Influenced by his honoured neighbours, Langsdorff entered the Kiel Naval Academy against his parents' wishes in 1912.

In October 1925, Langsdorff was posted to the Defence Ministry in Berlin to coordinate relations between the navy and the army.

Following the rise to power of the Nazis, Langsdorff requested duty at sea in 1934, but was instead appointed to the Interior Ministry.

On 21 August 1939, Admiral Graf Spee left port with orders to raid enemy commercial shipping in the South Atlantic following the outbreak of the Second World War.

Over the next 10 weeks, Langsdorff and Admiral Graf Spee were extremely successful, stopping and sinking nine British merchant ships, totalling over 50,000 tons.

Langsdorff adhered to the Hague Conventions and avoided killing anyone; his humane treatment won the respect of the ships' officers detained as his prisoners.

But she had fired a critically effective 8-inch shell into Spee, destroying steam boilers needed to operate the ship's fuel cleaning system.

[citation needed] Langsdorff learned that he had 16 hours of pre-cleaned fuel in his ready tanks—with no hope of replacement or repairs to the system at sea.

Langsdorff sought orders from Berlin, and was given instructions that the ship was not to be interned in Uruguay (which was sympathetic to Britain), or to be allowed to fall into enemy hands, but he was given no directive as to what action to take.

He wrote on 19 December 1939:[1] I can now only prove by my death that the fighting services of the Third Reich are ready to die for the honour of the flag.

[2] His body was buried in the German section of the La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Dudley Pope noted in his book The Battle of the River Plate that an Imperial naval ensign was the flag Langsdorf laid down upon when he shot himself.