Buenos Aires (“nice breezes”), the capital of Argentina, was a large European-looking city one-hundred-odd miles across the Río de la Plata (“silver river”) fromMontevideo, Uruguay. Both cities were a very long way from the battles raging at Guadalcanal (8,500 miles), Stalingrad (8,200 miles), and the Kasserine Pass (6,500 miles); and from Berlin (7,400 miles), London (6,900 miles), and Washington, D.C. (5,200 miles).
By comparison, it was only 577 miles from London to Berlin, 829 miles from Berlin to Stalingrad, and 1,100 miles from Berlin to the Kasserine Pass.
The war had actually come to Uruguay and Argentina in December 1939. The pocket battleship Graf Spee—the pride of the German navy, named after a World War I naval hero, Admiral Graf (Count) Maximilian von Spee—had sailed from Wilhelmshafen on 21 August 1939, with orders to head for the South Atlantic and there to interdict Allied shipping heading for England.
Wool, leather, and—especially—meat and other foodstuffs from Argentina and Uruguay had been of enormous value to the British in World War I, and the Germans were determined to shut off that supply in this war. The British were equally determined to keep the supply lines open, and dispatched the cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Achilles, and HMS Exeter to find the Graf Spee and sink her.
They found the German ship off the coast of Uruguay, close enough to shore so that the roar and concussion of the naval cannon caused the sea lions on the rocks near Punta del Este to leap to their deaths.
The Graf Spee suffered serious damage but managed to limp up the River Plate into the harbor at Montevideo. International law required that a warship of a belligerent power could claim the protection of a neutral harbor for only seventy-two hours.
The captain of the Graf Spee, Hans Langsdorff, one of the most respected officers in the German navy, radioed Berlin explaining his plight: There was serious damage to the Graf Spee that could not be repaired in the time he had. He had lost more than one hundred sailors in the battle off Punta del Este, and had as many more seriously wounded crewmen who required immediate treatment not available on the Graf Spee, whose onboard hospital had been destroyed in the sea battle.
And there were three British cruisers waiting for him in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Under these circumstances, he could see no alternative to letting the seventy-two hours run out, then allow himself and his ship to be interned by the Uruguayan government.
