On 18 January 1944, the U-852 sailed from Kiel on her first and last operational mission. As usual, only her captain, Kapitänleutnant (Lieutenant) Heinz Eck, knew the details of the mission, but the 66 crewmen on board surmised they were bound for the Far East as the boat was crammed with 150 days’ worth of provisions. The Type IXD2 submarine also carried two Bachstelze rotor-kites (one-man, towed autogiros), which were used to find targets and were issued only to boats heading for the Indian Ocean. The boat was intended for long-range operations, for which she had a surface endurance of 32,000 nautical miles at ten knots. She was armed with six torpedo tubes, a single 105-mm gun, two antiaircraft cannon (one 37 mm and one 20 mm), and some small arms.
The U-852 passed the Faroe Islands on 30 January and by early March reached the Equator, where the captain felt sufficiently confident to proceed on the surface. At about 1600, 13 March, the officer of the watch spotted a plume of smoke, and the U-852 closed rapidly to discover a Greek steamer, the SS Peleus, plodding along on her own some 250 miles southwest of Ascension Island. The Peleus was bound from Freetown to the River Plate, with a crew of 35: 9 officers (8 Greek and 1 British) and 26 foremast hands (10 Greek, 8 British, 2 Egyptian, 3 Chinese, and 1 each from Russia, Poland, and Chile). Nobody on the tramp saw the surfaced U-boat chasing them; consequently, by 1920, the U-852 was only 600 yards away when Eck fired two torpedoes, both of which hit the target on the starboard side and caused devastating damage. The ship sank in less than three minutes, with no time to launch the lifeboats. Approximately 12 survivors found themselves in the water, clinging to rafts and floating debris.
There was a great deal of shouting and blowing of whistles as the officers sought to assemble the survivors, while the U-852 cruised slowly nearby. Eck summoned his senior engineer, Kapitänleutnant Hans Lenz, who spoke some English, and ordered him to question the survivors. First, however, a machine-gun was brought out in case the survivors attempted to storm the small group on the foredeck. Lenz then called for an officer, and Third Officer Kefalas identified himself and was summoned on board the U-boat. Lenz asked Kefalas questions about the identity of the vessel, her destination, and whether there were any aircraft carriers in the vicinity, to which Kefalas gave evasive answers. He did, however, hand over a life-belt with the name Peleus painted on it, which was taken below as evidence of the sinking. Kefalas was then sent back to his raft, with an assurance from Lenz that Allied help would come the next day. The U-852 moved off into the darkness, leaving the senior survivor, Chief Officer Liassos, to assemble the survivors and work out what to do next.
The U-852 had moved some 1,000 meters away when Eck suddenly ordered that more weapons and five hand-grenades be passed up from below. Four enlisted lookouts and five officers—Eck, Marinestabsarzt (lieutenant [medical corps]) Walter Weisspfennig, Leutnantzur See (second lieutenant) August Hoffmann, Lenz, and Oberleutnant zur See (lieutenant [j.g.]) Gerhard Colditz—were on the bridge at the time. Eck then announced to the officers gathered around him that the wreckage was to be destroyed and that a machine-gun was to be mounted on one of the railings at the rear of the conning tower. Lenz, who had just reported the outcome of his interrogation of Kefalas, immediately protested to his captain that this was an illegal act, as the survivors surely would be killed. Eck overruled him, and so the engineer went below.
Despite his noncombatant status, the doctor was the first to open fire, but after a few bursts, his machinegun jammed. The U-boat’s gunnery officer, Hoffmann, cleared the stoppage and then carried on firing. After some time, it became apparent that the rafts were not sinking, so the submarine maneuvered closer, and a signalling lamp was shone on the wreckage. Hoffmann then dropped hand grenades into the rafts—but they still did not sink. Hoffmann also suggested using the 37-mm cannon, but Eck refused, because it could not be depressed sufficiently to engage such close-range targets. The shooting had been going on for some time when Matrosenobergefreiter (leading seaman) Schwender, a 19-year-old able-bodied seaman on his first voyage, entered the bridge for the midnight watch. Eck ordered him to fire the machine-gun at the wreckage, but after a few bursts there was a stoppage. Meanwhile, Lenz had returned to the bridge. While below, he had been busy reloading the torpedo tubes and adjusting the trim, but had heard intermittent firing. Back on the bridge, he was very surprised to see Schwender manning one of the machineguns. Despite his earlier protests to the captain, Lenz elbowed the seaman away from the gun, cleared the stoppage, and fired several bursts.
Finally, at about 0100, Eck decided to leave the scene. When he went below, however, he sensed that many of the crew were upset by what had been going on, so he used the public address system to tell them that he had decided on the shooting with “a heavy heart,” but that it had been necessary. He reminded them of recent U-boat losses, including that of U-848, which had been sunk on 5 November 1943 very close to where they had just attacked the Peleus and ended by saying that their families in Germany were being pounded nightly by the Allied air forces.
Unfortunately for him, Eck had not been as efficient as he could have been. During the firing, the Peleus crewmen in the water feigned being dead and made no attempt to help each other when the light from the submarine shone in their direction. So despite all the shooting, four men survived: Chief Officer Liassos and Third Officer Kefalas, both wounded by hand grenades, and two sailors, Said Rocco, a British greaser from Aden, and Dimitros Argiros, a Greek sailor, both unwounded. Liassos and Kefalas were on one raft, the sailors on another, and the rafts drifted together on the seventh day. The two sailors helped tend to Kefalas’s wounds, but his condition deteriorated and he died on the 25th day. Finally, 32 days after the attack on the Peleus, a Portuguese steamer picked up the three survivors and landed seven days later.
The three men immediately filed reports about their terrible ordeal, but although Liassos was able to give the location of the sinking with some accuracy, none of them could give any indication of the identity of the submarine. Nevertheless, the British publicized the reports and kept their eyes open.
On 1 April 1944, Eck torpedoed a British cargo ship off Capetown and then, having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, sailed northward, transmitting his positions to U-boat headquarters as he went. These were, as usual, received and decrypted by the British ‘Ultra’ Organization, and so the Royal Air Force at Aden was expecting U-852’s arrival. On 2 May, a Wellington antisubmarine warfare bomber surprised the U-boat on the surface off Cape Garde-fui on the coast of then-British Somaliland. The bomber dropped four depth charges, and Eck ordered an immediate crash dive. The boat reached 130 meters before Eck regained control, but there was then an explosion in the bow compartment, and water rapidly reached the batteries, giving off chlorine gas. Eck managed to get the boat back to the surface, and his crew manned the guns and fought off repeated attacks by British aircraft. Eck headed for the coast, where he ran the boat aground at dusk, but one British aircraft remained in the area while destroyers headed for the scene. The Germans started repair work, but the 17-852 became stuck, and Eck decided to abandon her. Some secret documents were destroyed, most of the crew went ashore, and at 0224, the remaining crew detonated scuttling charges. The surviving crew members were all captured, some by the Royal Navy, but those who got ashore were rounded-up by the Somaliland Camel Corps— an unusual event in submarine history.
Eck had failed to destroy U-852’s log, and it did not take the British long to suspect that this was the submarine that had massacred the survivors of the Peleus. Interrogation of the prisoners quickly confirmed this beyond doubt as the crew, almost to a man, were bitterly critical of Eck and the other officers for what had happened.
The British systematically garnered evidence over the following months but waited until the war ended before seeking to bring the accused to trial. There was some discussion of holding the trial in the United Kingdom, but it was felt that the German public would pay little attention, so the government instructed the British occupation force in Germany to conduct this first of all the war crimes trials. Curiously, the British Army, using army court martial procedures and with a British brigadier general serving as president conducted this trial of German naval officers for a crime committed on the high seas. The other members of the court martial were two British Army officers (a brigadier general and a lieutenant colonel), two British Navy officers (a commodore and a captain) and, in acknowledgement that the Peleus had been Greek-owned and most of her crew Greek, two captains from the Royal Hellenic Navy. Finally, there was a judge advocate, who wore the gown, white bands, and wig of the English barrister.
The five accused—Eck, Hoffmann, Weisspfennig, Lenz, and Schwender—dressed smartly in full Kriegsmarine uniforms and badges of rank, unlike the accused in other war crimes trials. They were not allowed to object to the jurisdiction or composition of the court, so the judge advocate, after swearing in the court and officials, read out the charges (identical for all five):
Committing a war crime in that you in the Atlantic Ocean on the night of 13-14th March 1944 when Captain and members of the crew of Untersee-boot 852 which had sunk the steamship Peleus in violation of the laws and usages of war were concerned in the killing of members of the crew of the said steamship, Allied nationals, by firing and throwing grenades at them.
The defense immediately objected on the grounds that the charge could be read in two different ways. The phrase “in violation of the laws and usages of war” could, they argued, qualify either the preceding “. . . sunk the steamship Peleus ...” or the following “. . . concerned in the killing of members of the crew. . . .” This was a most important point, since if the men were charged with sinking the merchantman in violation of the laws and usages of war, virtually every submarine captain of every belligerent navy could face a similar charge. The prosecutor and the judge- advocate agreed, however, that the violations referred to in the charges concerned the act of firing at the survivors and not the original sinking of the ship. On that basis the trial proceeded, although, interestingly, nobody mentioned that the charge used the word “killing,” thus avoiding the issue of whether the deaths were murder, manslaughter, or involuntary killing.
The prosecution case started with sworn affidavits taken some months earlier from the three Peleus survivors, the only contentious issue being whether the inclusion of the dying words of the third officer were admissible or not. That was followed by personal evidence given by five German sailors from U-852 and cross-examination by defense counsel, which usually consisted only of clearing up minor points of detail.
Six counsel appeared for the accused, three of them German civil lawyers. Dr. Todsen, supported by Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Meckel, represented Eck, while Dr. Pabst represented Hoffmann, Weisspfennig, and Schwender. Lenz, however, always one to be different, chose to be represented by a British barrister, Major Lermon. Professor Wegner, a respected legal expert, represented all the accused on matters of international law. The defense opened with a lengthy submission on behalf of all the accused by Professor Wegner, following which Eck was called to the witness box. U-852’s captain made no attempt at all to suggest that he had been following superior orders and admitted all the acts alleged in the charge, including opening fire, the use of the hand grenades, and the fact that survivors would have been killed as a result of his orders. He also did not deny that his order had been challenged by the chief engineer.
Eck’s defense rested completely on the grounds of “operational necessity.” He claimed that the initial reason for bringing weapons to the deck was because he feared an attempt by the survivors to take control of the U-boat, claiming to have heard of cases where this had happened. Then, he said, he decided to destroy the rafts and other floating wreckage so that they would not reveal the presence of his submarine to a patrolling aircraft. He said initially that he had not seen any survivors on the raft; nevertheless, he could not deny that they had been there and would have suffered, one way or another, from his acts. One thing he could not explain, however, was the fact that U-852 had spent no less than five hours trying to sink the wreckage—all during a time when the captain claimed to have been under pressure to escape being caught by Allied aircraft.
Eck was followed onto the witness stand by Korvetten-Kapitän (Lieutenant Commander) Schnee, a very experienced officer, who had commanded four U-boats and sunk 24 Allied vessels on 16 patrols before joining the staff of Befehlshaber der U-boote (BdU) (commander-in-chief of the U-boats) in early 1944- The main reason that he was called, however, was that he was the man who actually had briefed Eck before he left on his mission. Schnee reminded the court of the dangers faced by U-boats in the South Atlantic and of the heavy losses suffered. When it came to cross-examination, the prosecution asked Schnee, as an experienced commander, what he would have done on the night in question, had he been in Eck’s position. He resisted answering for as long as he could, but eventually was forced into two very damaging statements:
Prosecutor: “What would you have done, if you had been in Eck’s position?”
Schnee: “I would under all circumstances have tried my best to save lives, as that is a measure which was taken by all U-boat commanders. But, when I hear of this case, then I can only explain it as this, that Captain Eck through the terrific experience he had been through had lost his nerves.”
Prosecutor: “Does that mean that you would not have done what Captain Eck did, if you had kept your nerve?”
Schnee: “I would not have done it.”
Hoffmann, Weisspfennig, and Schwender claimed that they obeyed the order of their commanding officer. Indeed, the doctor even claimed that this overrode the regulation which forbade medical officers from bearing arms. Undoubtedly the most curious case, however, was that of Lenz, the chief engineer, who had not only decided that the order was clearly illegal but had argued with Eck about it. Nevertheless, when he returned to the bridge later during that fateful evening he had elbowed Schwender aside and taken over his machine gun. His grounds for doing so were that Schwender was a “bad character” and thus “unworthy” to participate in such a crime—an argument which clearly perplexed the British members of the court and which was referred to by the judge-advocate as “the most extraordinary piece of evidence” in the case. The last witness having left the stand, it was then the turn of the counsel to give their legal arguments, and precedents in German, British, U.S., and international law were all cited in defense of the accused.
Once the defense closed, the judge-advocate gave a carefully balanced summary of the evidence and the law in the case, following which the court closed to deliberate. About 40 minutes later, the court reopened, and the president announced the findings: All five men were guilty of the offense as charged. The court then heard evidence in mitigation of sentence and then retired to consider sentence, for which the War Crimes Tribunal Regulations offered: death (by hanging or shooting); imprisonment for life or any lesser term; confiscation of property; or a fine. The last three required a simple majority of the president and six members, but a death sentence required the concurrence of two-thirds of the members.
The necessary majority was clearly obtained in the sentences handed down by the president: Eck, Hoffmann, and Weisspfennig to be executed by firing squad; Lenz and Schwender to be sent to prison—Schwender for 15 years and Lenz for life. The court did not explain its verdicts, but presumably in Schwender’s case they took into account the fact that he was not a commissioned officer, while with Lenz they may have been swayed by his arguments with Eck over the illegality of the order. Interestingly, the court specified that the death sentences were to be by shooting, as opposed to hanging, which was awarded to all major war criminals found guilty in the Nürnberg and Tokyo trials.
The findings and sentence were confirmed by the British commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery. Before he faced the firing squad, Eck performed one last service for his former commander, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, when he was visited in the condemned cell by representatives of the prosecution and defense for the Grand Admiral’s forthcoming case at Nürnberg. When questioned once again as to whether he had received orders from Doenitz giving him official sanction to shoot prisoners, Eck reiterated that the decision had been his alone and that Doenitz had nothing to do with it.
Ten days later, at precisely 0840 hours on 30 November 1945, a firing squad completed the sentence for Eck, Hoffmann, and Weisspfennig. Meanwhile, Lenz and Schwender were committed to prison, where their sentences were immediately reduced from life to 21 years, and from 15 to 10 years, respectively. Their sentences were, however, repeatedly reviewed, and Schwender eventually was released on 21 December 1951, followed by Lenz on 27 August 1952.