soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:08:35 -0400, Dave Anderer
wrote:

>In article <47e2ed3a.801703@news.individual.net>,
> aspqrz@pacific.net.au (Phil McGregor) wrote:
>
>> The allegation is that Detmers had raised the white flag and
>> surrendered and, as the HMAS Sydney, reasonably under the
>> circumstances, approached close enough to launch a boat with a
>> boarding party, opened fire with his concealed, underwater, torpedo
>> tubes, and only with his deck guns *after* the torpedoes hit.
>
>Who is making this allegation, and on what basis? This isn't a
>rhetorical question - I'd really like an answer.

The fact that, as reported in the Senate report on the 1997-99 inquiry
(available online) Detmers gets the sequence of events WRONG several
times while interrogated before finally settling on the one that is
now accepted?

"There were four significant differences between the information
Detmers had given under interrogation at Swanbourne Barracks, and in
the action report which was later confiscated. First, Detmers stated
that Kormoran was ordered to stop before the cruiser signalled in
plain language for the secret callsign of the Straat Malakka to be
hoisted. Second, that Sydney was preparing to lower a boat. And third,
that the cruiser had fired first. Fourth, that Kormoran's first salvo
fell short of Sydney. Detmers' later descriptions were inconsistent
with these statements."

That would be a start.

As a German officer it was his DUTY to lie to the enemy. And his
Bridge officers had an identical duty.

>I can allege Sydney was sunk by UFOs. While we don't now *know* that

Or that it was sunk by a Japanese sub. Who knows what Detmers lied
about?

>You don't see the irony here, do you? While correctly noting we don't
>conclusively know what happened, and shouldn't condemn Sydney, you then
>slander the Germans with no evidence.

No, I am NOT slandering the Germans. It was their recognised duty to
lie to their interrogators, accepted under the appropriate wartime
conventions.

Did they lie? Detmers certainly seems to have.

WHAT did they lie ABOUT? No-one knows, except Detmers (dead, I
presume) and the small number of Bridge crew who may have been in a
position to have seen what actually happened and who may have survived
(mostly dead, I would guess).

The 1999 report made no attempt to question any of the survivors, so,
unless and until the further examination of the wreck visually shows
some conclusive evidence one way or another we may never know.

I certainly don't blame, for example, the Engine Room crew, for
example, for what Detmers may have done ... they had no way of knowing
and the only story they could have reported would have been the one
that Detmers probably ordered the Bridge crew to hold to.

Note also that the original wartime interrogations were poorly done,
allowing for the certainty of collusion in almost all the cases (and
there is no indication in the reports that differentiate between the
testimony of survivors from the Bridge crew, who would almost
certainly have known exactly what happened, to the testimony of the
rest of the crew who would have less or no chance of knowing the
'truth').

Detmers may, or may not, have been guilty of a war crime or piracy ...
the bulk of the crew probably wasn't ... "superior orders", IMT
Nuremberg decisions notwithstanding, DO still have some important
standing as a defence (and would have had in this case ... the
gunners, for example, could argue that they had no way of knowing that
Detmers had raised a white flag or not lowered the Dutch flag when
they were given what seemed to be perfectly legal orders to open fire
... ditto the torpedo crew).

Phil

Author, Space Opera (FGU); RBB #1 (FASA); Road to Armageddon;
Farm, Forge and Steam; Orbis Mundi; Displaced (PGD)
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Email: aspqrz@pacific.net.au