WW2 helicopter

As I recall, when the Norwegains protested to the British that Britain had violated Norwegian neutrality by entering Norwegian waters and boarding the Altmark, the British retorted that the Altmark had violated Norwegian neutrality by anchoring in Norwegian waters while retaining a cargo hold full of prisoners of war.  The British also apparently implied that the Norwegians had been either openly complicit in this action or, at the very least, negligent in not discovering the German ruse.  My understanding of international law is that belligerent ships entering neutral waters are required to release any prisoners of war they are carrying – a good example being, ironically enough, the British prisonners who were released in neutral Uruguay by Captain Langsdorff when the Graf Spee (the ship supplied by the Altmark) anchored in Montevideo harbour.  At any rate, the British position vis a vis Norway was basically, “You drop your protest and we’ll drop ours.”  Which they did.

Escaping Montevideo Harbour – possibly.  Getting all the way back to Germany – extremely doubtful.

In terms of getting out of the harbour, Langsdorff would have had two options: heading across the river Plate to Argentina, or making a break for the open sea.  If he’d headed for Argentina, there was no guarantee that he’d be any better off than in Uruguay.  Argentina had some Axis sympathies, I think, but it was still nominally neutral, and the British and French would have put the same diplomatic pressures on it as they had put on Uruguay to respect the Geneva Convention and either intern the ship or force it to leave.  Making a break for the open sea was problematic too.  The British had made sure that the Graf Spee’s departure from Montevideo was in a carefully defined time window by making use of an article in the Geneva Convention that prohibited a warship from sailing from a neutral harbor less than (I think) 24 hours after an enemy merchantman had left the same harbour.  There were British merchant ships in Montevideo at the time of the Spee incident, and the British arranged for one of them to leave the harbour at the right moment to put Langsdorff in a bind between the Geneva Convention and the expiration of the Uruguayan government’s deadline for the Spee to leave.  Harwood’s cruisers were lying in wait nearby, and it’s doubtful that the Spee could have given them the slip.  Moreover, the shallow waters of the Rio de la Plata area were unsuited for combat from Langsdorff’s perspective because his water intakes might have gotten clogged with mud.  Additionally, having the ship sink in combat in shallow water carried the risk that secret equipment and papers would have fallen into Allied hands (this being less of a concern if, as eventually happened, the ship was scuttled under controlled conditions).

Assuming for the sake of argument, however, that Langsdorff had managed to elude Harwood, getting back to Germany would have been very challenging.  Although the Spee was technically still able to sail and fight, the damage she had suffered in the original battle with Harwood had left her in very poor condition to make a long sea voyage.  Harwood, even if he’d initially been eluded, would still have been close by and would have sent his ships (and his scout plane) to look for the Spee; additionally, some British and French naval groups were already converging on the general area following Harwood’s initial battle a few days earlier, so Langsdorff would have had an awful lot of sea power focused on finding him.

@Herr:

The Soviet Union indeed intended to spread communism all around the world, but whether that would necessarily have implied a military invasion of central Europe in the 1940’s, is not certain. Their approach varied quite a bit, from inciting revolutions of the “working class” in other countries, to promoting wars between “bourgeois” powers, to actual war.

Also, if I remember correctly, Lenin’s death was followed by a power struggle in the USSR between the Trotsky faction, which wanted to pursue an agenda of internationalist communism, and the Stalin faction, which wanted to focus on communism at home (or whatever the phrase was).  The Trotsky faction lost, with Trotsky himself eventually going into exile and ultimately being assassinated.

May 18- German withdrawal from Monte Cassino.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

What is the topic, who will pick strawberries or something?

That was a different thread.

1. USA
2. USSR
3. UK
4. Canada
5. China
6. France
7. Australia
8. Turkey
9. India
10. ???

It is old, but I love this scene.  The “Americanization of Emily”.  For those of you who haven’t seen it - enjoy.  The ones who have… this kicks so much ass!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyMRz1hbb4M

@Dylan:

T 34

The T-34 should makes everyone’s top three list.

Wow, this one is even better than the civil war one.  Nice find Jermo!