# Talk:Maximilian von Spee

Note: Links to Nurnberg, Leipzig, and Dresden currently point to the German cities rather than to the ships. Possibly need to change the links to "SMS ...", but should check first that this is the correct abbreviation for WW1 German warships! Arwel 02:08 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)
SMS (Seiner Majestaet Schiff) is the correct abbreviation. Links have been switched to point to SMS... rather than the cities, though most articles have still to be written. Arwel 02:11 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

... the Spee Squadron had been lured onto the guns of the British battlecruiser squadron by means of a fake telegram sent in a German naval code that British cryptographers had broken and which "ordered" the German ships to the Falkland Islands to destroy the wireless station there.
Really? I wonder why Pulitzer prize-winning historian Robert K. Massie makes no mention whatever of this assertion in his account of WWI at sea, Castles of Steel, which contains a lengthy description of the British destruction of the East Asia Squadron? According to Massie's account, Spee overruled a majority of his captains in deciding to attack the Falklands.
See:  Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea (Balantine Books, 2004) by Robert K. Massie, ISBN 0-345-40878-0(also J. Cape, 2004, ISBN 0-224-04092-8)
Sca (talk) 15:07, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Seems rather dubious to me - I've never seen the claim repeated elsewhere either. It's been removed from the article. Parsecboy (talk) 16:36, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

"Spee had inflicted the first defeat on a Royal Navy squadron since the Napoleonic Wars a century earlier."  
Certainly this was quite a defeat, and the first surface action defeat of the British, but in September a German sub sank three old armoured cruisers in a single engagement.  A different sort of defeat than Craddock's, of course, but seems like the statement in the article is a bit misleading.  I recommend revising. Busaccsb (talk) 23:24, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

That's how the battle is routinely described. We can't make up our own criteria and apply it to the article. Parsecboy (talk) 23:46, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
An engagement requires both sides to know that each other is there in the first place. It was more accurately a massacre. But I agree with Parsecboy on the policy angle. Irondome (talk) 00:02, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
Also a fair point ;) Parsecboy (talk) 00:07, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
For info: Action of 22 September 1914. Irondome (talk) 00:19, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
The British at this point hadn't lost a squadron engagement on the high seas since the battle of Flamborough Head during the American war of Independence. They'd lost squadron battles on lakes (mostly to Americans) and single-ship actions (mostly to Americans), but losing a cruiser squadron at sea was a shock. 2404:4404:1408:CE00:6D26:DE20:4D5D:6F8A (talk) 11:59, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

@Parsecboy: Hello, I just realized that you are the user who greatly improved this article some years ago. I must apologize if I incorrectly added those references, but still, can you kindly find the references for footnotes such as "Strachan, p. 471", " Staff, pp. 29–30", "Bennett, p. 118", "Herwig, p. 158" and "Williamson, p. 39"? Please feel welcome to correct the recent references that I added. --Gabloc (talk) 01:33, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
Ah, I hadn't noticed I had never added the full citations to those - this is the main reason I've since started using {{sfn}} templates for citations, since it adds a red error message if the citations and references don't match up. Most of the books you've added are the wrong ones by those authors - I'll take care of them. Parsecboy (talk) 12:08, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

The reasoning for the attack on the islands versus some 'meatier' target seems very meager - why bother with some target at the bottom of the world when Germany's strategic needs were so clear - can the RS's provide more detail here? 50.111.8.86 (talk) 03:31, 22 June 2022 (UTC)