War Crime or Operational Necessity?

[sharkbit]

While looking around uboat.net the other day, I was curious about what they had on Kapitänleutnant Heinz Eck, commander of the IXD2 U-852. He was executed, along with two of his officers, November 30, 1945 for destroying the lifeboats of the Greek merchant steamer Peleus. He was the only u-boat commander convicted of killing survivors.

Uboat net includes an interesting article(taken from a book) on the incident in quite a lot of detail, including the trial- if that is what it can be called.
It is a four chapter article. The link below takes you to the first chapter. There are links to the other chapters at the end of each.

http://uboat.net/articles/index.html?article=18&page=2

Guilty or not, the trial was a travesty of justice. The defense had no time to prepare, the British Judge Advocate wouldn't allow them any time to prepare and he pretty much had the defendants guilty in his head and would do anything to make sure that was going to happen. The defense made some crucial mistakes when Eck took the stand to testify.

I found the use of "Operational Necessity" as a defense quite interesting. Basically, Eck felt the wreckage would put his sub at risk from strong ASW forces in Freetown and he wanted to eliminate the wreckage to make it difficult to pinpoint his position. Other nationalities have used "operational necessity" as justification to eliminate surviviors of a sunken ship. Some are detailed in the article.

I can't do justice to the article and the conclusions here. Read the article. It's a little long but very interesting.

[GoldenRivet]

Killing men in their lifeboats is no more an operational necessity than shooting a man in a parachute.

Disperse what food and water if any you can spare, direct them toward the nearest land or shipping lanes and leave the area with speed.

I agree with the courts findings... shooting the survivors was not operational necessity, it was a war crime.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

Killing men in their lifeboats is no more an operational necessity than shooting a man in a parachute.

Disperse what food and water if any you can spare, direct them toward the nearest land or shipping lanes and leave the area with speed.

I agree with the courts findings... shooting the survivors was not operational necessity, it was a war crime.

Rgr that

[RustySubmarine]

Read that book and I agree there is no excuse for shooting survivors. He got what was coming and deserved to hang.

[flag4]

I believe there was a case of the british doing the same, I may be wrong - so don't shoot the messenger.

..its thin ice so tread carefully...

also the Laconia incident...

[GoldenRivet]

Many liners were armed and used for troop transport as well as carrying other vital war materials.

The laconia incident sucked. no doubt. however she was armed according to what i have read, and as such the U-boat commander attacked her rightfully.

The however they justified it by repeated occurrences where the Japanese sailors not wishing to surrender would draw a weapon or hand grenades and blow themselves up (usually killing or injuring would be rescuers in the process) the idea was to make an attempt at rescuing them... but if they so much as looked at you the wrong way you better shoot them dead.

its a razor sharp line to walk, but the thing to remember is he was convicted of war crimes because his side lost and thats what it boils down to

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by flag4

I believe there was a case of the british doing the same, I may be wrong - so don't shoot the messenger.

Bloody HMS Baralong...