HMAS Sydney wreck heritage listed

[Feuer Frei!]

The wreck of the HMAS Sydney warship, lost in World War II, has been added to the national heritage list.
When she was found in 2008 in deep waters 290km off the West Australian coast, it ended decades of hunting for one of the nation's most famous navy vessels.
The wreck of the German raider HMS Kormoran, sunk in the same battle, has also been added to the heritage list.
The shipwrecks and associated debris fields are 22km apart, 290km off the coast of Western Australia in 2500 metres of water.

On the afternoon of November 19, 1941, the light cruiser Sydney, sailing from the Sunda Strait to Fremantle, encountered an unidentified vessel purporting to be the Dutch freighter Straat Malakka. Instead it was the disguised and heavily armed mercantile raider Kormoran.
According to Kormoran survivors, their captain Theodor Detmers realised he might one day encounter a warship and the only way to survive would be for the Kormoran to maintain its disguise as long as possible, then open fire with every available weapon. And that's what happened.
At a range of perhaps 1000 metres - point blank range in naval terms - Kormoran could hardly miss.
If anything, Kormoran was better armed for a close range fight thanks to five quick-firing 20mm anti-aircraft guns.
In a battle which lasted perhaps an hour, Kormoran's six 15-centimetre guns fired some 450 high-explosive shells.
An examination of Sydney's hulk revealed she was hit by at least 41 15-centimetre shells on her port side and 46 on the starboard side.
Many penetrated and exploded, wreaking carnage and starting devastating fires. A torpedo struck about 20 metres from Sydney's bow.
All 650 men of the Sydney were lost while estimates suggest 20 Germans may have perished aboard the Kormoran.


SOURCE

Now some reading material.
This is really interesting, for instance:

The ferocious, close-range battle that took place off Shark Bay, Western Australia, in the late afternoon of November 19 1941, remains one of the most extraordinary and controversial sea battles in history.
The key question, which has been the subject of ludicrous conspiracy theories, several excellent books, and bitter controversy to the present day, is why did such an experienced naval officer as Captain Joseph Burnett RAN, bring his ship so close to a vessel which he had not only failed to identify, but had not even established what type of vessel she was?
The concensus view would appear to be that he was under the impression that he was dealing with an unarmed supply-ship, most probably the Kulmerland, which bore a striking resemblance to the Kormoran, and which was known to have been operating in Australasian waters disguised as the Tokyo Maru, and that he was intent on sending a boarding-party to prevent her crew from scuttling her.


Another thing, just goes to show that humanity reaches far and wide:


One of the Kormoran’s torpedo men, Erich Meyer, who had been taken ill on the raider, and whom Detmers had hoped to repatriate on the Kulmerland, but couldn’t, due to the supply-ship not having a doctor on board, and who somehow managed to survive the ordeal of several days in an open boat, to be admitted to hospital in Perth, passed away shortly afterwards, and was buried with naval honours in a cemetary there. In a poignant and remarkable turn of events, the family of an Australian sailor who had gone down with the Sydney, generously offered to tend his grave.


Also:


No charges were ever brought against Detmers, despite some suspicion about possible ‘foul play’ against the Sydney, a controversy that still rages to this day, and the Australian Government finally released him and his crew on January 21 1947, nearly 21 months after the end of the war.
Some people, again, not all of them Germans, think this prolonged internment was a form of revenge.

[TarJak]

Good to see it getting heritage listing. Sad story for both crews really.

[Bilge_Rat]

nice story.

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

No charges were ever brought against Detmers, despite some suspicion about possible ‘foul play’ against the Sydney, a controversy that still rages to this day, and the Australian Government finally released him and his crew on January 21 1947, nearly 21 months after the end of the war.
Some people, again, not all of them Germans, think this prolonged internment was a form of revenge.

On that point, most german POWs were only repatriated by the western allies in 46-47 and the Soviets in 49-55, so their treatment was standard.

[bookworm_020]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

If anything, Kormoran was better armed for a close range fight thanks to five quick-firing 20mm anti-aircraft guns.

She also had two 37mm anti tank guns (scrounged from the army!) installed as well. HMAS Sydney was also vulnerable to these type of weapons due to most of it's secondary armament not being shielded in any way.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

No charges were ever brought against Detmers, despite some suspicion about possible ‘foul play’ against the Sydney, a controversy that still rages to this day, and the Australian Government finally released him and his crew on January 21 1947, nearly 21 months after the end of the war.
Some people, again, not all of them Germans, think this prolonged internment was a form of revenge.

I looked into this a bit more and have not found one reference to any person who thinks the treatment of Detmers and his crew by the Australians was a "form of revenge".

They were treated in accordance with the Geneva convention, were housed, fed, clothed, kept in a POW camp with other prisoners. One seaman died of lung cancer and Detmers was hospitalised for three months after a stroke. All were repatriated in 1947 more or less at the same time as every other Axis prisoner held by the western alllies.

A real example of a "form of revenge" is the way the Germans treated their prisoners. During Barbarossa in 1941, 3,300,000 Soviet soldiers were captured by the German Army. By march 1942, 2,800,000 had died in German POW camps.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

I looked into this a bit more and have not found one reference to any person who thinks the treatment of Detmers and his crew by the Australians was a "form of revenge".

The source of my post was from here , from Principal Sources listed at bottom of page.

They were treated in accordance with the Geneva convention, were housed, fed, clothed, kept in a POW camp with other prisoners.

Source?

Detmers was hospitalised for three months after a stroke.

2 actually.

A real example of a "form of revenge" is the way the Germans treated their prisoners. During Barbarossa in 1941, 3,300,000 Soviet soldiers were captured by the German Army. By march 1942, 2,800,000 had died in German POW camps.

Well, i'm not sure what you are implying here, if you are referring to me underlining the part about being in internment for 21 mths after the war and the part about revenge, i certainly wasn't inferring that that is my sole belief. I underlined them to stress a a point in the article.
Now, onto acts of so-called revenge by Germans, supposedly inflicted on the Russian prisoners taken from Operation Barbarossa
and i'll quote:

During the war the Armies of Allied nations such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia were ordered to treat Axis prisoners strictly in accordance with the Geneva Convention (1929). Some breaches of the Convention took place, however. According to Stephen E. Ambrose, of the roughly 1,000 US combat veterans that he had interviewed, roughly one-third told him they had seen US troops kill German prisoners.
Towards the end of the war in Europe, as large numbers of Axis soldiers surrendered, the US created the designation of Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF) so as not to treat prisoners as POWs. A lot of these soldiers were kept in open fields in various Rheinwiesenlagers. Controversy has arisen about how Eisenhower managed these prisoners

After the surrender of Germany in May 1945, the POW status of the German prisoners was in many cases maintained, and they were for several years used as forced labour in countries such as the UK and France. Many died when forced to clear minefields in Norway, France etc.; "by September 1945 it was estimated by the French authorities that two thousand prisoners were being maimed and killed each month in accidents

In 1946 the UK had more than 400,000 German prisoners, many had been transferred from POW camps in the US and Canada. Many of these were for over three years after the German surrender used as forced labour, as a form of "reparations

Source

Those held in Soviet-occupied territory fared far worse. Officially, the Soviet Union took 2,388,000 Germans and 1,097,000 combatants from other European nations as prisoners during and just after the war. More than a million of the German captives died. The immense suffering Germany and her Axis partners had caused surely played a key role in the treatment of enemy POWs. "In 1945, in Soviet eyes it was time to pay," wrote British military historian Max Arthur. "For most Russian soldiers, any instinct for pity or mercy had died somewhere on a hundred battlefields between Moscow and Warsaw.

Source

According to some sources, the Soviets captured 3.5 million Axis servicemen (excluding Japanese) of which more than a million died. One specific example of the tragic fate of the German POWs was after the Battle of Stalingrad, during which the Soviets captured 91,000 German troops, many already starved and ill, of whom only 5,000 survived the war.
German soldiers were for many years after the war kept as forced labour. The last German POWs (those who were sentenced for war crimes, sometimes without sufficient reasons) were released by the Soviets in 1955, only after Joseph Stalin had died.

Source

The conditions German POWs endured on the Eastern Front are beyond description. Shipped to separate camps in Siberia and elsewhere in the western Soviet Union, the German POWs were subjected to aggressive reeducation in communist ideology, as well as frequent beatings, torture, and execution. Food was always scarce.

Most German POWs were held for ten years after the war.

Source

And if that is not enough then my parents have some horror stories of their own, experiencing the Allies, in particular the Russians exercising revenge.

Sorry if i have gone overboard here, it is not my intent to aggravate or to be aggressive here, but it irks me everytime i see the eveil German stories.
No harm done i hope Bilge_Rat

[mookiemookie]

I suppose it took a couple years to get the POW repatriated for practical reasons, not out of revenge. Right after the war, Germany was a shambles. For the U.S. and England to release a million, two million men back into a non-functioning society would have been chaos. Getting food to the remaining German population was a huge problem without adding all those other mouths to feed.

The Russians on the other hand - I believe they kept their German slave labor out of pure spite.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Sorry if i have gone overboard here, it is not my intent to aggravate or to be aggressive here, but it irks me everytime i see the eveil German stories.

well you open the door when you imply that Detmers and his crew were somehow mistreated when even a cursory review of the historical record shows they were treated very correctly as were all German prisoners who were held by the Commonwealth authorities.

what irks me everytime is when I see stories that minimise German atrocities in WW2 or somehow equate that the US/Commonwealth committed excesses on the same scale as the Nazis. Germany in WW2 committed monstrous atrocities. The western allies also made mistakes.
Q: Were the two on the same level? A: not even close.

No harm done i hope Bilge_Rat

of course not.

p.s. - the wikipedia article you quoted on the treatment of POWs by the Western Allies above is grossly distorted. I dont know who wrote it, but obviously someone with an axe to grind.

[August]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Now, onto acts of so-called revenge by Germans, supposedly inflicted on the Russian prisoners taken from Operation Barbarossa
and i'll quote:

I read through your post and didn't see where you actually address this point. So are those "acts of so called revenge by Germans, supposedly inflicted on Russian prisoners" true or false, and how does the apparently better treatment of German POW's by the Allies relate to it either way?

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

well you open the door when you imply that Detmers and his crew were somehow mistreated when even a cursory review of the historical record shows they were treated very correctly as were all German prisoners who were held by the Commonwealth authorities.

Yea true, i could have done better here, in relation to attempting to stress a point or otherwise there.

what irks me everytime is when I see stories that minimise German atrocities in WW2 or somehow equate that the US/Commonwealth committed excesses on the same scale as the Nazis. Germany in WW2 committed monstrous atrocities.

Well, i will have to challenge that because i don't know where you are getting your information from but I constantly see or hear that the Germans committed horrible acts in WW2 and whenever subjects of this nature come up that the German-bashing is rife and alive, has been since the war and still is to this day.
Every person, and i mean every person i have ever entered into a discussion with about the 'role', if you will of Germany in WW2 has been a continual "well, the Germans were all bad, all Germans were Nazis, the Germans and the attrocities they committed were so terrible that... blah blah blah" that it's incredibly difficult to continue a discussion or even attempt to have open-minded or mature points to make to someone.
The point i am making here is that, yes, we know the Germans committed horrible crimes against Humanity, and we know that the Nazis were undeniably and without a doubt wrong in their ideology and their thoughts and actions.
So? And i mean that with the utmost diplomacy here, what i mean by so? is that we know all this, we know this happened, yet we always fall back to this usual rubbish point-making when we speak of anything even remotely that can be considered as questioning what happened in WW2 or questioning the Allies and some of their actions either during the war or post-period.
THAT is what gets me, and to deny that this happens is wrong.
Unfortunately history has been written, we can't change that, what we can change though is our attitudes and learn from history, so that the same mistakes don't happen again.
I think a lot of people still have a problem with letting things go, to continually rub the shame of what the Nazis did in WW2 into the Germans' faces of today.

The western allies also made mistakes.

Yes they did, i was attempting to highlight some of these, difference is that i was not generalising or lumping ALL Allies into one basket.
History tells us this was so, not all Allies committed mistakes, ofc not.
So, why this double standard then, history tells us that not all Germans were bad, or committed crimes against humanity. Etc etc.
It always touches a sore spot when questiong the History writers, which in this case is the Allies.
The Victors feel uncomfortable when they are questioned about what they have written down on paper, called History.

Q: Were the two on the same level? A: not even close.

Ofc not.

p.s. - the wikipedia article you quoted on the treatment of POWs by the Western Allies above is grossly distorted. I dont know who wrote it, but obviously someone with an axe to grind.

Grossly distorted? Why? Because you think so? Or it's 'too' unbelievable that this could have happened or that the Allies could have actually done this?
Once again, why is it so bad to question history? Or, in this case, why is it so unbelievable or grossly distorted that this happened?

Originally Posted by August

I read through your post and didn't see where you actually address this point. So are those "acts of so called revenge by Germans, supposedly inflicted on Russian prisoners" true or false, and how does the apparently better treatment of German POW's by the Allies relate to it either way?

Yes, it doesn't make sense my original post:

Now, onto acts of so-called revenge by Germans, supposedly inflicted on the Russian prisoners taken from Operation Barbarossa
and i'll quote:

What it should have said is:
Now, onto acts of so-called revenge OR acts of wrong-doings by Allies and in some of the following quotes, by Russians on German POW's taken from Operation Barbarossa, and i'll quote:

Makes more sense. I was quoting those to make a point, in relation to Bilge_Rat's post.

And with that, i think i have just derailed my own thread.

[August]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

And with that, i think i have just derailed my own thread.

Happens to the best of us!

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Well, i will have to challenge that because i don't know where you are getting your information from but I constantly see or hear that the Germans committed horrible acts in WW2 and whenever subjects of this nature come up that the German-bashing is rife and alive, has been since the war and still is to this day.
Every person, and i mean every person i have ever entered into a discussion with about the 'role', if you will of Germany in WW2 has been a continual "well, the Germans were all bad, all Germans were Nazis, the Germans and the attrocities they committed were so terrible that... blah blah blah" that it's incredibly difficult to continue a discussion or even attempt to have open-minded or mature points to make to someone.
The point i am making here is that, yes, we know the Germans committed horrible crimes against Humanity, and we know that the Nazis were undeniably and without a doubt wrong in their ideology and their thoughts and actions.
So? And i mean that with the utmost diplomacy here, what i mean by so? is that we know all this, we know this happened, yet we always fall back to this usual rubbish point-making when we speak of anything even remotely that can be considered as questioning what happened in WW2 or questioning the Allies and some of their actions either during the war or post-period.
THAT is what gets me, and to deny that this happens is wrong.
Unfortunately history has been written, we can't change that, what we can change though is our attitudes and learn from history, so that the same mistakes don't happen again.
I think a lot of people still have a problem with letting things go, to continually rub the shame of what the Nazis did in WW2 into the Germans' faces of today.

FF, you are not in a good position to be invoking the victim card. It is entirely appropriate to bring up examples of German actions in WW2 in a discussion about WW2, especially in a case like this where one of the topic you raised in your own thread is about the treatment of German POWs by the Allies.

If you don't want to discuss these issues, maybe you should stick to post-1945 topics.

The Victors feel uncomfortable when they are questioned about what they have written down on paper, called History.

The Germans kept meticulous records during WW2. Most of what we know about how many men, women and children were shipped to extermination camps, slave labor camps, POW camps and what happened to them comes from their own records.

Grossly distorted? Why? Because you think so? Or it's 'too' unbelievable that this could have happened or that the Allies could have actually done this?
Once again, why is it so bad to question history? Or, in this case, why is it so unbelievable or grossly distorted that this happened?

The wikipedia article is supposed to be about the treatment of German POWs by the western allies, but instead of giving you an overall picture, it relies on certain controversial and contested facts to give the impression that the western allies were systematically abusing German POWs.

I will give you some examples.

First, it starts with a quote by Ambrose which gives the impression that German POWs were routinely shot. Ambrose was talking about situations in the heat of combat where enemy soldiers were killed while trying to surrender or immediately after. I have no doubt this happened on both sides. However, real historians who have looked into the issue have not been able to find evidence that it occurred as frequently as Ambrose claimed. Now, if you are looking at evidence about soldiers who were killed in cold blood, long after they surrendered, all the documented cases are about German troops murdering allied prisoners, for example Malmedy or the murder of canadian POWs by the 12th SS in normandy. Terry Copp, the canadian historian looked into this whole issue in the book "Fields of Fire" on the Canadian Army in normandy and was not able to find any evidence that any German POW was ever murdered by canadian forces.

secondly, the wiki article then moves on to the controversy regarding the treatment of german POWs in germany in 1945-46, which is all based on one book, Baque's "Other Losses" which claimed that up to 1,000,000 POWs died. However, Baque is not an historian, but a novelist. Mainstream historians who have reviewed this issue dispute his findings and have established the death toll at the most at 1% of the 5,600,000 prisoners (i.e. 56,000). The other points, DEF designation and open air camp were temporary mesures which were much more due to the chaotic situation which prevailed in Germany in 1945 than any sinister plan by the Allies.

My point was that the wiki article is not an unbiased review of the treatment of German POWs, but a collection of controversial and disputed facts by someone who is trying to prove that German POWs were mistreated by the Allies, but anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of WW2 history will see that.

I could go on and on, since I have many more examples, (and will be happy to provide them if you wish) but I don't want to be acused of "German Bashing".

And with that, i think i have just derailed my own thread.

Happens to all of us.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

FF, you are not in a good position to be invoking the victim card.

I'm not waving the victim card at all here, merely just indicating what usually happens in discussions about WW2 and moreso when the Germans are involved in any sort of way.

It is entirely appropriate to bring up examples of German actions in WW2 in a discussion about WW2, especially in a case like this where one of the topic you raised in your own thread is about the treatment of German POWs by the Allies.

Well, appropriate it may have been, i guess i wasn't expecting to be 'served' a volley broadside with an alleged attrocity that the Nazis had committed.
I was merely, like i said in my earlier post, highlighting or strengthening a point in the article in the OP.
I at the time thought it was 'mild' enough in it's intent.
Obviously that wasn't the case.

[QUOTE]If you don't want to discuss these issues, maybe you should stick to post-1945 topics.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!

Well, appropriate it may have been, i guess i wasn't expecting to be 'served' a volley broadside with an alleged attrocity that the Nazis had committed.

well maybe it was overkill, but it does settle an argument quickly.


I am more worried now about the spread of wikipedia, many people see it as gospel, but just looking up various WW2 subjects over the past day, it is amazing what drivel gets put down as fact.

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

well maybe it was overkill, but it does settle an argument quickly.


I am more worried now about the spread of wikipedia, many people see it as gospel, but just looking up various WW2 subjects over the past day, it is amazing what drivel gets put down as fact.

We both live to fight another day