Maartje (00:14):
Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer. This week we are discussing the Battle of the River Plate, which came out in nineteen fifty six. It was written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It’s called The Pursuit of the Graf Spee in the US release, so named after that German battleship. It’s a true story of the first British naval battle of World War II wherein three British ships took on one German ship off the coast of South America in late nineteen thirty nine. It’s also apparently the only World War II battle to take place in South America in the first place. This movie is available in questionable quality on YouTube. What did you think of the movie, Sam?

Sam (00:58):
I loved watching the opening credits because it did that old-timey movie thing where they put everything at the beginning instead of at the end. And they obviously credit the human actors, but they also credit the ships, like what ship is playing what ship in the movie, which I got a kick out of. And one of the battleships actually played herself. The Ajax from the actual battle played herself in the movie, which I thought was cool. And the reason why I bring it up is because I think they made great use of having access to these ships. There’s all these cool shots of them firing off salvos and maneuvering through the waves. And you just know that they had access to these ships and they were like, Isn’t this so cool? And I’m like, Yeah, it is cool. I really enjoyed that. the score, they don’t score movies like this anymore. Is it’s old-fashioned, it’s big, it’s dramatic.

Maartje (01:40):
Mm-hmm.

Sam (01:45):
They have these warning stings when the bad guys are coming and these victorious sounds when the good guys are winning and that kind of stuff. it’s kind of docudrama style, it’s quite historically accurate, so if you vibe with that kind of thing, you’ll be into it. I will say that there was pretty bad sound mixing, and I don’t know if this is partly just the version that was ripped and put onto YouTube, but sometimes the rumbling of the ships and the noise of the shooting and the music it made it difficult to hear what people were saying. So that would be my one sort of downside to this movie. But broadly I enjoyed it. How about you?

Maartje (02:23):
I was wondering if you were gonna mention the ships as characters because I was also gonna mention the ships as characters. I thought they were so funny and sweet almost. They felt sort of endearing to me. Also the list of credits they give to several naval institutions is very long And I also really enjoyed this movie. But like you, I struggled to hear what people were saying, and there weren’t any subtitles for me to make it easier, or for you I’m guessing. Even the auto captions on YouTube couldn’t get over the rumbling, so there were no auto captions. And I did eventually find some janky Dutch VHS upload which was like skipping and you could see like the actual movie tip like skipping and all that. Which kinda made it a bit of a you know it felt like a genuine experience, at least, to watch an old movie. I also enjoyed it overall. I thought the storytelling was quite exciting. It wasn’t very slow. I did find the big battle that it’s all about slightly confusing at times because I couldn’t figure out what anyone’s n anyone’s names were. So I was like, wait, who is this? Who’s talking? Who’s saying that? And what’s he saying? So that was kinda confusing, although if we’re taking the ships as characters, then maybe I should have just focused on the ship names instead of the people’s names and I would have gotten it. but yeah, enjoyed it. And we haven’t done much naval stuff, so always good to expand our horizons, so to speak.

Sam (04:03):
Yeah, I’m looking forward to talking about it.

Maartje (04:04):
With that, let’s get into the plot.

Sam (04:15):
November fifteenth, nineteen thirty-nine, we see a Nazi flag run up a flagpole at sea. And just the music that was happening was very reminiscent to me of like, I an old pirate movie. valid, I guess. A voiceover explains the great difficulty that Britain is facing right now at the beginning of World War Two. They’re trying to bring in supplies. Obviously, they’re an island nation. And the Germans are doing everything in their power to prevent that from happening. So they’re blockading them with battleships, with magnetic mines, with U boats. And one German ship in particular, the heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spey, has conducted a number of raids on merchant vessels and will play a prominent role in this film.

Maartje (04:53):
I was really afraid they were gonna call the ship “Spee” like “spree,” instead of “Spay,” but I’m really glad that they got the German pronunciation, with the E sounding like the Dutch E. So I was like, this sounds familiar to me. Great.

Sam (05:09):
Yeah, I do feel like they put a lot of work into researching for this movie. Patrick Dove, who we’ll talk about in a minute, was a consultant on the movie. and obviously, as you say, they they credited quite a lot of military institutions, et cetera, at the beginning. So they obviously did a lot of legwork to make sure they got things accurate.

Maartje (05:27):
Yeah, I read somewhere that the creators of this film did years and years of research, but the reason this film was made in the first place was because they were handed Dove’s book about his whole ordeal, so that’s what inspired them to actually make a movie about it, which I think is cool. I think you can tell Dove is a very important character and he kind of sets the tone for most of the film I find, at least in the beginning. And I really enjoy that.

Sam (05:55):
Yeah, he’s the human story that they’ve tied into the story of this battle there. And he initially wrote about his experiences in a newspaper serial called I Was Graf Spee’s Prisoner. and this you can actually someone was very kind and made it into a PDF so you can access it online and we can put that on the website so people can check it out. And it was published as a book in nineteen forty.

Maartje (06:14):
Yeah. Tell me more about the Graf Spee please.

Sam (06:18):
The Graf Spee was part of the Deutschland class of heavily armed cruisers that formed part of the German Navy or the Kriegsmarine during World War II. So these were specially designed ships. After the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I, the Germans were restricted as to what size and type of ship they could build. The other countries had wanted to prevent Germany from building up its navy. And so they accordingly built several cruisers of this kind. Supposedly right at the top edge of their water displacement restriction, although secretly these ships displaced a lot more water than the Germans said that they did. and the British called them pocket battleships because they were light but heavily armed. the quotation that they said about it was, it’s faster than anything bigger and bigger than anything faster. they were put into place at sea before the war even started, so particularly the Graf Spee and the Deutschland. So that they would be ready to attack merchant shipping as soon as war broke out. And so it was quite easy for them to go out at sea and sort of settle in and lie in wait because war hadn’t been declared yet. and this was a result of Hitler having learned some lessons from World War One. He fully understood that if you want to defeat the British, you need to prevent them from bringing supplies in. so the Graf Spee sank nine vessels in the South Atlantic before the Battle of the River Plate.

Maartje (07:32):
It’s interesting to think about Britain as an island nation and the difficulties that were bringing during the war. I don’t think it’s talked about a whole lot in other movies when we talk about the British and how difficult that made it for a resupplying and all that. And it’s interesting to see a movie about it basically. It’s not really a movie about the resupplying, obviously, but it is a direct consequence of that. And I think it should be talked about more. Not necessarily in this podcast, but you know, just in general. Patrick Dove captain of the Africa Shell, played by Bernard Lee, is captured by the crew of the Graf Spee after they sink his ship in the Indian Ocean. He’s quite affronted because by his calculation his ship was three miles off the coast, which means that they are on Portuguese waters and that they therefore cannot be put under hostile action. And I really enjoyed the way captain Dove described this whole thing in his little report in a newspaper.

Sam (08:35):
Yeah, the real Patrick Dove actually briefly cameos in this scene, which is kind of fun. And we’ll note that Dove is taken prisoner here, but his crew is allowed to evacuate on lifeboats. Langsdorff is the German captain of the Grafts Bay, and he always attempted to ensure that non-military personnel were not harmed. And I think there’s this part of this sort of quaint old-fashioned gentleman’s warfare that was still in place in and many places at the beginning of World War Two, where it was like.

Maartje (08:57):
Mm.

Sam (09:01):
You know, we’re gonna play fair, we’re gonna play by the rules, that type of thing. And I think that’s really prominent in Patrick Dove’s account as well, how much he likes and respects Langsdorff and how it’s that seems to be reciprocated.

Maartje (09:11):
it’s very obvious from the way he talks about just the whole ordeal in general. It feels very neat. And I you know what made me laugh? His disappointment in having lost his golf clubs.

Sam (09:25):
Yes, very funny. when his ship was being sank, he he told his I don’t know, one of his subordinates, he’s like, Go get my golf clubs and then the golf clubs ended up on a lifeboat that he was not on and he like, God damn it

Maartje (09:38):
Yeah. This man is a very good writer by the way. it’s very engaging, I would say. So I will definitely put a link to the PDF on the website and you can you should read it. It’s really a good read.

Sam (09:51):
Mm-hmm. Hans Langsdorff, that’s our captain of the Admiral Graf Spee is played by Peter Finch. And he amiably disagrees with Dove, but directs him to write out a complaint so that it can be officially documented. And he pours him a drink and he gives him a tour of his ship and he tells him that he doesn’t believe that any Allied vessels are fast enough or have enough firepower to take him down. And he’s happy, he’s telling Dove all these specs about his ship, all of this stuff that should probably be secret information, but he’s convinced that Dove is going to be a German prisoner for the duration of the war, so it doesn’t really matter if he gives him any military secrets.

Maartje (10:23):
I really enjoyed this first interaction where they’re kind of taking jabs at one another where Dove’s like yeah you’re faster, yeah you’re stronger on paper. And it’s just it’s very charming and it’s like almost like he’s being shown around his Airbnb by this German boat captain.

Sam (10:41):
Yeah, and you can tell that Langsdorff is very like My ship is better than yours. Let me show you all the cool shit I have.

Maartje (10:47):
Yeah. The Graf Spee takes down two more merchant vessels while Dove is aboard. Dove gets to witness the German resupply and refueling process, during which a number of other British prisoners join him from the resupply ship. They are all fairly well treated, and even get to have a little party for St. Nicholas Day. The British prisoners soon discover how the Germans must be communicating. which British ships are actually in the area. Because they know just a horse racing page in a newspaper is not what it seems. I really enjoyed this whole it’s such a funny thing to witness. It’s so different from the POW stuff we see in other movies.

Sam (11:26):
Yeah. they have enough food. They have a reasonably comfortable place to sleep. They’re being treated fairly well. you know, the Germans are not looking to harm them really. and I I also got a kick out of the fact that we get to see this resupply scene in such detail. And so the Graf Spee is this big ship. And what it does is it has this schedule with its resupply ship where it always knows where the resupply ship roughly is gonna be in the ocean on a given day. So it goes to it and then the resupply ship has fuel and and other resources that they might need. So we get to see them like one ship fueling the other and them bringing supplies from one ship to the other and it is really cool and I’m like the only reason they included it is because it’s really cool, not because it contributes to the f plot meaningfully.

Maartje (12:11):
No, it’s just a little bit of cool water two technology shit going on. I did enjoy it though, even if it did not add very much. And it’s funny, I wonder also if one of the reasons these men were treated better generally than in other POW camps is because they really had no means of escaping.

Sam (12:18):
Yes.

Maartje (12:35):
Like they’re on a ship. Where are they gonna go? And if you look at other prisoner camps that are on the shore, like on on land, I should say, there’s always a risk of people trying to make their escape.

Sam (12:47):
Yeah, I also think, you know, we’re three months into the war at this point, so nobody’s huge mad at each other yet. and I also think that the Germans have plenty of supply so they can afford to feed POWs. Like there are a lot of things that are different because we are right at the beginning of World War Two.

Maartje (13:02):
That is true. Yeah. And these crewmen and officers haven’t done anything to this particular ship either, so it’s like they were just a victim in this, so you’re right.

Sam (13:14):
December twelfth, there are three British ships off the coast of Uruguay and Argentina where the river plate flows into the sea. Well, there’s two British ships and one New Zealand ship, but they’re all part of the same little group that’s traveling together. And they are the cruisers Exeter, Achilles, and Ajax. The captains of the ships get together to discuss the fact that the Graf Spee will likely be in their part of the South Atlantic come tomorrow. And the Graf Spee has been a subject of British naval pursuit over the past few weeks. They know that the Germans have these two ships that are kind of sneaking around the seas, taking down their merchant vessels, and so they’ve been looking for them. And these captains are Captain Edward Parry of the HMS Achilles, played by Jack Gwillim, Captain Frederick Hookie Bell of the HMS Exeter, played by John Gregson, and Captain Charles Woodhouse of the HMS Ajax, played by Ian Hunter. And they are led by Commodore, later Rear Admiral, Henry Harwood, played by Anthony Quayle, whose flagship was the HMS Ajax. Though the Graf Spee has these cruisers outgunned, they have a strategy where they’re going to try to attack it from different sides to divide its firepower.

Maartje (14:20):
it from different angles to be very annoying and distracting.

Sam (14:24):
Yes. Gwillem and Gregson both served in the Navy during the war. like many of these movies that we’ve seen that came out in the fifties and sixties, a lot of the actors have military experience. Quayle joined the Royal Artillery initially, but he was later actually part of the SOE, the special operations executive, as a liaison officer to Albanian partisans. And we have talked about Anthony Quayle before actually in our Ice Cold in Alex episode.

Maartje (14:47):
Who did he play again in Ice Cold in Alex?

Sam (14:49):
The South African guy.

Maartje (14:50):
of course he did. Yeah, yeah. Funny. Go listen to that. It’s a fun episode.

Sam (14:54):
Yeah. So the British are taking a calculated risk here. If they damage the German ship but do not sink her, the Graf Spee will still have to limp its way back to Germany, and on its way it’s going to end up facing the bulk of the British Navy. So if they don’t sink it, someone else probably will. Meanwhile, the Graf Spee is one of Germany’s capital ships, and Germany doesn’t have a significant navy at this point. So if they lose a capital ship, it’s gonna be a significant loss. And so the British are going, Well, technically we wouldn’t normally take on this ship, but it’s worth it to us to take the risk in this instance.

Maartje (15:27):
It’s being too much of a nuisance too, like it’s it’s just sinking ships left and right. Like stupid German ship get away.

Sam (15:37):
Yes.

Maartje (15:37):
December thirteenth The British cruisers are on the hunt when they spot some smoke in the distance. The Exeter goes to check it out. Meanwhile on the Graf Spee, the British prisoners are awoken by the sound of an alarm, which indicates that the battle is about to begin.

Sam (15:52):
Yeah, you d you gotta imagine those British prisoners are like, on the one hand on the one hand I want our side to win, on the other hand, I don’t want to get sank on this ship.

Maartje (16:01):
Yeah, there was a probably a pretty real chance that they would have drowned if they were actually sank.

Sam (16:07):
The prisoners’ quarters on the Grafts Bay take a direct hit. Both ships are firing away at each other. We get to see some pretty cool stuff about how battleships of this era would operate during a battle. So some examples here. Each ship has a reconnaissance plane. So they have like one plane that leaves and flies around and and tells them, you know, where the positions of the other guys are. they’ll lay smoke. When they want to do sneaky maneuvers, so they’ll send out all this smoke so that the other ship can’t see where they are. there’s a part where they’re passing messages down through the ship, and they have one guy yell to the other guy who yells to the other guy, but they also have these cool little pipe tube things that they speak into to speak to someone in another part of the ship. And they’re of course using like a a light to flash Morse code to the other ships, and so watching all of this communication is really interesting in this era. Before, obviously, you know, they had the modern technology. there’s a part where we see one of the British ships jettison its depth charges. we’ve talked about depth charges before. That’s how you would potentially take down a U-boat that was attacking you. But if you have a whole bunch of explosive material on your ship and you get hit by a shell from another ship, then obviously that puts you at a pretty huge risk of having a massive explosion. So they’re just jettisoning them off the ship. So watching all this stuff. Go down was pretty cool. And all four ships involved take a beating with men wounded or killed.

Maartje (17:25):
I really enjoyed seeing the reconnaissance plane being just catapulted off the ship. I’d never seen that before. It’s so interesting to see how that works. but also a little janky because it looks obviously fake. Although the launching of the plane, I wonder if that was real because it looked kind of real to me. yeah. it’s just it’s a really

Sam (17:46):
It could have been.

Maartje (17:49):
detailed look at how these ships work. You’re really you’re right in saying that. And I don’t think there’s any other movie that we’ve seen that shows it in any great detail, so it’s quite nice to see.

Sam (18:01):
Yeah, definitely.

Maartje (18:02):
Bell on the Exeter is nearly knocked clean off his bridge.

Sam (18:05):
Yes, there’s a moment where he loses his hat and he reaches over and snatches the hat off another officer because he’s like, I’m the captain, I should have my hat. And then there’s a there’s another moment where they get just showered in debris and stuff, and he turns to the other guy and he says, Should’ve worn your hat

Maartje (18:23):
Yeah. And what if there aren’t too many funny moments in the film. This one was definitely funny.

Sam (18:30):
There were genuinely I wanna say maybe three or four moments that made me chuckle. there’s also the two Kiwi guys who are monitoring the horizon and stuff and having a little chit chat between them. There’s a couple funny moments.

Maartje (18:42):
I also thought it was kinda funny when there’s like medics and stuff trying to keep these people from bleeding out and they’re just still just commanding everybody just sitting on a stool being quite calm and like Man you’re bleeding like how are you not spazzing out? But I don’t know. I guess these men were tough. the ship, the Exeter that is, is so badly damaged that it’s rendered defenseless and must retire to the Falklands for repairs. And it they actually ask if it can make it to the Falklands and then they say, Well, we kind of have to, so we’ll go however far we must go to get away from this place.

Sam (19:22):
there was one moment in real life where they had I think one cannon that was left working, but they kept firing it even as they were limping away because they wanted to continue to draw fire from the Graf Spee and prevent it from turning the full brunt of its guns on the other two ships.

Maartje (19:39):
That’s pretty badass, to be honest. Like we’re almost sinking, but fine, we’ll keep shooting. The remaining British sailors on the Ajax and Achilles give it all they’ve got, bearing the brunt of the Graf Spee’s attack now because obviously the Exeter is leaving.

Sam (19:46):
Mm. it’s hard to overemphasize how much like the British were really outmatched here. The Graf Spee was the superior ship. but because there were the three of them and they had this strategy of attacking from different sides, they’re able to heavily damage the fuel system and the galley of the Graf Spee. Langsdorff is convinced at this point that these little British cruisers would only be acting so audaciously.

Maartje (20:00):
Yeah.

Sam (20:20):
When obviously outgunned, if they were trying to drive him into the guns of bigger ships, he’s like, These little shitheads can’t all there is. Like, there have to be bigger ships out there. And so accordingly, his ship’s kind of fucked up. He decides to head to safety in the neutral harbor of Montevideo in Uruguay. The British give chase, though they are extremely wary. On the Graf Spee, the British prisoners are trying to figure out how the battle went. And there’s this scene where they’re sitting there and obviously they’re trying not to get hit by the blasts and Dove is sitting there he’s holding a chair over his head. It really made me laugh. I was like, what exactly is that going to accomplish?

Maartje (20:55):
Well, maybe it’ll catch some debris, but it might also then kill you if something heavy falls on top. But you know at least his hair does he have hair? I don’t remember. Never mind. so Uruguay was neutral, but it did have a pro British stance, and apparently it produced corned beef to support the Allies.

Sam (21:02):
Yeah.

Maartje (21:17):
And I really can’t think of a more British thing to do. Like I feel like at least to us Dutch people, corned beef is like the penultimate British food.

Sam (21:28):
Yeah, highly British for sure.

Maartje (21:29):
The British prisoners learn that they will be released the following morning. It’s bad news for the Germans though, because now they are anchored in the Montevideo harbour and by international law a belligerent ship can only have basic repairs done to render it seaworthy, but not the extensive repairs they need and definitely not repairs to to give them extra gunpower. So they cannot resupply themselves with any sort of firing power. French and British diplomats urged the Uruguayan foreign minister doctor Alberto Guani, played by Peter Illing, to kick the Graf Spee out of the harbour. Guani acquiesces, allowing the Germans seventy two hours before they must go back out to the sea, where the British ships that are still remaining are waiting for them.

Sam (22:18):
Yeah, he’s not in a great position. there were other ports potentially further down the coast that would have been more friendly to German ships, but he just ended up in this place where he’s caught between the rock of Montevideo and the hard place of the British Navy.

Maartje (22:32):
Yeah. At least Montevideo’s pretending to be neutral. I’m saying I’m saying pretending because they are neutral but also they’re helping the allies a little bit.

Sam (22:42):
The people of Montevideo come down to the harbour in droves. Obviously this is a huge event, right? it’s all turning into a massive news story. I did enjoy the little bits and pieces we saw of people partying in Montevideo. We got some nightlife, we got this news anchor who’s bellowing the news to everybody. The British prisoners disembark and Dove and Langsdorff say their farewells. It’s a pretty somber occasion for Langsdorff, of course.

Maartje (23:09):
Yeah. the reporter that’s reporting is American. He’s very, very American and he’s doing his American thing in the reporting, which made me laugh as well. Captain McCall, the British SIS agent, played by William Squire, speaks with Harwood, that’s the Commodore, and learns that while the Exeter has been replaced by the HMS Cumberland the British do not have other immediate reinforcements available. They question whether their three ships will be sufficient to prevent the Graf Spee from getting away. And they decide, shit, we need to stall for time now, they need to stay. McCall decides to fabricate fake intelligence that a number of capital British ships are coming, so big ones, which the Germans thankfully believe. They believe that they face either destruction at the hands of the British or else the sailors and their ships will be interred in Uruguay, which is not very good either because it would be dangerous if Uruguay ultimately enters the war on the side of the Allies. so Uruguay did declare war very, very late in the game. on Germany and Japan in nineteen forty five and also signed the Declaration by United Nations, which is the treaty that united the Allies. And that was signed by forty seven national governments in nineteen forty five. And Uruguay had actually previously already severed diplomatic relations with the Axis powers in nineteen forty two, so even though they declared war in nineteen forty five so that took them a while, they’d stopped having diplomatic relations with the Axis powers way before that.

Sam (24:51):
Yeah. And this is pretty much what Langsdorff is afraid is gonna happen because he has this ship that’s got some fancy new technology on it, and the last thing he wants is for that to fall into British hands.

Maartje (25:04):
Like code machines and stuff, right? And radar that was fairly new at the time.

Sam (25:10):
Yeah. December seventeenth, the day of the Graf Spee’s deadline arrives, they have to either get out of the harbor or they’re gonna be interned. The Germans have failed to sneak out of the harbor, which some people thought that they might attempt to do, due to an international law that states that belligerent ships must wait twenty-four hours after the departure of a merchant vessel before they can follow. And this is some sneaky behavior by the British and the French because they knew that the Germans would follow the law, and so they were deliberately sending their ships out in 24 hour increments so that 24 hours could never pass. and so, yes. Langsdorff decides that he must scuttle his ship to the great relief of the British. spectacular explosion. They set off, I think, or they put they laid three explosive charges, but only two of them went off. But anyway, it was enough.

Maartje (25:43):
Well

Sam (25:56):
To send this ship to the bottom of the sea in a spectacular fashion. obviously he evacuates his crew first. and then Dove comes to see Langsdorff at the end to compliment him for behaving honorably rather than initiating some huge naval battle that would probably have cost a lot of lives.

Maartje (26:12):
I, being Dutch, had never heard of the word scuttle before, so was like so that’s what and what it’s called when you sink your ship on purpose.

Sam (26:20):
Yes. Dove talks about this moment in his account. He says, I saw Captain Langsdorff only once again. Once more he stood beside the coffins of his sailors, this time in the cemetery of Montevideo where they were to be buried. At the end of the ceremony, after he had moved down the line of graves, sprinkling a little earth on each coffin, he came to where I was standing. As he came level with me, he looked up and saw me standing there with my hand at the salute. He stiffened himself to attention, looked me straight in the eyes with his face set, and returned my salute quietly. He passed on, and I never saw him again. And that is because Langsdorff died by suicide two days later.

Maartje (26:57):
They notably do not include this in the movie and I wonder if it’s a sign of respect by the movie makers even because I wanted to note about the whole movie that it seems pretty level in terms of showing the German point of view versus the British point of view and there’s no real judgment in it. From the British side. It’s a British production obviously, but I don’t feel like they were very well, they were a little bit saying the Germans are the bad guys, but they also gave the Germans plenty of screen time, well especially in Langsdorff of course. But I enjoyed that. I thought it was pretty well balanced.

Sam (27:36):
Yeah. I think crucially Dove spoke very glowingly about him. obviously they knew each other pretty well after spending a few weeks together on a ship. notably in the movie we don’t see Langsdorff doing the Nazi salute, he only ever does the regular military salute. yeah, and so I think there was this perception of him, especially because he did scuttle his ship and prevent this massive naval battle. That he was an honorable man and they wanted to depict him that way.

Maartje (28:03):
Yep. it’s not been that long since the end of the war, it’s only ten years. So I think that’s pretty amazing for a film that was shot not even ten years after the war to be so respectful of the Germans. I mean God knows people have carried grudges for a lot longer than that. But apparently the movie makers, probably because you’re right, because of Dove’s influence, did not feel the same way.

Sam (28:27):
Yeah, I think it’s interesting too. Like I think nowadays people are a lot more unlikely to let a sympathetic portrayal of a German officer from World War Two pass. Like I think people are a lot less likely to let that slide now. Whereas at the time I think there was still this sense of like, Yes, you did have the Nazis, but you also did have these Wehrmacht officers who or these naval officers or these people who

Maartje (28:38):
Mm.

Sam (28:52):
were involved in the German military occupation, but they were distinct from the Holocaust, you know?

Maartje (28:59):
Yes. And I do also wonder I don’t know how far the relationships between countries had been rebuilt ten years later, but maybe it’s even still the sense of look, we we wanna move on from this war, so we’re not gonna place any unnecessary blame in this movie. And we’ve talked about this before, but usually in a context that’s slightly closer to the end of the war. But I wonder if it still plays a part in like the reparations between countries.

Sam (29:29):
Well, and the other thing too, right, is that the British and Americans at this point, they want to be on good terms with West Germany and they want to reduce the influence of the Soviets in Germany. And so it definitely makes sense that they would go out of their way to present them in a positive light. And I do think that Langsdorff as a man, like I don’t think they made it up. I think that he was a guy who behaved honorably in this instance and who was courteous to his prisoners and and did try not to harm civilian personnel. but yeah, I do think that definitely plays a part in it.

Maartje (30:04):
Yeah, Dove had no reason to make stuff up anyway. I mean I guess the British do have a thing for not speaking ill of the dead, but even still, if things were being shit, I feel like he would have said. So you’re right, I do think it’s a truthful portrayal.

Sam (30:21):
Yeah, and so the British risk paid off here and they get to sail victoriously away, and have five more years of war after this.

Maartje (30:29):
Enter the sunset Hm

Sam (30:31):
Yes, they do. They do. I will say, the parts where all of the officers were on the bridge of the ship and it was just so clearly that they were just in a studio somewhere, like that part really cracked me up because you would get all these great shots of actual battleships doing cool stuff, and then you would see all these guys like clearly just in a room somewhere in London.

Maartje (30:50):
It reminded me of their finest window obviously on a soundstage on a little fake ship. And it looked exactly the same. Which I it actually surprised me that it was in colour. I was expecting it to be in black and white.

Sam (31:05):
Yeah. and the one other thing that I wanted to mention about the I guess the actual filmmaking piece was I don’t know if you remember the part of the movie where it’s so clear that they’re filming it from like a lifeboat or a dinghy or something and the whole camera is like moving cause you’re following the the waves and it kind of made me a little bit seasick.

Maartje (31:27):
Yeah, I think it’s great though. It kind of puts you in the in the boat literally. But yeah. Along with that like deafening sound because we had to turn it up to even hear what they were saying. It was quite the experience, this movie.

Sam (31:41):
Yeah.

Maartje (31:50):
You had some notes.

Sam (31:51):
I do. So the Graf Spee was sunk in I don’t know exactly how many feet of water, but it was very shallow there, so a large portion of the superstructure remained above the sea level, like it was visible. And so because she was the first German warship equipped with radar, the British salvaged that from the wreck of the ship and they analyzed it. and I believe there were also some American sailors who boarded the ship the next year trying to dig up some intelligence stuff. So Langsdorff was right. If his ship fell into enemy hands, it was definitely going to be used to pillage military secrets. And for decades portions of the wreck remained above the surface and it gradually became a hazard. You know, bits and pieces of it would come unattached and that kind of stuff. And so the Uruguayan government has begun raising the wreck, but they have to do it in pieces because it’s so big and it’s fragile at this point. It may ultimately be displayed at the National Marine Museum in Uruguay, which I think would be pretty neat. but this initially began raising the wreck like 20 years ago. So this is a very slow process, and there’s been a lot of controversy over the pieces raised so far. So one thing that was in the news semi-recently was there was this huge nazi eagle affixed to the stern of the ship. It has a swastika on it, of course. And they dug this up from the bottom of the ocean. And then for a while they had it displayed, and they were kind of like, I don’t know if we want this displayed. So then they put it in a warehouse. And then some government official recommended melting it down and making it into a dove of peace. And so there’s a lot of people who are still discussing what exactly you do with something like that. But there are some little bits and pieces, some less controversial pieces of the graph spade that are on display. I believe if you go to the Marie Museum, there’s like a big gun outside, you can see some other little bits and pieces. and last year, an international team of marine archaeologists visited the ship with modern technology, you know, your new like 3D sonar and that kind of stuff. And they revealed intact compartments and sealed areas that contained preserved documents and even Enigma machines. So they were able to bring this stuff up and actually like read it and they got to f they found like notebooks written by the captain and all this kind of stuff. So I thought that was really neat. I would love to kind of keep track of the story and find out what kinds of things that they learned from that because they were saying that there was quite a few things in the documents that surprised historians about kind of how able these ships were able to communicate with Berlin at the beginning of the war. Like there was some stuff that we didn’t really know yet. So I always think it’s really neat that we’re still learning new things all the time.

Maartje (34:20):
Imagine it’s been so long and we’re still learning. I wonder if there’s any like enigma codes in those logbooks because I was recently at Bletchley Park where they show you a bunch of enigma code books from ships as well. And it’s so neat, like I can’t really make sense of it, but it’s really cool to look at.

Sam (34:40):
Yeah, definitely.

Maartje (34:41):
That’s the end of our notes. We do have to rate this movie, but before we rate it, I would like to remind you that you can follow us wherever you get your podcast and rate us five stars, or you can send this episode to your friend.

Sam (34:53):
Every time you send this episode to a friend, a British ship captain makes a bomb shelter out of a chair.

Maartje (34:58):
And now we have come to the rating part, which could potentially be a little bit controversial, but also it’s funny. Because we are rating this out of however many secret crushes on your German captor out of ten.

Sam (35:11):
Yeah, I mean listen, Patrick Dove, you didn’t have to do all that in your account. He thought Langsdorff was a cool guy.

Maartje (35:15):
Hmm.

Sam (35:17):
Alright. How crushes on your German captors out of ten would you rate this movie?

Maartje (35:21):
I would rate this movie I I should have given this some thought before we started recording. I think I would give it maybe a Seven and a half secret crushes on your German captor out of ten because it’s such a unique story and that’s the main reason. I really like the acting. by the ships and people. I like seeing all the cool technology that we don’t see anymore today. didn’t like the sound or the music too much. just for being loud and annoying. But overall I just really enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Like I thought this was gonna be a slow old-timey movie, but it’s not slow. It’s actually really well paced. So yeah, good rating for me, but yeah.

Sam (36:09):
Yeah, I honestly think if someone had like a remastered DVD version of this, this movie would crush. Like I I would recommend it probably more to people. yeah, I’m gonna give it I’ll give it an eight crushes on your German captors out of ten. I think they did a pretty good job of tying in the human story with Captain Dove and the actual battle itself. I don’t think that they threw too many characters at us. There were some little funny moments in it, like it was reasonably well acted. and it’s really historically accurate. So if you want to know what happened in this battle, you can go watch this movie and it’s pretty much a blow-by-blow. So yeah, so I really enjoyed that about it. And you know what? There were even two female characters in it who had lines. We didn’t mention them because they are such teeny tiny blink and you miss it parts, but for a movie that’s mostly a bunch of dudes on a ship, I was happy to see that there was a couple of women that did get included, even if they were only in the background. So yeah, good movie.

Maartje (37:00):
Have I forgotten the women? What were they doing?

Sam (37:03):
There was a lady singer who was always arguing with the news guy and then there was a woman secretary I think who was like manning the phones for the ambassadors I wanna say.

Maartje (37:07):
Alright, yes. Yeah I totally forgot about the singer. She even gets to sing a song and I totally forgot about her. That’s crazy. I watched his movie yesterday, I cannot be that forgetful. Please forgive me.

Sam (37:29):
Are you reading anything?

Maartje (37:30):
I will be. I got The Book Thief on your recommendation since you are already reading it. I’m not sure if I will finish it in time for our recording, because I did see it was quite a few pages. But I will be reading that and I will also be reading The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Because that’s a story about the French resistance in World War two and it’s getting a movie next year, so I figured I’d get ahead of the shit I have to read a book on time for once and start reading that now.

Sam (38:02):
Excellent.

Maartje (38:03):
How about you?

Sam (38:03):
Yes, I’m also reading the Book Thief. I’m on page three hundred and seventy-one and I was on page forty yesterday. So I’ve really been flying through it. It’s it’s quite good. I mean it’s an international bestseller, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but yeah, I’m really enjoying it. It’s unique, I think. It’s got a unique perspective. I’m also reading a nonfiction book called I Will Not Abandon You Queer Women in Nazi Germany by Samuel Huneke the Nazi laws sort of left a gap where queer women were concerned. Obviously, you know, there were like sodomy laws and stuff like that for gay men, but it was a little different with queer women, but they were still persecuted. It just looked a little bit different. and it’s also about sort of the underground lives that these women lived in Nazi Germany and how in many ways they resisted fascism. And I guess I’m not that far into it yet, but I think the topic’s really interesting and I listened to a podcast where they interviewed the author and he seemed really well spoken, so I’m excited to read the rest of it.

Maartje (39:00):
That does sound exciting and different and an angle we don’t get to see a lot of or hear about a lot. So that’s always good. from what we are reading, I think you can tell that we will be responding at some point to the Book Thief if you wanna either read the book or watch the movie before listening to the next episode. And I would also like to point something out on our website because I got a little nerdy and built something that allows you to rate the movie as we have and it’ll show up on on the post page for the episode so we can have a collective rating for each episode. So if you enjoy that kind of thing, please go rate it. It’s funny.

Sam (39:43):
Yeah, I honestly think our website is such a great resource for, you know, like we’re always looking for more World War Two movies. And I think it would be cool to, you know, have access to this, you know, whole movies that someone else has watched and like people have commented on and stuff. Like I think it’s really it’s the amount of work that you’ve done on this.

Maartje (40:00):
I appreciate you for saying that. It’s not necessary perhaps to the podcast, but it’s part of my education too, so it just gets me kind of going and I get like learning about it. And I try to put like the historical context for each movie on the website and easy to read paragraphs and they’re not very long but they should give you a nice like jumping off point to dive a little deeper. So do go visit and if there’s anything you’d like me to put on there, let me know on our Instagram, a Rosie the Reviewer Podcast, which I’m just gonna do the outro now. And thank you for listening to yet another episode. You can follow us wherever you get your podcast and rate us five stories. You can follow us on Instagram, as I just already said, or you can visit the just mentioned website, rosiethereviewer.com, for more information, and we’ll see you next week.

Sam (40:55):
Bye.

Maartje (40:56):
Bye.