The Automedon Affair

[el cid again]

The commander of the German raider Atlantis, and future commander of the post war
Federal Republic of Germany Navy, was the most successful officer of his type. The year
before the affair involving the Automedon - a very fast passenger/cargo ship -
he had captured the City of Baghdad - "in the process discovering a top secret manual
containing all of the BAMS (British Merchant Shipping) seret codes as they existed on
17 July, 1939.

This time, aside from capturing the newest versio of the BAMS code, he intercepted a
key report written by the governor of Malaya, on leave in the UK, at the request of
Churchill. Recognizing its import, he suspended raider operations, and sailed for Japan
in a REAL Allied merchantman (a captured Norwegan tanker), delivering the report to
the German embassy. The report was sent by courrier to Germany across the Soviet
Union by rail, but an executive summary written by Capt Rugge was sent by postal
telegraph code, which was not monitored by Allied intelligence. Hitler directed the
material be given to the Japanese Embassy in Berlin. In due couse the material
reached Imperial General Headquartes. It persuaded Adm Yamamoto that his one
reservation about the plan to attack Pearl Harbor - the the RN would simply cancel out
any strategic advantage by sending a fleet to the Far East if Japan negated the United
States Fleet in Hawaii - was no longer germane. The material below is a quote from
Japanese Intelligence in World War II. An article in Sea Classics, with the above Title,
contains much more information about the story. This quote actually understates
the content of the 87 paragraphs, and fails to correctly identify its author or his
office, but the Sea Classics article does both. Quote:

The Automedon affair subsequently influenced IJN strategy.465
Automedon was a British Blue Funnel cargo liner that was
sunk by a German raider, Atlantis, in the Indian Ocean on
November II, 1940. Automedon possessed a secret copy of the
British War Cabinet Minutes for August 1940, which was
being sent to Singapore from Liverpool, and the document
was captured by the Germans. It consisted of 87 paragraphs
and showed a blueprint of the British Far Eastern strategy.
This document indicated that Britain would not go to war
against Japan, even if the Japanese Army invaded French
IndoChina. In the document, British Chiefs of Staff regarded
Thailand and Hong Kong as indefensible against Japanese
attack.466
Bernhard Rogge, captain of the Atlantis, recognized the
significance of the document and sent it to the German naval
attaché in Tokyo, Rear Admiral Paul Wenneker. In Berlin, the
Japanese naval attaché, Captain Tadao Yokoi, sent a summary
of the document to the Navy Ministry in Tokyo. On December
12, 1940, Wenneker handed the document to Admiral
Nobutake Kondo, the Vice Chief of Staff, and talked about
Britain’s overstretched empire. At that time, Hitler was urging
Japan to attack Singapore to weaken the British Empire.
Admiral Koshiro Oikawa referred to this information in
December 1940 and he had a conviction that Britain would
not wage a war against Japan over French Indo-China. As
mentioned above, Admiral Yamamoto ordered his junior, Vice
Admiral Onishi, to plan the Pearl Harbor operation in January
1941, just after the Automedon affair.
465 Also

[dr.hal]

This is your second post revealing this type of information. Can you post a URL?

[Skyros]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Automedon

Pretty common knowledge, here is wikipedias version.

[Kereguelen]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

The commander of the German raider Atlantis, and future commander of the post war
Federal Republic of Germany Navy, was the most successful officer of his type.

Bernhard Rogge commander of the post war German navy????? Where on earth did you copy this text from?

[bigred]

wiki Bernhard Rogge

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Kereguelen

ORIGINAL: el cid again

The commander of the German raider Atlantis, and future commander of the post war
Federal Republic of Germany Navy, was the most successful officer of his type.

Bernhard Rogge commander of the post war German navy????? Where on earth did you copy this text from?

From my original copy of the Sea Classics article - which I cited. Regretfully, Sea Classics does not
put a date or issue number on each page, and I failed to record the issue when I filed the article.
The material is widely quoted in part in other places, including a book I found and posted from online,
but the article remains the most complete source I have seen or is in my file set (with over 10,000 pages
on WWII, and even more on China/PLA). My files are drawn from magazines and journals, academic and
technical papers, notes, booklets or photocopies of documents - many originals from museums or
archives or researchers. I help authors with historical technical research in English, Japanese and German.
My focus (foci?) are ships, aircraft, radar, AFVs, and WMD - in particular Axis aspects of all of these. In
the current era I study PLA/PLAN - and find remarkable parallels with IJA/IJN - including overspecialization,
lack of numbers of high tech units/platforms required to sustain a long war, and a focus on surprise attack
sans a declaration of war to obtain a temporary, initial advantage.

Here is a bio on Rogge in Wiki: QUOTE

Bernhard Rogge (4 November 1899 – 29 June 1982) was a Captain (German: Kapitän zur See) of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) who, during World War II, commanded a merchant raider.

Born in Schleswig, he was one of many German officers who were forced to apply for a German Blood Certificate, that would allow their racial background to be overlooked (he had a Jewish grandparent). [1]

He was awarded a Japanese ornate Samurai sword and the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his actions as the commander of the Hilfskreuzer (auxiliary cruiser) Atlantis (Schiff 16).

Rogge eventually became a Vizeadmiral (vice-admiral--equivalent to a two star admiral during World War II) by the end of World War II, and, when the West German Bundesmarine was established after the war, returned to service as a Konteradmiral (rear-admiral--a two star admiral).

Rogge also was one of the few German officers of flag rank who was not arrested by the Allies after the war. This was due to the way he had exercised his command of Atlantis.


Further Quote later on:

The skipper of the British vessel, City of Baghdad, which the Atlantis sunk in July 1941, stated, "His treatment of prisoners left respect, instead of hatred". The Captain of the City of Baghdad, J. Armstrong White, later wrote the foreword to Atlantis, the Story of a German Surface Raider, written by U. Mohr & A. V. Sellwood.