In mid-January 1944 Kapitanleutnant Heinz Eck left Kiel with the U-852 bound for the Indian Ocean. The passage from the Fatherland through the North and Middle Atlantic was uneventful, although to some of the more experienced members among the boat's men and officers the taut tension seemed to be steadily mounting ere the raider was many days out of Kiel. Perhaps it was the cramped quarters; perhaps the two aircraft alarms in the North Atlantic had created this early vague disquietude.
Most assuredly there lingered in Heinz Eck's mind cold, vivid memories of the intense briefing he had received from Kapitanleutnant Schnee, just prior to the U-852's departure from Kiel. Schnee, a veteran of sixteen U-boat patrols and credited with having sunk thirty Allied vessels, was responsible for correlating reports from returning U-boat Kommandanten and for briefing outgoing Kommandanten. He possessed only sketchy intelligence regarding the Indian Ocean situation, but he dispensed vital and abundant information as to the probable dangers of Eck's proposed route through the North, Middle and South Atlantic. Eck had listened pensively to Schnee's account of how only recently four of the latest and largest members of the Nazi U-boat Navy had been lost in the South Atlantic. All four were sister ships of Eck's U-852 and had been commanded by experienced Kommandanten—officers whose previous experiences had won them the Oak Leaf of the Iron Cross.
Why had these losses occurred? What basic lessons could Eck learn from these losses? Schnee had reminded the young officer that the U-852—like its lost sisters—was such a large type that it was slow to submerge, was a larger target and, in general, was more vulnerable. Furthermore the general location of the losses—the Freetown-Ascension area—was a factor of tremendous significance; for tragic experience had taught the Nazi sub-surface raiders that once detected in that area by Allied aircraft the chances of being hunted down were not in favor of the sub.
To his youthful listener Schnee had hammered home basic elements of survival: keep a good and constant lookout, use the latest W/T. transmitters to obtain current instructions, be cunning in grip with the enemy. Needless to say, upon each day out Heinz Eck constantly recalled the exact words of his superior Schnee.
One month out of Kiel and the tension was terrific. Submerged for from 14 to 16 hours each day, day after day in exceedingly cramped quarters, the U-852's entire complement experienced the physical and psychological tortures of a long wartime sub cruise known only to the veteran.
On March 13, just as the final streaks of sunlight were fading, the U-852's periscope broke the surface of the Middle Atlantic. Kommandanten Eck's first glance through the periscope revealed that approximately 2,000 yards away was a steamer riding high and headed for the South Atlantic. By the time the curtain of darkness had completely descended, Eck had calculated the course and speed of the steamer and was rapidly formulating plans for the attack. As he ordered his ship to the surface to facilitate his pursuit tactics, Eck sensed a partial relief from the accumulated tautness with which he had been plagued mercilessly. Simultaneously, however, Eck found a new sensation developing with more intensity than the first—a morbid desire to wreak vengeance and gain compensation for the immeasurable torture of the past weeks.
The darkened victim was scarcely more than five hundred yards away when Eck ordered the firing of two torpedoes. As the "fish" sped on their way, Eck confidently reassured himself that at that short distance he could hardly miss, and seconds later a gigantic explosion caused the young Nazi to be released from the clutches of vengeance into those of gleeful hysteria. There, by the light of the holocaust, were plainly visible two smoking, gnarled masses of freighter. As Eck stood clutching the railings of the U-boat's bridge, the light, which had burst into being just three moments before, was suddenly gone as the two wrecked pieces of freighter hulk slid beneath the ocean's surface forever. Through the darkness Eck could now perceive several small blinking lights, and as he maneuvered his ship toward the lights the noise of shouting and whistling reached him. Survivors!—always a problem, but sometimes also the source of worthwhile intelligence. Eck immediately decided to obtain the identifying details of his obliterated victim. He ordered pistols and machine guns brought on deck (for protection purposes, so he related afterwards), and directed that one or two survivors be pulled aboard.
Kapitanleutnant (Ing.) Hans Richard Lenz was summoned to conduct the interrogation, and as his ship approached a raft bearing two human beings who had apparently survived the torpedo's blast, he ordered that one of the two climb aboard the sub. The survivor obeyed and offered the following information: The sunk ship was the Peleus, a British-built, Greek tramp freighter of some 8,000 tons which had been chartered to the British Ministry of War Transport. Bound in ballast from Freetown for the Plate, she had carried a cosmopolitan crew of 35-Britains, Greeks, Chinese, Egyptians, Chileans, Russians and Poles. The interrogated survivor was the Peleus' Third Officer, Stravros Sogias. In answer to Lenz's questions he furnished general information concerning convoy routings, number of ships in Freetown and whether convoys were being escorted by aircraft. Lenz then took the man's life belt from him and directed him to jump back to the raft, telling him that aid would undoubtedly come the next day.
When Lenz returned to the bridge and the U-852 continued on her way, Heinz Eck was filled with a spirit of partially satisfied revenge and of concern for survival as well. Astern of his craft and over a widening area bobbed telltale flotsam—evidence of his deed—live and lifeless evidence. Could he afford to let the evidence remain? The warnings of Schnee flashed into Eck's mind. Directing the helmsman to come about, he gave orders to destroy all evidence. Ram it! fire on it! blast it with hand grenades! anything—but destroy it!
Clinging precariously to the rafts and other bits of wreckage were several survivors of the Peleus—asEck and Lenz andothers of the U-boat knew. One survivor was Antonios Cosmas Liossis, one of the Peleus' officers and a veteran of twenty-one years of sea service. As he had stood on the Peleus' bridge he had seen the approaching torpedoes' tracks on the port hand and had ordered the helmsman to comb the tracks. Too late! The next moment he was clinging to a floating hatch-cover and his ship was a sinking mass of wreckage. With another Greek he had reached a raft on which was a Russian. They had managed to row the raft a bit and to lash it to another raft carrying three survivors. They saw the sub carrying out the mission of interrogation, leave the scene, and then a short time later reappear. Then they heard a hail. Suddenly the submarine opened fire with a machine gun. The exhausted survivors dug futilely into the shallow depression of the raft's surface. As the sub drew nearer the searchlight's rays appeared to seek out any human targets so that they, along with every floating means of survival could be riddled. Grenades were thrown to explode on the rafts which were repeatedly rammed. None of the Peleus' survivors escaped the fusillade; all were killed except five who were painfully wounded but somehow left alive.
After some time of slowly cruising on its merciless errand, the U-boat left the scene and continued southward on its mission, nearly five hours after the torpedoing.
Unsinkable rafts, carrying five bleeding survivors, floated away from the scene of the gory orgy. Twenty-five days later one man died, and on April 20, thirty-eight days after the Peleus’ destruction, a Portuguese freighter rescued the remaining four survivors.
***
On May 2 of that same year the U-852 was compelled to beach herself, after air attack, on the sands of Somaliland along the East Coast of Africa. By some fateful oversight her log remained undestroyed and upon examination revealed that on March 13 she had torpedoed a vessel in approximately the position in which the Peleus had been sunk. The entire U-boat’s complement was made prisoner and taken to Britain.
On October 17, 1945, Heinz Eck and four of his associates were put on trial for their lives before a British-sponsored War Crimes Court in Hamburg. In the words of the Judge Advocate (the legal adviser to the Court), they were charged with the following crime:
Committing a war crime in that you in the Atlantic Ocean on the night of 13/14 March 1944, when Captain and members of the crew of the Unterseeboot 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 said steamship, Allied nationals, by firing and throwing hand grenades at them.
Immediately the defense counsel objected to the charge as read, noting that if the phrase “in violation of the laws and usages of war” qualified the word preceding it (sunk), the meaning would be entirely different from that if the phrase qualified the words which followed it (concerned in the killing). The Judge Advocate stated that there was no intent to try the accused for having sunk the Peleus and that the stated phrase qualified the words which followed it. Eck and company were being tried for the slaying of the crew and for that alone.
The accused all severally pleaded “Not Guilty,” and the trial of the Peleus was on. For four days the War Crimes Court heard testimony. First the counsel for the prosecution, Colonel R. C. Halse, presented the case against Eck, Leutnant-sur-See Roffman, Marine-Oberstabsarzt (Medical Officer) Weisspfennig, Kapitanleutnant (Ing.) Lenz, and Matrosen Obergefreiter (Leading Seaman) Schwender. Colonel Raise related the details of the case and introduced a statement made by Eck while in prison in 1944 which read, "Never before sailing or on the passage did I at any time receive orders to shoot or otherwise eliminate survivors on any vessel that my ship might sink," and in the opinion of Prosecutor Halse that statement disposed of any suggestion which might be made so far as Eck was concerned that he committed the crime on orders from his superior officer. (Eck did have orders, however, that he was to take aboard no survivors of any sinking.) The defense for Eck immediately objected that the statement had been taken without informing Eck that anything he might say could be held against him. Halse temporarily withdrew the Eck statement and submitted the affidavits of the Greek and British survivors, followed by the testimony of five German members of the U-852's crew. (For the future safety of these five sailors their names were not published outside the courtroom.)
With the closing of the case for the prosecution, the defense had its turn. Each of the accused had at least one counsel, Eck and Hoffman had two. Lenz was defended by a British Major, N. Lermon, and representing all of the accused was Professor A. Wegner, eminent German authority on international law.
Although the trial was not lengthy, each counsel had sufficient time in which to present his entire case and to call whatever witnesses were desired. The general trend of the case of the defense was briefly that Eck and his associates acted not out of sheer cruelty or revenge but rather from a determination to eliminate all traces of the sinking. The orders which Eck issued, it was contended, were the result of a very special situation—a situation forced upon him and his vessel.
Professor Wegner undertook to enlighten the court on the international law implications of the case and proceeded to outline six basic questions as follows: (1) Was the act one of self defense? (2) Did the principle of superior command enter the picture? (3) Did the modern conception of war crimes obscure "the old and sound principles of criminal law and procedure?" (4) Was the principle of ex post facto involved, i.e., was there a law at the time of the crime? (5) Were the defendents knowingly aware of the guilty nature of their deed—was there guilty knowledge? (6) Could the court rightfully admit secondary evidence?
During Eck's turn as witness, he stated that he had considered the Peleus' rafts a real danger. Why? Because a plane might spot them, or they might carry modern signalling equipment. These considerations had given him the impression that if he did not sink the rafts his own ship was in acute danger if not virtually lost. He admitted that the whole act left him in a depressed mood—a mood shared as well by the members of the crew and that upon completing the job of destruction, he had spoken to the crew through the ship's amplifier and had told them of the event, reminding them, "If we are influenced by too much sympathy we must also think of our wives and children who die as the victims of air attack at home."
When Eck's superior, Schnee, was called as a witness, he indicated that although he deplored the whole affair, nonetheless he could "fully realize that the Kommandant after such a journey may possibly lose his head."
After hearing all the defendants and witnesses the Court once again heard Professor Wegner. Obviously aware that the prosecution was determined to base its charges on the Llandovery Castle case, Wegner launched his principal ' defense in that direction. He noted that the Court had already been reminded of how in June, 1918, a U-boat had torpedoed the British hospital ship Llandovery Castle and had attacked and sunk the survivors who had entered lifeboats. He admitted that in 1921 the German Supreme Court at Leipzig had charged and convicted two of the German officers concerned with the sinking. (The commanding officer was also charged but could not be located for the trial.) He acknowledged that the Leipzig court in stating its verdict had declared that "the firing on the boats was an offense against the law of nations. In war on land the killing of unarmed enemies is not allowed, similarly in war on sea the killing of shipwrecked people, who have taken refuge in lifeboats, is forbidden." He admitted all of the foregoing points, but he contended that the rules of the Llandovery Castle case could not apply to Eck and his fellows because" the psychology of the world had changed and that what had been of general acceptance in 1921 could no longer be regarded as a matter of agreed principle."
In the closing speech for the prosecution Colonel Raise maintained that the Court was entitled to try the five accused Germans on the very charge which had been before the Leipzig Court in 1921, and the Judge Advocate further maintained that no one in any, authority had ever challenged the accuracy of the principle expressed in the judgment of the Leipzig Court.
Finally the Judge Advocate reminded the Court that two basic principles of British justice were fundamental to this case; first, that it is not for the accused to prove their innocence but it is for the prosecution to prove the guilt charge beyond a reasonable doubt; and second, that each defendant had chosen to give evidence on his own behalf and that the Court must not assume that just because a person is accused, his testimony can be discarded. He further urged the Court to remind itself that despite the German nationality of the accused, they were entitled to just as fair treatment and as much consideration as if they were citizens of an Allied nation.
The Court retired to consider the evidence and upon reassembling announced the verdict. Each defendant was declared guilty as charged. Eck, Hoffman, and Weisspfennig were sentenced to be shot, Lenz was given life imprisonment, and Schwender was given fifteen years imprisonment.
In reflecting upon the Peleus case one may recall a statement pertaining to the question of superior orders. The statement goes:
No international law of warfare is in existence which provides that a soldier who has committed a mean crime can escape punishment by pleading as his defense that he followed the commands of his superiors. This holds particularly true if these commands are contrary to all human ethics and opposed to the well-established international usage of warfare.
The writer of that sound statement? Dr. Goebbels in a German newspaper on May 28, 1944.
A student of American history and international relations, Mr. Langdon graduated from Hamilton College in 1940, and taught in secondary schools, Cornell University, and Stanford University, at which institution he is a candidate for the Ph.D. degree. At present he is an assistant professor in the Department of English, History, and Government of the U. S. Naval Academy, and an associate editor of the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings.