soc.history.war.world-war-ii

In article <47e64d2a.2786828@news.individual.net>,
aspqrz@pacific.net.au (Phil McGregor) wrote:

> 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.

Thanks for the information. Several thoughts:

- I was unaware of an "action report" that is in conflict with other
statements. I'll need to go research.
- However, the presence of such conflict in information could suggest
many things, including the the scenario above. I see no particular
reason to trot out that specific allegation at this point.

We just don't know.

I just looked up "allegation" in the OED - the definition seems right on
target here:

"a claim that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically
made without proof"

> >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.

If you're asserting they used disinformation to mislead/confuse their
enemy, that is one thing. If you're asserting they used disinformation
to cover up wrong-doing, that is quite another, and lacking proof of
such is pretty durn close to slander in my book.

One other observation: I wasn't aware of how the whole affair evidently
resonates in Australia even to this day. Much like Pearl Harbor or the
JFK assassination in the US I suppose. Such events tend to spawn their
own conspiracy-industries.

I'm not saying you (Phil) or anyone else in particular is a 'conspiracy
nut', just observing that some events do seem to generate more such
theories.

Personally, I've always been a fan of William of Ockham.