'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

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Terry Duncan
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'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

#1

Post by Terry Duncan » 21 Nov 2014, 15:16

Ninety six years ago today the High Seas Fleet surrendered to the Grand Fleet for internment at Scapa Flow, where it would be scuttled some six months later. One of the sadder moments of WWI, but also one of the most spectacular too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30128199

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Re: 'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

#2

Post by askropp » 21 Nov 2014, 15:40

The blockade of Germany meant that by 1918 it was the Germans who were hungry, not the British. Unrest followed, then a clamour for peace.
Sorry, but it is outrageous that the BBC adopts Hindenburg's and Hitler's Dolchstoßlegende. The revolution was the result of the defeat at the frontlines, not the defeat the result of the revolution, as Ludendorff would make us believe. When Erzberger's delegation crossed the frontline on its way to Compiègne, the Kaiser and Max von Baden were still in office. It is also very telling that the story omits the constant humiliation and mobbing of the german sailors by Admiral Beatty and his staff.
There are times in history when staying neutral means taking sides.


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Re: 'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

#3

Post by Terry Duncan » 21 Nov 2014, 18:31

Sadly the BBC adopts what is easiest to find for a bored researcher with access to Google, so some of the article is not a surprise in that respect. The treatment of the German sailors by Beatty was far from good, though there was much concern that they be kept as isolated as possible to stop them 'infecting' the RN sailors with 'The Red Menace of Communism' that drove this policy. His rather petty order over the flying of the German flag was yet another sad attempt to gain a victory he had failed to achieve by arms during the war, and possibly beyond the terms of internment too, as the ships remained German property until the peace was settled.

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Re: 'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

#4

Post by Polar bear » 21 Nov 2014, 18:53

hi,
Terry Duncan wrote:.. beyond the terms of internment too, as the ships remained German property until the peace was settled.
quite right, Terry, proving that the term "surrender" which was used in the text is, from a historian's point of view, simply wrong.

greetings, the pb
Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War
(John Milton, the poet, in a letter to the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652)

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Re: 'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

#5

Post by Terry Duncan » 21 Nov 2014, 19:39

It was sad end to a great fleet, there is a great deal of truth in the remarks of several commentators that the act of scuttling showed that the spirit of the German navy lived on, and that the scuttling did the Allied nations a favour in that it prevented them falling out over who took what.

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Re: 'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

#6

Post by favedave » 26 Nov 2014, 08:42

Stripping the Germans of the means to make war was perhaps the biggest factor in Germany's nearly maniacal quest to rearm for a rematch. While it is thought to be all Hitler's doing, it began immediately after the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. With no navy or air force to speak of, Germany engaged in extensive R&D activities (often in cahoots with that pariah of the West, the Soviet Union) which were unfettered by not having to maintain the ships, aircraft and tanks from the Great War in service long past the point of obsolescence. This is one reason the weapons systems developed by the Third Reich were generally more advanced than those of the Allied Nations. These weapons systems were used from the Blitz Krieg of Poland to the war's end. Their Axis partners, the Italians and the Japanese also had new powerful navies and air forces too. When the Japanese attacked the British and Americans in the Pacific in December of 1941, the Japanese fleets and aircraft were far superior to the World War One fleets they bested and the decade old aircraft they swept from the skies. All of the battleships damaged and sunk at Pearl Harbor were built either before, or during WWI. The same is true of the Royal Navy. What the Allies had was quantity, and the ability to not only replace lost aircraft and ships, but to overwhelm the Axis powers with new designs in such numbers defeat was the only long term outcome.

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Re: 'Der Tag' The Surrender of the High seas Fleet

#7

Post by Graeme Sydney » 27 Nov 2014, 22:05

askropp wrote:
The blockade of Germany meant that by 1918 it was the Germans who were hungry, not the British. Unrest followed, then a clamour for peace.
Sorry, but it is outrageous that the BBC adopts Hindenburg's and Hitler's Dolchstoßlegende. The revolution was the result of the defeat at the frontlines, not the defeat the result of the revolution, as Ludendorff would make us believe. When Erzberger's delegation crossed the frontline on its way to Compiègne, the Kaiser and Max von Baden were still in office. It is also very telling that the story omits the constant humiliation and mobbing of the german sailors by Admiral Beatty and his staff.
I didn't read that into the article but I took exception to the next sentence "For maritime historians like Andrew Choong, the strategic defeat of Germany at sea was an even greater British contribution to victory than the battles fought on land." Sounds more like RN propaganda than history.

Obviously both were equally strategically important in the defeat of Germany (rather than the defense of the British Isles) and to make distinction is childish and inaccurate.

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