Nazi bronze eagle to be recast as peace dove

Uruguay’s president has promised to melt down a bronze eagle found on a sunken World War II-era German destroyer and recast it as a peace dove.

The 350-kilogram "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-metre-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 Admiral 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.

The sculpture was found in 2006 after a 10-year hunt in the River Plate off Montevideo.

Last year, Uruguay's Supreme Court ruled the eagle was the property of the state, after a long a legal battle between the salvagers and the state.

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Uruguay to melt Nazi bronze eagle, recast it as peace dove (France24)

Photo: The bronze eagle from the Admiral Graf Spree salvaged in 2006 (Simon Wiesenthal Centre)