurances that no military operations were in train. In Scapa Flow, the Royal
Navy’s anchorage in the Orkney Islands, the Home Fleet was ordered to raise
steam. Under Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes the battle squadrons
slipped their moorings and headed seaward in a show of strength and
determination. Britain’s traditional first weapon of defence was already
mobilized. Hitler faltered as the possibility became a probability, postponing
his invasion; but he was unable to stay his hand for long. German forces began
their advance into Poland at dawn on the 1st September; that evening a first
British ultimatum was delivered from London. During the 2nd, as the overwhelmed
Polish forces fought valiantly, refusing to cave in, intense diplomatic
activity sought to halt Hitler. Then, on the morning of the 3rd, Great Britain
and France rallied to their Polish ally and declared war.

While Forbes was ordered to carry out a sweep in the
Iceland/Faeroe Gap in search of German merchant ships, particularly the liner
Bremen, and HMS Somali, Captain Nicholson, of the 6th Destroyer Flotilla
captured the Hannah Boge 350 miles south of Iceland, the waiting Panzerschiffs
and U-boats, by a conspicuous and swift interdiction of British merchant
shipping, might still prevent a declaration of war in support of a dying ally
amount to full-blown hostilities. But then, on the very evening of the day on
which a betrayed Neville Chamberlain had declared Britain and her empire at war
with Germany, Lemp sank the British passenger liner Athenia off Malin Head.

Hitler had expressly forbidden the sinking of passenger
liners and although Lemp was afterwards exonerated from charges of disobedience
on the grounds that he believed the Athenia to have been an Armed Merchant
Cruiser, the attack convinced the Admiralty that the Germans had embarked on
unrestricted submarine warfare. Although initially far from perfect, merchant
shipping was immediately organized in convoy, as much against the firepower of
surface raiders, Hilfskruizers (fast cargo liners heavily armed as commerce
raiders) and Panzerschiffs, as against the torpedo of the U-boat. But convoy
could only be extended across the North Atlantic and south to Gibraltar and
Sierra Leone. British merchantmen, owned by hundreds of private shipping
companies, traded worldwide. For a sea officer of the Third Reich determined to
interdict the enemy’s supply routes, there were opportunities galore not in the
North, but in the South Atlantic.

In contact – but not in company – with Dau, Langsdorff
headed south for his ‘waiting station’ off Pernambuco (modern Recife) on the
shoulder of Brazil but adjacent to the so-called Atlantic Narrows.

Grossadmiral Raeder had prepared his small but modern navy
for a war on trade to the best of his ability and in spite of the shortfall in
time the Führer had assured him he would have. He knew, as Stephen Roskill
pointed out after the war, that: ‘The effectiveness of surface raiders depends
not only on the actual sinkings and captures which they accomplish but on the
disorganization to the flow of shipping which their presence, or even the
suspicion of their presence, generates’. Raeder’s first principle was, therefore,
concealment; his second deception. Langsdorff and Wennecker were expected to
take advantage of the vast areas of open ocean uncrossed by the traditional
trade routes and far beyond the reach of air reconnaissance. It would be in
such wild spots that the Panzerschiffs would rendezvous with their supply
tankers. For the Admiral Graf Spee, a cruising ground in the South Atlantic had
been chosen. Here two major British supply routes offered alternative targets.
The route from the Rio de la Plata, much favoured by fast, frozen meat-carrying
ships, would prove one area rich in pickings. The other, to and from the Cape
of Good Hope, not only exposed the traffic to Cape Town, but also some services
from Australia and India which, by taking in East African ports, favoured the
Cape route rather than the transit of the Suez Canal. Not only did these twin
major arteries of British imperial trade allow Langsdorff a choice of targets,
but they could be struck anywhere along their attenuated lengths. He was to
avoid their concentrated choke-points, for at such foci strongest naval
protection would most likely be found. But both routes bore a mass of shipping,
from the fast reefers, mentioned earlier, to the equally fast passenger and
mail liners, cargo liners with valuable ladings of outward general cargo and
homeward loads of produce from all over the world including tanks of Tung and
palm oils, latex and tallow. There were also the heavily burdened tramp ships
with their homogenous bulk cargoes of coal, steel, sugar, wheat, iron and
manganese ore, loads of flax and rubber, their deck-cargoes of flammable
esparto grass and timber. Nor did these ships trade directly between Great
Britain and her partners, but provided shipping services to other nations.
Disruption of these would have wider political implications detrimental to
invisible earnings for the British economy. Moreover, to throw any pursuit off
his trail, Langsdorff could disappear into the Southern Ocean and double either
of the great capes, to reappear in the Pacific or the Indian Oceans, or to
descend on the British and South African whaling fleet in the waters south of
the Falklands. As his operational orders summed up: ‘The enemy is not in a
position to carry his complete import requirements in escorted convoys.
Independent ships can therefore be expected.’

Although specifically ordered to obey the Hague Convention
and respect the Prize Regulations applied to cruiser warfare against unarmed
civilian merchantmen, Langsdorff was to strike and withdraw, to keep the enemy
guessing, to disguise his ship by means of wood, canvas and paint. The hoisting
of neutral naval ensigns as they approached a victim was approved under
international law, provided the belligerent ensign was run up prior to fire
being opened. Above all, Langsdorff was to avoid any contact with British naval
forces. If these should be encountered by accident and ‘even if inferior,
are only to be engaged if it should further the principal task (i.e. war on merchant shipping)’. This, Langsdorff was to discover, was not merely more difficult than the staff officers in the Seekriegsleitung supposed when drafting his instructions, but would prove the very crux of the matter and the cause of his undoing.

His master, Erich Raeder, sensed this, and presciently wrote a reflection on the situation on 3 September, the very day that war broke out. Of his surface forces, the Grossadmiral said that they could ‘do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly . . .’ Specifically the achievements of the Deutschland and the Admiral Graf Spee, ‘if skilfully used, should be able to carry out cruiser warfare on the high seas for some time’. He added, just before he asked Korvettenkapitän Heinz Assman to countersign the document: ‘The Panzerschiffs, however, cannot be decisive in the war…’

Despite – or perhaps because of – these misgivings, Raeder
had given his commanders the greatest possible latitude, allowing them the
untrammelled judgement of the man-on-the-spot. Moreover, by way of
encouragement, provided ‘operational possibilities were exhausted’ they might,
in extremis, run into a neutral port where, however, they must ‘without fail [.
. .] ensure that on no account the ship falls into enemy hands’. Having held
out the carrot, Raeder could not conceal the stick: ‘I shall act without mercy
against any commander who compromises the honour of the Flag and is found
lacking in that energy which alone can bring success and achieve a position of
respect for the Kriegsmarine. Rather death with honour than strike the Flag!’

Langsdorff’s escape undetected into the Atlantic was a model
of careful navigational passage-planning, hugging the Norwegian coast as though
on an exercise, taking a wide sweep north of Fair Isle and the Shetlands and
passing through areas where shipping might be encountered during the hours of
darkness. In this he was fortuitously assisted by a suspension on the 21st of
the North Sea air patrols which had been a feature of British naval exercises
during August. On the 23rd the Admiral Graf Spee was north-west of Bergen, she
then slowed down until, on the 24th off Stokksnes, Iceland, she increased speed
and swung south and west. Four days later, east of Cape Race, Newfoundland, she
was heading due south, to meet the Altmark. Securing to a line trailed astern
of the tanker, they passed a hose and topped up with fuel. Some unwanted
material was disposed of and two 20mm guns were transferred to the tanker for
her own defence. The two ships then proceeded south in company, sing-songs
being organized to raise morale so that, by Sunday, 3 September, the Admiral
Graf Spee was north-west of the Cape Verde Islands, adjusting her speed and
making small and local alterations of course to avoid being seen by any
merchantmen.

The first positive news of war came from a B-Dienst
intercept of the BBC’s broadcast from Rugby. Langsdorff had forbidden his
officers to listen to the BBC but the German signal notifying them of war
arrived within the hour. Soon afterwards came an instruction not to attack
French shipping – by which his ship would assuredly be reported – in an attempt
by Hitler to divide the Western Allies. B-Dienst intercepts also informed him
that British naval precautions were in hand, convoy arrangements were already
made and naval forces were being built up at Freetown, Sierra Leone, the
southern rendezvous point for North Atlantic convoys. Finally, further
disheartening news came in the wake of Lemp’s precipitate action in sinking the
Athenia: the immediate organization of convoy, but the otherwise quiescent
attitude of the British and French persuaded Berlin – still trying to avoid a
hot war with Britain – that commerce raiding was ‘inadvisable at present’.
Maintaining radio silence the Admiral Graf Spee was to move father south, to
‘hold back and withdraw . . .’

Three days later, midway between Freetown and Trinidad, she
altered course south-eastwards to her new ‘waiting position’, a vast scalene
triangle with its dart-like and shallowest angle pointing at the Cape of Good
Hope many miles away, but lying between the two major trade routes in the South
Atlantic and where she and the Altmark arrived on 10 September. The two ships
ran under reduced engine revolutions, biding the outcome of events upon the
plains of Northern Europe. On 11 September Langsdorff secured his isolation by
flying-off his Arado 196 floatplane to provide notice of any shipping and, with
boats ferrying stores between the two ships, began a replenishment from the
Altmark. While this was in hand the Arado sighted two vessels one of which they
thought to be a British cruiser. To their horror it appeared to alter course
and to head for the position of the Admiral Graf Spee and her consort. Hoping
his aeroplane had gone unobserved but maintaining radio silence, the Arado
pilot banked steeply and headed for home.

Immediately on receipt of this intelligence, Langsdorff
aborted the replenishment and, recovering his boats and the Arado, sped away;
Dau took Altmark on a diverging course. The alarm had been caused by HMS
Cumberland, on her way from Plymouth to reinforce Commodore Henry Harwood’s
cruiser squadron then off Rio de Janeiro. The abrupt and purposeful alteration
of course had been merely a routine change from zig to zag as the Cumberland
carried out standard anti-submarine procedure along a median rhumb-line.
Langsdorff had no such comforting assurance, however, and his B-Dienst people
were put to the task of diligent interception of British naval signals to
discover whether or not their presence was known to the enemy.

Meanwhile, far away Hitler and the Oberkommando der
Wehrmacht vacillated over what to do next. On the 23rd the Führer, Keitel,
Raeder and their respective staffs met at Zoppot to consider the situation
vis-à-vis the Western Allies. Insofar as the Deutschland and the Admiral Graf
Spee were concerned it was appreciated that, despite the support of the
Westerwald and Altmark, their supplies were finite and they could not be asked
to remain undetected indefinitely. There was also the awkward question of
morale. Against this the second wave of U-boats would shortly be sent to sea
and therefore an intensification of ‘war against merchant shipping’ should be
initiated ‘at the beginning of October’. To this the Führer agreed.
Accordingly, on 26 September, the Deutschland and the Admiral Graf Spee were
ordered to operate against the British. French shipping – of less importance
both to France and to the German war-effort – remained inviolate.

With the mask off, Langsdorff considered his position,
helped by appreciations from Berlin and his B-Dienst specialists on board. He
was aware that, on the 2nd October a Pan-American Neutrality Zone would be
declared by the American government, warning the European belligerents that no
attacks on shipping within 300 miles of the coast of the Americas would be
tolerated. He also knew that Mussolini’s Italy would not, as she was bound to
by treaty, come into the war at the side of her fellow Fascists, which meant
that the British still had unrestricted access to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean
Sea. He also learned of the dispositions of the British Royal Navy.

The Royal Navy was not far away. Prior to the outbreak of
war, during an increase in international tension between the European powers,
the Royal Navy had mobilized. As noted the Home Fleet was on a war footing
prior to 3 September and, during extensive exercises in August, the Reserve
Fleet had also been mobilized. Immediately on the outbreak of war, in addition
to instituting convoy for all merchant ships on the home coasts and Western
Approaches, the British declared a blockade of Germany. Its first acts were to
intercept homeward-bound German merchantmen, hence Nicholson’s capture of the
Hannah Boge off Iceland and Forbes’s unsuccessful sweep in search of the
Nord-Deutscher Lloyd liner Bremen, which was already safe in Murmansk and from
there by way of neutral Norwegian waters reached the Fatherland. Despite
errors, such as that of the British submarine Triton sinking the British
submarine Oxley, the blockade was effective, if only in that German ships
preferred to scuttle themselves to avoid capture. Most notably, however, the
liner Cap Norte, ‘which was carrying reservists from South America to Germany
was successfully seized’, but not until 9 October (she afterwards became the troopship
Empire Trooper). Farther afield, off the Rio de la Plata and in the first two
days of the war, the British cruiser Ajax, flying the broad pendant of
Commodore Henry Harwood, intercepted the German freighters Carl Fritzen and the
Olinda. Off the West African coast the Neptune caught the Inn. Neither Harwood
nor Vice Admiral D’Oyly Lyon, the Commander-in-Chief, South Atlantic, nor their
masters in the Admiralty in London had an inkling that a powerful German raider
lay in the offing between.