In December 1939 the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, one of the most advanced warships in the world, was cornered in the neutral harbour of Montevideo by a British fleet that did not exist. This documentary tells the full story of the Battle of the River Plate, the first major naval engagement of the Second World War, and explains why Captain Hans Langsdorff chose to scuttle his own ship rather than fight his way out. We follow Commodore Henry Harwood as he calculates where a lone raider will strike, the cruisers HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles as they take on a ship that outguns all three combined, and the extraordinary 72 hours in Montevideo when British diplomats, intelligence officers and a naval attaché convinced the Germans that the carrier Ark Royal and the battlecruiser Renown were waiting beyond the horizon, when in truth they were more than a thousand miles away. Using the German naval records captured at the end of the war, the script separates fact from legend, including the myth that Berlin ordered the scuttling, and looks at the real damage, the ammunition shortage and the captain's concern for his young crew that combined to end the career of the Kriegsmarine's finest commerce raider without a shot being fired at her in harbour. If you are interested in WW2 naval history, Royal Navy history, pocket battleships, the Graf Spee, HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax, HMS Achilles, Hans Langsdorff, Henry Harwood, Montevideo 1939 or the story of how Britain won a battle with information rather than firepower, this is the definitive account of the Battle of the River Plate.