Germany's submarine operations in the South Atlantic were critically im-portant to the war effort. Neutral Argentina was growing rich providing both the Allies and the Axis with beef, leather, wool, and other agricultural products.
Under international law, a neutral country's merchant ships bound from one neutral country to another could not be torpedoed. Thus, Germany-bound supplies were shipped in Argentine and other neutral bottoms to neutral Portu-gal or Spain, then transshipped by rail through occupied France to Germany.
England, of course, was also free to use neutral merchantmen as far as Spain or Portugal, and sometimes did so. But there was no way to transship by land cargoes from Spain or Portugal to England, and the moment a merchant-man, neutral or otherwise, left a Spanish or Portuguese port for England, it was fair game for German submarines.
The Allied solution to this problem was to use their own merchantmen. These sailed up the Atlantic Coast of South America under the protection of Brazilian warships, and then of the U.S. Navy, until the ships could join well-protected England-bound convoys sailing from ports on the Gulf of Mexico and on the Eastern seaboard of the United States.
Consequently, the best-often the only-place where German submarines could attack England-bound merchant ships was on the high seas between the mouth of the River Plate, when they left protected Argentinian/Uruguayan neu-tral territory and before they came under Brazilian Navy protection.
It was a very long way-more than 7,000 nautical miles-from the subma-rine pens in Germany and France to the mouth of the river Plate. As a practical matter, submarines on station in the South Atlantic could not return to their home ports for replenishment. Under the best conditions it was a forty-day round trip, and submarines returning to the South Atlantic arrived already out of fresh food and low on fuel.
Replenishment ships, stocked with everything the submarines needed, were the obvious solution. But either German Navy or civilian cargo vessels ran the great risk of being interdicted and sunk, either en route to the South Atlantic or while on station on the high seas, waiting to replenish submarines. And "neu-tral" merchantmen serving as replenishment vessels weren't the solution either, as any "neutral" vessel suspected of being a replenishment vessel was shad-owed by Allied warships on the high seas and off the Uruguayan and Argentine coasts.
The solution to the problem was to take advantage of Argentine neutral-ity-with the secret support of some high-ranking Argentine officers.
A Spanish-registered merchantman was secretly loaded with fuel, torpe-does, and other supplies in Bremen. It returned to Spain, and then sailed from Spain for Buenos Aires, as a neutral vessel bound from one neutral port to an-other, and thus safe from Allied interdiction.
It anchored "with engine problems" within Argentine waters in the Bay of Samboromb¢n in the river Plate estuary. With the Argentine Navy and Coast Guard looking the other way, submarines were able to take on fuel, weapons, and fresh food and then resume their patrols.
It didn't take the Americans long to figure that out.
Reluctant to violate Argentine neutrality by sending warships into Argen-tine waters to take out a "neutral" merchantman, the Americans turned to covert operation. They sent a team of OSS agents to blow the ship up. But when they arrived, Gr?ner's contacts in Argentine intelligence warned him of the presence of the OSS team, and later identified them.
Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay had a criminal element quite as vicious as any in Berlin or Hamburg. Gr?ner had little trouble contracting with a group of Argentine smugglers to eliminate this OSS team on the river Plate, and then with a group of Paraguayans to eliminate the Argentines when they went to Paraguay "until things cooled down."
The Americans then sent a second team of OSS agents to Buenos Aires, and again they were identified to Gr?ner by German sympathizers in the Ar-gentine military. Though Gr?n
er attempted to eliminate the team chief, the at-tempt failed. And shortly after the replacement replenishment vessel-the Portuguese-registered Reine de la Mer-arrived in the Bay of Samboromb¢n with a fresh cargo of torpedoes and fuel, she was blown to bits, taking to the bottom with her a submarine that was tied up alongside taking on fuel. There were no survivors.
Gr?ner didn't know exactly how this was accomplished. But he suspected the infiltration into Argentina of a team of U.S. Navy underwater demolition ex-perts-with the assistance of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade. Frade also doubtless helped the team in its exfiltration from that country.
It was a monumental disaster for submarine operations. The Reine de la Mer had managed to refuel and otherwise replenish only one submarine before it was destroyed. Afterward, Gr?ner had no idea how many other submarines- he guessed ten, or perhaps a dozen-were ranging the South Atlantic counting on replenishment in Samboromb¢n Bay.
What those submarines did when they were advised that fuel and food- not to mention torpedoes or ammunition for their cannon-were not going to be available in the South Atlantic was unpleasant to think about.
Even the obvious-heading for the submarine pens on the coast of France-was not possible for some of them. They did not have the necessary fuel for the twenty-day voyage.
There were options, of course. There are always options. They could ren-dezvous at sea with other submarines. Those with reserve fuel could share it with those whose tanks were empty. As a last desperate measure, one subma-rine could theoretically tow another.
Gr?ner had heard nothing of what actually happened. The German em-bassy in Buenos Aires was told only what it was necessary for it to know. Sig-nificantly, Gr?ner thought, there had been no word of a replacement for the Reine de la Mer. Which probably meant that none was en route. There was a possibility, of course, that the completely unexpected-and catastrophic-loss of the Reine de la Mer had so upset people that Buenos Aires would learn of a replacement vessel only when it entered Argentine waters.
It was also possible, of course, that a midocean rendezvous had taken place, with the submarines receiving at least fuel from the tanks of German surface warships, or perhaps even from merchantmen, German or otherwise, which would at least get them back to the sub pens in France.
But for all practical purposes, the destruction of the Reine de la Mer had brought submarine operations in the South Atlantic to a halt.
El Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade had been one of the most powerful men in Argentina. It was scarcely a secret that he had been the power behind the Grupo de Oficiales Unidos, who were reliably reported to be about to stage a coup against the government of President Ramon S. Castillo. At one time, Frade, a close friend of General Pedro P. Ramirez, the Argentine Minister of War, had been thought to be, like Ramirez, very sympathetic to the German cause.
That had changed. In an unexpectedly masterful stroke on their part, the Americans sent in Frade's long-estranged son. Blood, Gr?ner knew, was indeed stronger than water, and he himself knew the strong emotion-mixed pride and love-a father felt for a son who was a heroic aviator.
Gr?ner now acknowledged that he had allowed that knowledge to color his judgment. Young Frade had turned out to be more than a son sent to tug on the heartstrings of a father from whom he had been long separated. He was also a professional intelligence officer. The bodies of the two highly qualified assas-sins sent to eliminate him, and the blown-up Reine de la Mer, were absolute proof of that.
After a good deal of thought, Gr?ner decided that Goltz had waited to come to Argentina until the operation to eliminate el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade was carried out. If Goltz had been in Argentina, some would suspect he was in-volved in that. Because of the implications of the Frade elimination, and of his own and Ambassador von Lutzenberger's objections to it, Gr?ner also decided that the order to eliminate Frade must have come from higher up-perhaps from Canaris or Ribbentrop. But he wasn't sure. In his experience, highly placed SS-SD officers were very good at arranging for fingers of suspicion to point at other people.
There would be a long list of other items on Goltz's agenda, of course, mat-ters that interested the upper echelons of the Nazi hierarchy.
This secondary list would start with questions concerning how long it had taken him to deal with the problem of el Coronel Jorge Guillermo Frade once the order to eliminate him was given. This would be followed by the ritual in-quiries into the level of devotion to the F?hrer personally and to National So-cialism generally by members of the Embassy staff from Ambassador Manfred Alois Graf von Lutzenberger downward.
Goltz and his superiors would also be interested in what he had done, and was doing, to aid the escape and repatriation of the officers of the Graf Spee who had been interned in Argentina since the ship was scuttled.