Submitted by alcapwnage0007 t3_z707uq in todayilearned
Ironically that Colonel probably had it unceremoniously confiscated by the next guard he met.
A lot of high ranking german officers had multiple "surrender" pistols that they carried with them. Goering had a gold plated pistol he intended to use to surrender the nation to the allies, and a couple regular ones if he got captured.
There are several stories like this and those pistols sometimes end up in auctions with solid provenance documentation.
It’s kind ironic, eh? “I am planning and prepared to surrender” is absolutely packing.
Dunno if this is a known fact or not but during the last few months of the war a lot of high German officials were competing to be the one surrendering the nation.
In the sick powerplay of the final day's of the Third Reich surrendering the nation was, internally, seen as equal as being appointed as the next person in line to command the nation in the post war.
It was more or less known for months that uncle Addie wasn't going to stick around to let himself be captured, so a lot of the higher officials used whatever excuses they could find to bail out of Berlin before the Soviet Boogie came to town.
This started a competition to see who would be the one that would get the chance to surrender Germany and use that position to try to appoint himself as a provisory Chanceler.
Himmler had this mind boggling plan to drive to the Brits and more or less present himself as the only person with authority to keep control of the Nation and in his mind the Allies would welcome the SS as a police force in the post nation.
Goering planned to present himself as the leader of the only major branch of the German military that were "clean" of warcrimes and a lot of propaganda was created around it, something that stuck to this day by the way.
At the end Donitz was chosen by Hitler for the task, since he was seen as the least power hungry of the trio. A fact that was both false and led to a lot of unnecessary deaths in the final days as Donitz wanted to try to secure his position before the surrender.
All three, and some other more, had presentation pistols chosen to be used for the occasion. While they packed an assortment of other side arms to give away if they got captured in the process or self defense.
The more interesting about this is that most of them survive to this day.
That only happened on the TV show. In interviews he says he kept that pistol as a prized possession.
And then was roughed up lol
"Curse you Wetherby Savings & Loan, I spit at you!"
-- Captain Ironsides.
Nazi officers had no honor and deserved no gallant treatment. Those with integrity died in July ‘44.
> Those with integrity died in July ‘44.
If they had integrity they wouldn't have fought the war in the first place. Stauffenberg and his buddies were perfectly fine with conquering Lebensraum in the east and enslaving the people living there or starving them to death. They only turned against Hitler when the war was irrecoverably lost.
I wasn’t going to get into that, but there were a variety of people involved in the conspiracy. Some were just dissatisfied with Hitler’s leadership, others felt it was a moral issue.
"Refused to accept surrender"
Me: oh shit, it's gonna get dark
"... because they respected each other too much."
Me: wheeew...
Yeah every other time I’ve read something like this in history it’s led to some kind of atrocity or catastrophe.
My favorite is probably when the Romans refused the Carthaginian surrender. They wanted to take Carthage. They got their butts whooped by Xanthipus and then as they sailed home they got caught in a storm and their entire fleet sank, drowning the entire army. Tens of thousands of Romans killed within a few weeks of triumphing over the Carthaginians.
Fucking idiots 😂
Then they made the new fleet even bigger. Which suffered the same fate, again. So they made another!
And that fleet stayed up!
And that's what you're gonna get lad, the strongest fleet in all the land.
But I don’t want any of that. I’d rather. . .just. . .SING!
The USS Constitution is still going strong too. Pretty crazy when you think about it.
It's the only ship in the US Navy with a confirmed kill.
Greenville had one.
Are you talking about the Japanese fishing vessel?
That is nuts. Although, I guess that says a lot about the kinds of fights we've been picking and how modern we've kept ourselves
The Navy also has multi layered defensive postures. There are few in this world dumb enough to go toe to toe with a carrier strike group. Also the US hasn't fought a war with a country that had a respectable navy since Korea(?).
Pretty cool flex on the part of the Constitution tho.
I've been on it and it's a beautiful ship!
You know how many times it’s been basically rebuilt? A fuck ton
>You know how many times it’s been basically rebuilt?
Exactly as you'd expect for a ship that's still afloat, if you want it to stay floating. I think that there's only 10 or 15% of the original wood remaining in Constitution.
There is a lot more of the original timber from USS Chesapeake surviving, in a flour mill in Hampshire. It has been surveyed by naval archaeologists.
That makes it more impressive that 65% of HMS Trincomalee and over 95% of HMS Unicorn is still as it was launched 200 years ago (1817/1824). Obviously not taking into account years of active service and being maintained in sailing condition.
>65% of HMS Trincomalee and over 95% of HMS Unicorn
I didn't know of those ships, thanks for that.
Tricomalee was built of Indian teak, which is probably why she's survived; I think ship worm would devour European wood in a few years. Unicorn has never sailed.
Read that as navel archeologists... an interesting 30 seconds, for sure
You're reading about ships in the navy, and the word naval comes up, and then you suddenly thought about belly buttons??
So you see why I was so confused
If someone has a habit of looking at combat ships for extended periods, is that naval gazing?
A real life Ship of Theseus
Hull also had Dacres' mother's Bible returned to him after the battle, which I personally find is a beautiful little act of kindness
Edit: I can't edit the title, but the captain of the Guerriere was named Dacres, not Dacre. That is my b.
That coward Cornwallis said he was indisposed and couldn't surrender his sword in person at Yorktown.
The surrender had all kinds of middle school drama. The British had requested being able to march out with flags flying and weapons at the ready, and playing an American or French tune in tribute to the victors. The Americans refused, as the British had denied the same request to the surrendering Americans at the Siege of Charleston the previous year.
So the British marched out with flags furled, muskets shouldered, and playing "The World Turned Upside Down" (though that might be apocryphal).
Cornwallis, claiming illness, did not attend and instructed a subordinate, Brigadier General Charles O'Hara, to surrender. O'Hara first attempted to surrender to Commander-in-Chief of the French forces, Rochambeau, who refused to accept it. O'Hara then attempted to surrender to Washington, who directed O'Hara -- as Cornwallis's subordinate -- to one of his own subordinates, Brigadier General Benjamin Lincoln, who finally accepted the surrender.
The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis as painted by John Trumbull depicts Lincoln reaching out to accept the sword of surrender from O'Hara, as Washington looks on.
Eight thousand British troops then marched out and laid down their weapons before the assembled French and American troops, then taken as prisoners of war. The American and French officers then hosted a cordial dinner with the British officers.
At the same time all this gallantry was going on, the American soldiers were ordered to round up all fugitive slaves who had fought alongside the British, and return them to their masters.
Do you have a citation re the officers getting dinner? Never heard of that
https://www.britishbattles.com/war-of-the-revolution-1775-to-1783/battle-of-yorktown/?amp
> After the surrender the American and French officers entertained the British officers to dinner, other than Tarleton with whom the Americans refused to sit at table, due to the atrocities committed by his troops in North and South Carolina.
https://www.nps.gov/people/banastre-tarleton.htm
> When Cornwallis marched his army into Virginia, he loosed Tarleton and the Legion on sweeping raids into the interior. At Monticello, Tarleton nearly captured Governor Thomas Jefferson, who fled just in time. In the Siege of Yorktown, Tarleton served across the river at Gloucester. On October 4, 1781 a French Hussar regiment skirmished with Tarleton's British Legion. In this skirmish, Tarleton was unhorsed and wounded, saved by his men from a French lancer. After the British surrendered at Yorktown, there was a dinner party for military officers. The Americans invited all British officers, except for Tarleton. His past conduct could not be overlooked.
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Indeed. It is nice to read about nice acts of human kindness and generosity during war.
Interesting read
And fantastic Wordplay for the summary!
“on August 19th, Guerriere's Captain James Richard Dacres engaged, confident of victory against the larger, better-armed U.S. ship.”
Sounds like he fucked around and found out.
There was this thing, after an admiral wussed out of a fight & we lost Minorca they only went and shot him (despite him having some extremely influential mates). After that, the RN developed a fighting attitude under pretty much all circumstances. I’ve read that in some battles the French/Spanish leaders went in trying to preserve as many of their ships as possible, the Brits went in to win. Yeah sure, sometimes it didn’t work but it did an awful lot of the time (and sometimes the overly aggressive attitude nearly ended in disaster: Jutland). To briefly (probably mis)quote Admiral Cunningham whilst ordering his destroyers back to Crete to evacuate as many soldiers as poss (after losing many the day before) It takes 3 years to build a ship, it takes 3 centuries to build a tradition, we go back in
Violence of action is a another way of saying it too.
> after an admiral wussed out of a fight [the Admiralty] went and shot him
Inspiring Voltaire's famous quote
>Mais dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de tems en tems un Amiral pour encourager les autres. > > but in this country it is found good, from time to time, to kill one Admiral to encourage the others.
And it did indeed have a galvanising effect on the Royal Navy - officers were incredibly gung-ho and would prosecute an attack in the face of insurmountable odds. Thanks to the high training and discipline of the Royal Navy they would typically win as well.
Maybe. At the time, the British were very sure of their naval prowess!
Everyone wants to be a Nelson
56 gun versus 44 gun. Guerriere engaged in a nose punching fight and Constitution, unsurprisingly, won.
However, the fact that Constitution pretty much completely demasted Guerriere also may mean Constitution used chain shot and got lucky early.
But other than that... Not a smart fight on Guerriere's part.
There seems to be a tradition of losing commanders offering up their swords and winning commanders turning them down. Dont knkw why. I'd wear them all at once.
Professional courtesy.
Monsieur Monroe...I have always known you as a gallant antagonist
Then they kissed
I was so hoping it would say that he couldn’t accept the sword without the captain’s blood on it. Disappointed by chivalry.
, , , ,,,,,,,,,
He chumped him.
Sounds like he wanted to give him the sword of uh... Naval friendship. Repeatedly.
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The Hood was not destroyed because of "British overconfidence".
The Bismarck escaping into the Atlantic shipping lanes was a threat they could not allow. The Hood and the Prince of Wales were forced to shadow the Bismarck with their radars so that it could be attacked.
No one thought the Hood could beat the Bismarck in a fight - British, German, or otherwise.
Never heard of this battle before. So what actually happened? We lost one ship out of 600?
The Guerriere had been a part of a mission with a larger group to capture the Constitution, and happened upon it while heading alone to port. The captain of the Guerriere decided to engage, but ship was bested and sunk by the Constitution.
While the outcome meant very little if not nothing in the grand scheme of the war, news of the battle was a big boost to morale for the US.
Ships normally sink one at a time. Who won the war?
Neither side looking into it. War of 1812 ended with the ratification of treaty of Ghent which left borders unchanged, slaves returned to captivity and death tolls/bills to pay on both sides. Seems like a bit of a waste. Possibly a win for both sides as the outcome lead to many years peace between UK and US which would in turn be laying the foundations for the current relationship.
Correct me if I’m wrong though, only spent a about 20 minutes googling.
That is what basically all Brits, Americans and French say. Canadians like to say it was a victory though.
Well, to be fair to Canadians, one of the goals the USA had going into the war was to take Canadian territory. I'd say stopping an attacker from taking your shit counts as a victory.
One of the goal they had going into the war was to push south and take control of the Midwest with Tecumseh, which ended in retreat, the annihilation of most of their native allies, and losing naval control of the Great Lakes forever.
r/thatHappened /S
Yup, it did.
Landlubber77 t1_iy3zujg wrote
"You may keep your sidearm, Colonel."
-- Major Dick Winters