BREMEN ELUDES BRITISH NAVY IN DASH HOME
BERLIN, Dec. 12, 1939 — The great liner Bremen steamed safely into German waters tonight, once more escaping the British Navy's net on its homeward voyage from Murmansk, its Russian Arctic refuge. German authorities said it had arrived within an unidentified ``safe zone'' under command of Capt. A. Ahrens, the skipper who took the liner out of New York Aug. 30 and sailed it into Murmansk by a far northern route.
Earlier authorities had indicated that it was expected at a German port, presumably Bremerhaven.
They asserted that German scouting planes were hovering over the Bremen as it neared a home port after an absence of more than three months and that these planes compelled a British submarine which was encountered to submerge.
Germans insisted that the scouting planes did not constitute a convoy and for that reason it would have been a violation of international law had the submarine torpedoed the Bremen without warning.
The Monitor is looking back at the events of World War II.