{"id":13396,"date":"2016-03-21T22:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T03:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=13396"},"modified":"2016-03-21T22:00:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T03:00:57","slug":"world-war-i-history-germanys-last-act-of-defiance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/21\/world-war-i-history-germanys-last-act-of-defiance\/","title":{"rendered":"World War I History: Germany’s Last Act of Defiance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SMS_Bayern_sinking\"<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe commander of the 70\u00a0impounded\u00a0ships\u00a0had his men\u00a0destroy the\u00a0vessels rather than see them awarded to the victors.\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

ALTHOUGH THE GUNS<\/strong> of the First World War fell silent on Nov. 11, 1918<\/a>, it was not until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles<\/a>\u00a0more than seven months later that conflictofficially<\/em> ended.<\/p>\n

Yet mere days before the inking of that fateful (and controversial) document on June 28, 1919, one\u00a0German naval officer ordered a\u00a0final act of defiance against the Allies.\u00a0The incident involved the ships of the\u00a0Kaiser\u2019s once-mighty High Seas Fleet<\/a>, interned since the Armistice at\u00a0the British naval base at Scapa Flow<\/a>\u00a0in Scotland\u2019s Orkney Islands.<\/p>\n

The commander of the 70 impounded\u00a0ships\u00a0had his men\u00a0destroy the\u00a0vessels rather than see them awarded to the victors. British cruisers\u00a0keeping watch over the captured armada\u00a0responded to the audacious undertaking with lethal force. Nine died in the ensuing fusillade \u2013 they would be the last casualties of a war that claimed 17 million lives. Here\u2019s how it happened.<\/p>\n

\"US_64th_regiment_celebrate_the_Armistice\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Germany Quits<\/h2>\n

There were 35 provisions of the Armistice\u00a0signed at Compi\u00e8gne on Nov. 11, 1918<\/a>. Among them, Germany agreed to evacuate its armies from France, Belgium and Eastern Europe and hand over 5,000 artillery pieces and more than 1,500 aircraft. Berlin also ceded the bulk of its\u00a0navy to the Allies. It further agreed to sail its\u00a0fleet into captivity beginning one week after the ceasefire. The 70 vessels to be handed over included 10 battleships, several cruisers and dozens of destroyers. All were to be escorted to the Scapa Flow\u00a0until such time as the victors could determine their fate. The fleet\u2019s 20,000 sailors would man the ships for the transit. It was agreed they would be gradually repatriated once the convoy\u00a0had reached its destination \u2013 skeleton crews would\u00a0remain aboard the interned vessels as custodians.<\/p>\n

\"German<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Berlin ordered Franz Ritter von Hipper<\/a>, admiral of the High Seas Fleet, to personally command the voyage. Interestingly enough, Hipper, 55,\u00a0had only days earlier been planning to sail the\u00a0vast armada into the Thames Estuary<\/a>\u00a0to provoke a final and decisive showdown with the British. He flatly refused to shepherd those same vessels into ignominious internment. Instead, Hipper\u00a0delegated the unpleasant\u00a0task\u00a0to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter<\/a>, a 49-year-old veteran of the battles of Dogger Bank<\/a>, Jutland and Heligoland Bight<\/a>. the chief\u00a0was however on hand to watch the flotilla depart from\u00a0Wilhelmshaven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"reuter\"<\/p>\n

\u201cMy heart is breaking with this,\u201d he wrote of the spectacle.Berlin ordered Franz Ritter von Hipper<\/a>, admiral of the High Seas Fleet, to personally command the voyage. Interestingly enough, Hipper, 55,\u00a0had only days earlier been planning to sail the\u00a0vast armada into the Thames Estuary<\/a>\u00a0to provoke a final and decisive showdown with the British. He flatly refused to shepherd those same vessels into ignominious internment. Instead, Hipper\u00a0delegated the unpleasant\u00a0task\u00a0to Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter<\/a>, a 49-year-old veteran of the battles of Dogger Bank<\/a>, Jutland and Heligoland Bight<\/a>. the chief\u00a0was however on hand to watch the flotilla depart fromWilhelmshaven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reuter, aboard his flagship\u00a0Friedrich der Grosse<\/em><\/a>, led the defeated fleet into the North Sea where it\u00a0rendezvoused with the Allied navies. More than 370 British, French and American fighting ships were assigned to escort the vessels\u00a0into captivity. It would take six weeks for all the stragglers to arrive at Scapa Flow. Anchored\u00a0around the tiny uninhabited island of Cava<\/a>, the captured ships\u00a0lay idle under the guns of a squadron of British battlecruisers. For the German crews, it was the beginning of a six-month floating purgatory.<\/p>\n

Read the Remainder at Military History Now<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe commander of the 70\u00a0impounded\u00a0ships\u00a0had his men\u00a0destroy the\u00a0vessels rather than see them awarded to the victors.\u201d ALTHOUGH THE GUNS of the First World War fell silent on Nov. 11, 1918, it was not until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles\u00a0more than seven months later that conflictofficially ended. Yet mere days before the inking of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[475,4418,1898,3545],"tags":[10451,10452,10453,3823,10454,10455,4206,10456],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}