A little #RiverPlate thread. Some folk who question the significance of the Graf Spee eagle seem to have very little sense of the significance of this strange little action. It took place at a point when Nazi Germany had successfully carved up most of central Europe. 📸Getty On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland and overran it in a brutal blitzkrieg lasting little over a month, while Poland’s Allies, Britain and France, stood by and watched. Then the two sides settled into what has been misnamed “The Phoney War” for six months. 📸IWM COL 149

OK long thread time as promised, slightly past the anniversary but never mind. The Granville Raid is an odd footnote to #WW2 which has been a minor obsession of mine for years, & it got worse when I wrote Coastal Convoys & discovered one of my coasters had been dragged into it! In February 1945 the war had left the Channel Islands behind. Nearly 30,000 bored, cold and hungry German soldiers, sailors and airmen were stranded in what Hitler had designated a fortress, forbidden from surrender, while the fighting moved across France and into Germany.