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...

[jonmar]

I remember seeing a documentary where they actually showed a Japanese survivor in the water pulling the pin off a grenade and blowing himself up. It was pretty rough to watch.

There was another documentary with footage of American soldiers approaching Japanese civilians and they showed a mother holding a baby jump off a cliff because of the horror stories they'd been told about the American troops by their propaganda.

Sorry for getting off topic. To reply to the OP yeah I definitely would say it was a war crime. GoldenRivet's analogy of shooting a man in a parachute was spot on.

[Jimbuna]

BARALONG had gone as quickly as possible to the scene in the Irish Sea off the Old Head of Kinsale after the Cunard liner LUSITANIA had been torpedoed and sunk without warning by the German submarine U-20 on 7 May 1915 with the loss of 1,198 lives, but the submarine was well clear of the area when she arrived. This caused outrage in the U.K. and in the neutral world and when next in port, BARALONG’s Captain was told verbally by the Admiralty that it “was most undesirable to take any enemy submarine prisoners”. This statement may well have led to the subsequent “BARALONG Affair “

[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?

[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.

[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.