Uruguay to melt Nazi bronze eagle, recast it as peace dove [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

By AFP
Published June 16, 2023



Uruguay's Supreme Court has ruled the eagle was the property of the state - Copyright ALFREDO ETCHEGARAY/AFP/File HO

Uruguay will melt down a bronze eagle found on a sunken World War II-era German destroyer off its coast 13 years ago, and recast it as a dove of peace, the South American country’s president said Friday.

The 350-kilogram (770-pound) “symbol of violence and war” will be turned into a “symbol of peace and union,” President Luis Lacalle Pou told journalists in the capital Montevideo.

The two-meter (6.5-foot)-tall bird with a Nazi swastika gripped in its talons adorned the stern of the Admiral Graf Spee, a battleship involved in one of the first naval skirmishes of World War II.

The Graf Spee’s captain, Hans Langsdorff, scuttled the battleship — one of the Third Reich’s largest — on December 17, 1939 following the Battle of the River Plate.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/uruguay-to-melt-nazi-bronze-eagle-recast-it-as-peace-dove/article