Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou had a change of mind Sunday regarding the bronze eagle from the Third Reich's battleship Admiral Graf Spee and announced it would not be turned into a dove of peace because “an overwhelming majority did not share” his decision. However, he did not specify what will happen to the piece.
The man-sized, 350 kilos bronze eagle holding the Nazi emblem in its claws, rescued from the remains of the German battleship scuttled in the River Plate will be turned into a dove of peace, to be located somewhere along the Uruguayan coast where the mighty River Plate becomes the Atlantic Ocean.
Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou Friday announced that the bronze eagle retrieved from the wreckage of the German World War II battleship Admiral Graf Spee in 2006 will be transformed into a dove as a “symbol of peace and union” by local artist Pablo Atchugarry, whose work is expected to be completed by November, it was reported in Montevideo.
This Sunday, December first members of the HMS Ajax and River Plate Veterans leave for Chile, Uruguay and Argentina to recall events of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the River Plate, 13 December 1939.
Uruguay's government must sell a huge, bronze Nazi eagle, and gun ranging telemeter, salvaged from a sunken World War II era Nazi Germany warship, a court ruled on Friday. The nearly 350 kilo eagle with a swastika held in its claws was part of the stern of the German “pocket battleship” Admiral Graf Spee that was sunk off the coast of Montevideo in December 1939, that is almost eighty years ago.