War Crime or Operational Necessity?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

Japanese sailors not wishing to surrender would draw a weapon or hand grenades and blow themselves up

And it looks like that's exactly what happened in that film clip. The .45 made the splash following the blast, but unless he was shot with a 40mm AA gun that guy definitely blew himself up.

The only confirmed incident of an American captain ordering survivors to be shot was Dudley Morton, and he claimed they shot first. He could be a war criminal, or it could have happened the way he said it did. He died later, along with his crew, so there is no real evidence one way or the other.

[HW3]

There was also the American destroyers escorting convoys before America entered the war. They attacked German u-boats, and there was at least one case of them dropping depth charges on a sinking u-boat while the u-boat survivors were swimming in the water. There were no survivors left after the depth charges went off. America was supposed to be neutral at this time?

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by HW3

There was also the American destroyers escorting convoys before America entered the war. They attacked German u-boats, and there was at least one case of them dropping depth charges on a sinking u-boat while the u-boat survivors were swimming in the water. There were no survivors left after the depth charges went off. America was supposed to be neutral at this time?

You are referring of course to the USS Niblack which did drop depth charges on a German U-boat in April of 1941. supposedly while picking up survivors from a merchant ship the Niblack detected a submarine which appeared to maneuver into firing position. in the commander's defense the depth charge barrage appeared to be more of a "warning shot" than an all out attack. as it was the intent to drive the u-boat away rather than to sink her.

Ideally these escorts (including the battleship USS Texas) were meant to protect American ships which were sailing into an active war zone even though america was not in the war.

As for dropping depth charges on survivors... i read about this in torpedo junction... An American Destroyer attacked a u-boat during paukenschlag in spring of 42, the u-boat surfaced momentarily, a hand full of men left the boat and then it submerged quickly. The Destroyer commander feared this may be a ploy to have the destroyer maneuver to pick up survivors only to be attacked while sitting still so he continued his depth charging of the sonar target (the sinking U-boat)

of course depth charges in the water with swimmers is a bad mix.

It has even occurred that survivors of a sinking destroyer swimming in the water would in fact be killed by their own weapons as secondary explosions took place aboard their sinking ship.

I have read that the shockwave of the underwater explosion hits your body and causes major damage to internal organs, leaving you more or less appearing to have no injuries - except that you are dead and may have blood seeping from one or more orifices.

make no mistake... its a nasty business when men are caught up in a "them or us" situation - a situation war will always provide us with

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by HW3

...and there was at least one case of them dropping depth charges on a sinking u-boat while the u-boat survivors were swimming in the water. There were no survivors left after the depth charges went off. America was supposed to be neutral at this time?

Do you have a reference for that incident? Yes, American destroyers helped escort convoys in which American merchants took part. American destroyers did help attack u-boats when American merchants were sunk. Four American destroyers were attacked, and two of them were sunk. All that is true. What I have been unable to find is any record of an American destroyer successfully sinking a u-boat before America entered the war, much less depth-charging and killing the survivors of said boat. Maybe it happened after we entered the war - I didn't check anything after 1941. Please provide something that supports this claim.

[edit] I just read GoldenRivet's account, which says the incident took place in 1942.

[HW3]

I should know better than to post from memory. I should have looked it up first. My point was to say both sides committed war time atrocities, Germany's are just more well known due to Nuremberg.

[J0313]

My Granddad served aboard the USS Grenadier form the begining of the boats life till its end when they had to scuttle her form damage sustained in action in April of 1943. He told me a few very interesting things while I was growing up. Infact I heard all his stories so many times ( my Grand parents adopted me when I was 2 ) I could resite them like I had been there right along with them. He told me several times that US. fleet boats would shoot Jap survivors in the water. They did this for several reasons.

#1. Most survivors would'nt allow themselves to be rescued and thus captured. This represented a security risk for the boat becouse if the survivor and or survivors were later picked up by friendlies, they could give info that could lead to the boat being located.

#2. All nations tended to dehumanize thier enemies. This was nessasary in order to wage the kind of war that was being fought, TOTAL WAR. That means that no one is safe and everything is a legitimate target. Most American servicemen who fought in the Pacific theatre hated the Japanese at the time. This was understandable. The attack on Pearl Harbor cemented the unhuman quality of the Japanese in the minds of most Americans.

So as I stated before, history and who is a criminal and who is not is dictated by the winner. All though I know that our side was right and just in our cause to defeat the axis powers, no side came out perfectly clean in that war. So I can understand why the German Commander did what he did. He was just unlucky enough to be on the losing side of the war.

[raymond6751]

Just finished reading a book about US subs by Ed Beach. In it he told of his captain, Lt Cmdr Momsun, ordering Japs in the water to be machinegunned, and they were. His reasoning was that it was no different than an aircraft bombing and strafing a troop train.

The winners make the rules. If Germany had won several Allied hangings would have taken place. War is all about death.

[Jimbuna]

I was expecting that.

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

I was expecting that.

What?
The last post or the one where a real ParaTrooper can tell you that as a ParaTrooper your just as good a target as any on the ground?

[Gustav Schiebert]

I happen to have studied Eck quite extensively for work (did a long essay on Morality and Legality of Submarine Warfare in WWII for a POs promotion course).

Eck was certainly guilty of a war crime by Allied standards. As was pointed out at the start, the article makes it clear that the trial was pretty poor - as were the vast majority of German war crimes trials. Although that article does seem fairly heavily biased in favour of Eck in my opinion.

Doenitz himself says:

I could not approve of the actions of this commander, for an officer must not in any circumstances depart from the accepted moral principals governing the conduct of war ... Lt Cdr [sic] Eck had an extremely difficult decision to make. He was responsible for the safety of his boat and it's crew, and in wartime that is a heavy responsibility. I believe it was the same locality and time that four boats were, in fact, bombed. If with that in mind he believed that he would have been discovered and destroyed had he refrained from the action he took - if it was on these grounds that he acted as he did, then I am sure that any German court martial would have taken the fact into consideration. When the fight is over one sees things a little differently, I think, and one is inclined to be less conscious of the tremendous responsibility resting on the shoulders of the unfortunate captain.

Ten Years and Twenty Days, Doenitz, 1958. My italics.

As with all these issues it's never black and white - although this is pretty far over towards 'war crime' on the scale, and as Doenitz alluded to if he had survived he probably would have faced a German court martial.

But British and American forces took similar actions - machine-gunning surrendering Germans was very well-documented in the surrender of U-570 to name but one instance - and there are estimated to have been many more than the few that were known. Allied ships frequently refused to take on board U-boat survivors who refused to give their boat number or commander's name.

People who argue it's not a p***ing contest, proving your enemy did it (particularly when he won the war and has put you on trial) does not excuse your doing it - you're probably right morally. But legally, this was a valid defence and the main reason Doenitz himself was not executed at Nuremberg was he proved the US had practised unrestricted submarine warfare.

There is also the side issue, on a personal note, that leaving the moral aspect aside I would say spending all night blowing up floats with grenades would be a very poor use of one's time, given the very likely possibility that you'd loose six hours' chase time, and quite probably miss some wreckage in the dark. Without wanting to be an armchair general about this I would have thought best speed, clear off in an unexpected direction (NW or W in this case) would be wisest. But I wasn't there.

In summary - it's a shocking case, but people who are genuinely shocked by Eck's actions should probably read a little wider into the actions of Germans and Allies alike, in all theatres, and on land sea and in the air. It was a very brutal decision and certainly not a moral one - but there is sufficient doubt about legality that he may have stood a good chance of defending himself in any theoretical 'perfect' neutral court.