Hans Langsdorff
Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff (born March 20, 1894 in Bergen on Rügen , † December 20, 1939 in Buenos Aires ) was a German naval officer, most recently captain at sea and in command of the ironclad Admiral Graf Spee .
Life
Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff, son of an appellate judge, passed his matriculation examination at the municipal high school and high school on Klosterstrasse in February 1912 in Düsseldorf. In Crew 12 , he joined the Imperial Navy as a midshipman . After completing his training, he served as a lieutenant in the First World War . On SMS Großer Kurfürst he took part in the Skagerrak Battle . From 1917 he was in command of minesweepers in the North Sea. He was awarded the Iron Crosses of both classes and the Hamburg Hanseatic Cross.
After the end of the war he was accepted into the Reichsmarine . Initially used for mine clearance, he was promoted to lieutenant captain on April 1, 1922 . At that time he was chief of the 3rd torpedo boat semi-flotilla. Langsdorff then worked in the Reichswehr Ministry until 1935 . From 1927 to 1929 he completed the admiralty staff training. As a frigate captain (from September 1, 1935) Langsdorff I was admiral staff officer first with the commander of the reconnaissance forces, then with the naval command. From 1936 to 1938 he was 1st Admiral Staff Officer of Rear Admiral Hermann Boehm , the commander of the naval forces deployed in the Spanish Civil War. On October 1, 1938, he became the commander of the ironclad Admiral Graf Spee with the rank of sea captain.
Langsdorff became famous at the beginning of the Second World War . His ship, which was en route to the South Atlantic at the outbreak of war, sank nine English merchant ships in a cruiser war lasting several weeks before it was badly damaged in a naval battle against three English cruisers in front of the Río de la Plata on December 13, 1939 and sought refuge in the port of Montevideo . Langsdorff was also slightly wounded in this battle. Since neutral Uruguay did not allow the ship to be repaired, Langsdorff agreed by telegram with the Navy High Command that the Admiral Graf Spee should attempt a violent breakthrough to Buenos Aires with the remaining ammunition and should be destroyed if this attempt failed. However, since Langsdorff considered an attempt to escape hopeless, he ordered the Admiral Graf Spee to be sunk in the mouth of the Río de la Plata by his own crew on December 17, 1939 , so that the state-of-the-art technical equipment, in particular the German maritime clock radar , could not fall into the hands of the Royal Navy . The entire crew of the ship was evacuated and interned in Buenos Aires .
That he avoided the naval battle could have been seen as treason or cowardice. As he adhered to a higher concept of honor , he shot himself on December 20th, lying on the flag of his ship, in his quarters. With great sympathy from the local population, he was buried with military honors by his crew in the German cemetery in Buenos Aires. Many British sailors, whose lives he had spared, also gave him the last escort . The remuneration of the widow who remained in the German Reich was reduced.
The archaeologist and SS leader Alexander Langsdorff is a cousin of Hans Langsdorff.
personality
Langsdorff's adjutant Kurt Diggins characterized him: "He had a humanistic education that one could not expect from an officer in the Imperial Navy." Langsdorff was particularly valued for his humanity. The trade war he waged did not cost a single human life, as he adhered precisely to the international price order , according to which an enemy merchant ship could only be sunk when the entire crew had been brought to safety.
Contrary to the expectations of the German naval command and all traditions of the Navy, he decided not to let his ship go down in a hopeless final battle, which he felt was pointless, and thus saved the lives of his entire crew. The saying he has handed down: “I won't let a superior force shoot us out there at sea. I prefer 1000 young living people to 1000 dead heroes ”, characterizes a human attitude that was in direct contrast to the behavior of the namesake of his ship - Maximilian von Spee - 25 years earlier in the sea battle on the Falkland Islands . Grand Admiral Erich Raeder was a sponsor of Langsdorff. He describes the operational starting position at the beginning of the war and the possible objectives in the war diary of the naval war command :
“As far as the Navy is concerned, in the autumn of 1939 it was of course by no means sufficiently armed for the great battle with England. ... The surface forces are (but) so few in number and strength compared to the English fleet that - provided they are fully committed - they can only show that they know how to die with decency and are thus willing to create the basis for a later reconstruction are."
Two days after Langsdorff's suicide, he issued the order: "The German warship will fight with the full commitment of its crew to the last shell, until it wins or goes down with a waving flag."
Posthumous honors
In a telegram to the Foreign Office in Berlin on December 22, 1939, the German envoy in Uruguay, Otto Langmann , protested against German propaganda reports about alleged "bad behavior by English seamen at the graves of Graf Spee men" and referred to reports in the South American one Press about the "chivalry of the angry English seafarers [...] with appreciation of the good behavior of the Spee crew towards them" as well as that the "attitude of the South American public towards the dead of the Spee [...] appreciative and compassionate" be.
Numerous crew members of the Admiral Graf Spee stayed in Argentina after the war. Even today, in December of each year, the surviving crew members commemorate their commander, to whom they owe their lives, and lay flowers on his grave.
The Canadian city of Ajax (Ontario) , named after the Greek hero Ajax the Great , like the HMS Ajax involved in the battle in front of the Río de la Plata , honored Langsdorff with a street name.
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Kaack: Sea captain Hans Langsdorff. The last commander of the ironclad Admiral Graf Spee. A biography. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-70262-3 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Hans Langsdorff in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Hans Langsdorff in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Hans-Jürgen Kaack: Management decision in a borderline situation: Sea captain Hans Langsdorff before and in Montevideo 1939 . Lecture for Klaus-Jürgen Müller on his 80th birthday at the Helmut Schmidt University on March 11, 2010 ( mkbug.de [PDF; accessed on November 26, 2013]).
- ↑ The sinking of the »Admiral Graf Spee«. The time 2009.
- ↑ Kurt Diggins (ubootarchiv.de)
- ↑ a b The last samurai. The world , 2004.
- ↑ Gerhard Wagner (Ed.): Lectures of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy before Hitler 1939-1945. Munich 1972, p. 20 f.
- ↑ Files on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, Series D, Volume VIII M 7007, p. 441, 1946; ed. v. Commissioners of the victorious powers USA, GB and France.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Langsdorff, Hans |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Langsdorff, Hans Wilhelm (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German naval officer; Sea captain and commander |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 20, 1894 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mountains on Rügen |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 20, 1939 |
| Place of death | Buenos Aires |