Letters
The strategy of Graf Spee
Sir: According to your 'Argies, go home' (10 April), Admiral Count Spee, the Com- mander of the German East Asian Squadron in November 1914, while ap- proaching the Falkland Islands after his vic- tory over Admiral Cradock's squadron off Coronet, entertained the vision of striking 'a magnificent blow for German morale by seizing a remote chunk of British territory and then repopulating it with German set- tlers drawn from the ranches of Chile and Argentina'.
Couldn't sound more exciting in the pre- sent atmosphere. As usual, however, the truth is much more prosaic. Count Spec assembled the captains of his squadron two days before the battle of the Falkland Islands (8 December 1914) and informed them that he proposed to attack the islands in order to destroy the wireless station and coal stocks, and capture the Governor in, retaliation for the British imprisonment of the (German) Governor of Samoa.
The 'wireless station' would have been the 'Cable and Wireless' of today, and the then Governor of the Falkland Islands on board His (German) Majesty's Ship Schar- nhorst would have made for an adven- turous touch which even Mr Rex Hunt might have considered worth sampling for a day or two.
Thilo Bode
London Bureau, Suddeutsche Zeitung, London SW15
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