German submarine commander Heinz Eck was executed as a war criminal in 1945 for killing shipwrecked survivors

U-boat captain Heinz Eck, left, and four of his crew on trial for war crimes in Hamburg, Germany in October 1945.

• On March 13, 1944 a German submarine, U-852, was patrolling the waters of the South Atlantic off the African coast when it encountered a lone Greek steam merchant ship, the Peleus. Captain Heinz-Wilhelm Eck issued an order to fire two torpedoes which sank the vessel.
• The sinking left a large debris field with several survivors clinging to rafts and wreckage. Eck ordered his crew to open fire on the survivors, a shooting that went on for hours. By day's end 36 Peleus seamen were killed in the attack but, miraculously, three survived.
• These 3 men drifted at sea for 25 days clinging to flotsom and suffering from extreme thirst, exposure and hunger. The three survivors were rescued by a Portuguese steamer and were taken to port.
• On May 2, 1944 a Royal Air Force bomber spotted the U-852 and dropped several depth charges which drove the submarine aground on the Somali coast. Captain Eck and his crew were captured and sent to prison camps to await the end of the war.
• The Peleus War Crimes Trial was the first of all of the WW2 war crime trials, occuring a month before the Nuremberg trials began. Five men were placed on trial before a military tribunal which convened in Hamburg, Germany in October 1945.
• Eck and four crew members were found guilty. On Nov. 30, 1945 Heinz Eck, medical officer Walter Weisspfennig and Lt. zur See August Hoffmann were executed by firing squad; two others were sentenced to prison terms.
• The presiding Judge Advocate ruled that the killing of the unarmed survivors "was forbidden as a result of the experience of civilized nations through many centuries. To fire so as to kill helpless survivors of a torpedoed ship was a grave breach of the law of nations. The right to punish persons who broke such rules of war has clearly been recognized for many years."
• He also ruled that "the duty to obey is limited to the observance of orders which are lawful. There can be no duty to obey that which is not a lawful order." (British Military Court at Hamburg, the Peleus Trial, ICRC Law and Policy Newsletter.)

Pete's Hegseth's order on the first Caribbean boat strike was

"kill them all."

Was this a war crime?

"The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack -- the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere -- ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water."

-- Washington Post, 11/28/2025, updated.

Associated Press video

2.14 min., 12/2/2025

The War Crimes of U-852

(Nautical lore video : 25 min.)

The war crimes of U-852 remind us that even in total war humanity must prevail. The oceans, often mercilous by nature, have long had a code of mercy among sailors.

Last Train to Nuremberg

by

Pete Seeger

Editor's note: I have focused on only one incident in Trump's "war on narco-terrorists." Since December 1st the U.S. military has killed over 80 people on small boats in the Caribbean. The killing of defenseless people is a war crime -- whether it's in Gaza or in international waters off the coast of Venezuela. According to the Washington Post (12/3/2025) legal experts say that "the targeting of defenseless people is prohibited -- regardless of whether the United States is in an armed conflict, conducting law enforcement or other military operations."



Sources - including those cited above - from which I quoted extensively are: "Kill everybody - Hegseth's reported order echoes WW2 war crime," by Seth Hettena in The After-Action Report, 12/1/2025; CNN's Dana Bash interview with Jack Reed, leading Democrat on the Armed Services Commitee, 12/2/2025; "Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: 'kill them all,' by Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, 11/28/2025, updated; "Execution of German submarine commander," Chronotope, 11/30/2020; Wikipedia.

Friday's Labor Folklore

Saul Schniderman, Editor