Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Strange Journey of the SMS Emden

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

This is a preview, for the entire episode become a supporter of the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/107373024

Hey everyone, what you're about to listen to is a preview of a bonus episode that is available on our Patreon. If you like this clip, you can grab the whole episode, as well as years of other bonus content, at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. The captain was also something of an oddity. So, rather than being born into a naval family, being brought up in naval service, anything like that, Carl Friedrich's Max von Mueller was from a Prussian army family. And, you know, at the time that was a pretty big deal. Right. He was commissioned into the Prussian army, but eventually transferred over to the German Navy after his army career hit a fucking wall, namely due to the fact he was a violent drunk. And to be a violent, abusive drunk to the fact he was a violent drunk.

And to be a violent, abusive drunk in the Prussian army is still impressive. All right. I was going to say, so he's a sailor. Like, yeah, yeah, he fits right in. He's a violent drunk. It's a problem. We can't we can't deal with that in the army. You need to go get on a boat. I'm just picturing like the breathalyzer machine from The Simpsons.

He blows into it, and it just starts playing the German, the Prussian Navy, him. And it's just like, well, all right, you're a sailor now. You've crossed the blood alcohol threshold. Yeah, your blood is mostly coal dust and fucking beer. Yeah, it's a breathalyzer interlock on the ignition for the boat, but you have to have at least a.1 to get the boat started.

Fellas, you ever get so drunk, you wake up on a boat and you're the captain? Like... There's also a small problem. He got his first overseas posting to Tanzania, where he caught malaria that made him violently ill for years. So after he got out of the hospital, he kind of just got put behind a desk, but his malaria

was really fucking bad. He'd get out of the hospital, go work behind a desk. His malaria would come back. He'd have to go back to the hospital. And this happened for years until finally landing at the Naval office in Berlin between the years of 1909 and 1912, where someone realized like, he's actually kind of knowledgeable. Maybe we should put him on a boat because he's in the Navy.

He knows some stuff, but I don't want to deal with him. So... Where is it? All right, we can't fire him. Where is the farthest place we can station this motherfucker away? A boat bump and shot down. That is kind of what happened. Just like spinning the globe, where is the farthest place we can station this motherfucker away? Like it is kind of what happened. Like just like spinning the globe, looking at like the exact opposite side of being like, I don't know, do we have anybody there? Uh, and if not, why not? Yeah. Getting, getting a globe and a piece of string and just being like,

what's the longest piece of string? Get this motherfucker away from me. He just keeps getting drunk and having malaria shits everywhere. Oh man. he's Bolsonaro. So by 1913, at the age of 39, he got his first command. The SMSM did. You know what? Just because you're middle-aged doesn't mean that you can't be rising up in the ranks.

Look, when you're 39 in the Navy back then and getting your first command, that is not rising up the ranks. Yeah, I mean, that's like, you know, like 39-year-old like E4 status. Yeah, that's like, oh man, have you seen my new sergeant? He's 60. And this is a bad time to be a naval commander in the German Pacific. German command knew that their squadron would be outgunned and outnumbered and unable to protect their one real base in China when all this finally went live. So at the outset of World War

I, they ordered the Navy to ditch their Chinese base and go to the Marianas in order to organize themselves into a commerce raiding force. Not to raise the base or anything so it wouldn't fall into enemy hands, but rather to just assume they're going to lose it, leave it undefended in case of the inevitable situation of an allied attack because they knew we can't defend it. So let's not waste our time. So they just kind of left. They just kind of vacated the base. Now there's still people on the base.

All their facilities are still there, but the whole fleet just fucked off to the Marianas. I just love the idea of them all getting ready to steam. And they're all just doing the very obvious whistling thing, hands behind their backs, just rocking back and forth on their heels. It's a fucking Looney Tunes cartoon. How much would it fucking suck to be one of the ground crew guys at the base?

Why is everybody leaving? They wouldn't leave without us, right? No Hans they're gonna come get us they're not gonna come get us are they they're just going out for some bratwurst and some schnitzel where they're gonna be right back I'm sure the great Mariana schnitzel however since the squadron were all coal fired ships higher command was in effect abandoning the squadron as a whole. They needed a network of coal bases that remained functioning along with repair stations, but those had not been built throughout the Pacific holdings, only at the Chinese base.

So Mueller and his executive officer Helmuth von Mucht came up with the nice. Okay, so small note here. I have no idea what this man's last name. It's Mook gay or mooka. I'm not sure I'm gonna go mooka mooka I'm gonna fuck it up Germans and be mad at me either way helmet mocha now helmet muck Helmet muck I've had I've had that problem Yeah, you need to pedicel after that. You gotta clean out of the helmet or you get the muck.

Yeah, you get the helmet muck from, you know, do 12 hour patrol, can't take your helmet off, you got some helmet muck. Yeah, so Mukka, he came up with an idea. If the German Navy wasn't going to give them reinforcements or resupplies, they would simply have to make some. They captured the Russian civilian liner, the Ryazan, and they quickly kicked the civilians off and decided that they should make it into an ad hoc cruiser.

However, they didn't have the guns, ammo, or supplies needed to complete this transformation. Those were all still at their Chinese base. So, Mucca pointed out, let's just go back to the base and kind of break into it. Because the Germans assumed the British would have taken the base over, or at the very least have it under surveillance for when the squadron got back. But they didn't. They just had ignored it, leaving its staff of several hundred German sailors and engineers untouched with all of their supply depots in Intact and probably very pissed like you imagine steaming back six months later and everybody's like oh now you're back now

Did you bring schnitzel? No, you need guns. Oh, okay. Okay. That's exactly what happened So like they show up to the base like hey, we need to turn this motherfucker into a warship everybody swarms down to start building it and they're like, oh, well, we need a crew. And there is no shortage of people at the base. Like I volunteer, give me the fuck out of here because I know you guys aren't going to come back. And that's how they staff the whole thing. Dad came back from going in to get a pack of cigarettes once, you know, you're not going to, you know. Yeah, exactly.

Let me ask you, Joe, are there on this island, are there native inhabitants too? I mean, this we're in China. This is where the bases in China and the Marianas Yes, but so are there in like this general area Chinese You know, I didn't know if it was it might be some kind of Polynesian Group of people but I'm just wondering if there's like some some very blue-eyed German looking kids running around China from the leftovers I mean probably anywhere that any of these Imperial bases got stationed, they left behind unwanted children. Like they're a Kasabian father.

But I mean, in the Chinese base specifically, like, uh, you know, it's part, it, they stole it from the empire of China and the Marianas there's, uh, Polynesian people live in the Marianas. Okay. Um, and all of these islands are all inhabited to some extent, even if they're, you know, not that many people. Like some of the islands we're gonna talk about. A lot of these islands are little more than a speck of dirt. And people that live on them

probably don't live on them all the time. You know, they are quite migratory at the time because they live on a speck of dirt. You know, they got there somehow, they're gonna leave somehow. There's a bunch of Germans on this dirt. Yeah, I don't want to be here anymore. As someone who lives by a tourist spot that is Swarmed by German tourists whenever the weather gets over 60 degrees. I empathize.

People love to go visit the war criminals? No, that's not it. Germans love to go visit the Hague. It's the beach mostly. Have to go see Uncle Hans at the Hague. at the Hague. It's the beach mostly. Have to go see Uncle Hans at the Hague. However, when the Emden got back to the German base in the Marianas, the squadron commander, Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee, came to the conclusion that, Our mission is completely pointless. We can't supply ourselves and we're going to be immediately destroyed by the Allies. We should sail back towards Germany

and aid in what he called the real war effort. Virtually everyone agreed to this, other than Mueller, who insisted that his ship could remain behind. And as crazy as this sounds, it does make a little sense. The Germans didn't have enough supplies in the Pacific for their squadron to operate, but they did have more than enough supplies

for one or two ships. So Mueller argued that using those, he could continue raiding Allied supply lines. And since he would be acting as something of a rogue guerrilla force at sea on his own, it would make him far harder to track down than their entire force, than if everybody remained behind. That is kind of like what they ended up doing like 20 years later during World War II.

They would just kind of send out like a rogue battleship or something just to get kind of sporty in the Atlantic. Yeah, go bomb around and if you see somebody that's not German, fuck them up a little bit. Yeah, that's kind of what they did. I mean, SPIE agreed and they parted ways, leaving Mueller a supply tender to help him. As soon as the squadron left, unfortunately, Mueller got more words of the realities of war. Japan's about to declare war on us too. Oh no.

A bad time to be in the fucking Pacific. I mean, in fairness, at least you got a warning. Yeah, I mean, this is World War I where people are like, I'll have you know in one week's time, we will declare at least you got a warning. Yeah, I mean, this is World War I where people are like, I'll have you know in one week's time we will declare war on you at high noon. Alright, thanks. It's being tapped across the Atlantic Ocean on Morse code things. It really takes away from the declaration of war when you have to... They send a physical guy out to you to just slap your face with a glove.