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Who was this man?

Discussion in 'Atlantic Naval Conflict' started by Panzerknacker, May 1, 2002.

  1. Panzerknacker

    Panzerknacker New Member

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    I have heard from sources, including historian Michael Gannon, that there was a single incident where a U-Boat captain ordered gunners to machine-gun survivors in the water.
    Does anyone know:-
    *The name of the man concerned
    *The boat concerned
    *The date of the action
    *And the subsequent punishments meted out

    Thanks in advance Gentlemen...

    "Those sixteen-year old assholes commanded their Regiments in big shining Mercedes cars as though they were Corps Commanders."
    Erwin Rommel talking about the Hitler Youth.
     
  2. C.Evans

    C.Evans Expert

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    Thats hard to say because, according to Horst Bredow at the Uboat Archiv in Cuxhaven/Altenbruch, there was only one instance where a uboat kapitan was executed--and it wasnt because of M-gunning sailors in the water.

    He has no historical documents documenting at any time--that there was an order or a kapitan who ordered the killing of shipwrecked sailors.

    I dont remember the reason why this certain uboat kapitan was executed--but it wasnt for the commission of a war crime.

    But, I had heard about this as being possible as happened. I dont believe that it ever happened--(knowing uboat vets like I do) ;)

    I asked all the survivors of U 181 at their reunion about such an incident--and two admitted that they had heard that during the war--that a uboat kapitan had been executed--but they didnt know details. They vehemenantly denied such an order had ever been given--I have too agree.

    One thing that must be taken into consideration is: German sailors all for the most part--feel that any sailor from any nation--is their brothers and comrades. This had been proven to me while I was in Germany at their reunion, at the Uboat Archiv, in Laboe, in Wilhelmshaven, and in bremerhaven--where I also met many more uboat vets.

    Hope this helps you my friend ;)
     
  3. Jumbo_Wilson

    Jumbo_Wilson Member

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    The recent BBC2 series on Battle of the Atlantic intervied a good many German U-Boat officers. One mentioned that a junior officer on the bridge was about to order the machine-gunning of allied survivors but he intervened and prevented it. I suspect that there were not always honourable men to step in and do this all the time.

    Several survivors commented that they expected to be gunned down in their boats, but instead the U-boats tossed them supplies, told them their position, and radioed en-clair to the British after nightfall.

    Jumbo
     
  4. Bish OBE

    Bish OBE Member

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    According to Peter Paddfield in War Beneath the Sea, there was one incident such as you mention. It involved KLt. Heinz Eck, commanding the Type IXD2 U-852. It happened on the 13 March 1944 when he sank the Greek tramp Peleus off the west coast of Africa. Eck and two others were executed by British firing squard on 30 Nov 1945, while two others recieved 6 year prison sentences.

    This actually riles me alot, because the same book mentions several British Capts that did the same thing in the Med, but nothing was done.
     
  5. Friedrich

    Friedrich Expert

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    Well, actually Hitler once talked to Dönitz and ordered him that all the enemy crews of sunk ships should be shot. Dömitz imediately got annoyed and told the Führer severely that he was not going to obbey that order because shooting unarmed sailores at the middle of the sea would smash the morale of the submariners and less them effectiveness. The Führer imediately took the order back. The Kriegsmmarine officers and men were not cold-blooded as the SS, by example. That is why I love the Kriegsmarine.
     
  6. C.Evans

    C.Evans Expert

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    I have to agree with you Jumbo about the Germans tossing survivors supplies. This actually happened to my grandfather who was Captain of the ship SS Fort Lee. His ship was torpedoed by U 181 (its former Commander was Wolfgang Luth and the Commander at that time was Kapitan zur See Kurt Freiwald) I met 10 of U 181s vets at their reunion in Bad Camberg, Germany on Sept 17 and 18 2000. I am very good friends with some of them including the last surviving officer of this U boat--Herrn Dietrich Hille. My best friend of this U boat was also a recipient of the German Cross in Gold (which is just one step below the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross)

    This Uboat had Four RKTs serving on it at the same time (More than any other unit of such size in any branch of the Wehrmacht)

    I have my friends DKiG award photos and many others. You will sometime in the future--see them all posted here. You will see three of these men in Singapore being awarded the DKiG by RKT Kapitan zur See Wilhelm Dommes. In a photo of Dommes, in the background--you will see Kapitan Freiwald.

    Let me assure you--that men of the quality of the men who served on U 181--would never commit anykind of crimes. I am in touch with all 7 living vets of U 181 at this time.

    [ 30 July 2002, 12:58 PM: Message edited by: C.Evans ]
     
  7. Friedrich

    Friedrich Expert

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    Correction, Carl (except for the four that Jumbo mantioned) any of the 40.000 men of the submarine service would ever commit such crimes.
     
  8. C.Evans

    C.Evans Expert

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    Hi Friedrich--I guess it was possible, but I really believe it never happened. The Kriegsmarine had no nazis and no man could be a member of the party (active) they had to givt it up to be in that service. Erich Topp had been a nazi, but gave up his membership upon starting his service in the Kriegsmarine--and the rest is history as we all know it. :D
     
  9. Stevin

    Stevin Ace

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    Correct me if I am wrong, Carl, but I have read that several (captured) U boote crews actually were nazi's. Example that comes to mind is Joachim Schepke, who went on a tour in Germany after returning from a succesfull trip and made no secret of his being a supporter od the regime...Survivors of his crew that were picked up and interrogated by the British. I remember reading that one interogation officer wrote that the survivors of that crew were a 'particular nasty bunch'...
     
  10. Bish OBE

    Bish OBE Member

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    Well, i don't think giving the size of the U-Boat arm, that one KTl. who shot survivors is any stain on the U-Boat arm. Peter Padfield says that this is the only known incident. And given how much peole like to put Germany down, if it had happened more, we would know about it.

    The only stain as far as i am conerned is on the RN who did nothing to punish British Capts. Padfield even says that the Admiralty heard of this and ordered it stopped. Not out of any sense of injustice, but simply because they did not want to give the Germans an excuse to do the same.

    One episode of the Battle of the Atlantic series mentioned Capt Walker. He ordered that U-Boat crews who did not tel them what Boat they came from and the name of its Capt were to be thrown back in the water. And one guy admited to doing it. This is worse than the Laconia oder for which Dornitz got 10 years. While Walker is a national hero.
     
  11. Friedrich

    Friedrich Expert

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    No. It was FORBIDDEN to belong to ANY political party if you were a member of the Kriegsmarine. Erich Raeder forbade also to do the nazi salute whenerver possible.
     
  12. C.Evans

    C.Evans Expert

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    Hello Stevin. There sure were some in the Kriegsmarine who supported the regime but--they were not nazis. Friedrich is correct--no nazis were allowed in the Kriegsmarine--to get in if you were one--you had to give up your membership. Erich Topp is a famous example.
     
  13. Stevin

    Stevin Ace

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    Hmmmmm....ok...my bad....
     
  14. Herr Kaleun

    Herr Kaleun Member

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    To say that there were no Nazis at all in the Kriegsmarine is not a fair or accurate statement to make. If you prefaced that claim, with ‘until 1943’ then you would have a more accurate statement.

    Raeder as commander in chief used the Nazi party for the navy’s benefit. Raeder did everything in his power to ‘keep out’ the influences of the party. The navy retained the standard military salute instead of the party salute for example.

    Then, a change in the Kriegsmarine high command occurred. The distinct change in the navy’s position toward National Socialism came from its new commander’s (Dönitz’s) initial address:

    “Our lives belong to the state. Our honor lies in our fulfillment of duty and readiness for action. None of us may claim the right to a private life. All that concerns us is the winning of this war. We must pursue this goal with fanatical devotion and the harshest will to win.”

    In December 1943, Dönitz said in a speech to senior naval officers, "It is therefore necessary that a soldier fulfills his duty with his soul and all his spiritual strength and willpower. And that includes his conviction, his Weltanschauung...It is nonsense to say that the soldier or officer must be nonpolitical. The soldier embodies the state in which he lives, he is its representative, the outspoken advocate of the state. Therefore he has to stand behind the state with all his might."

    Dönitz himself became party member 9,664,999 in February 1944. One can assume from his ‘enlistment’ that he did not forbid any other officer or sailor from joining the party if they had chosen to do so.

    Albert Speer noted, “Dönitz is a National Socialist through and through, and he keeps the navy free of all the bad influences. The navy will never surrender. He has implanted a National Socialist concept in it.”

    On the other hand, many of the officers and men have stated that politics was rarely discussed. The chief engineer of U 190 recounts, “Any attempt to introduce political ideology into our lives was met with deep resentment. The very rare young Nazi fanatic who appeared aboard was looked at with benevolent amusement and otherwise ignored…The one thing we bitterly resented after the assassination attempt was the replacement of the military salute with the so-called Deutscher Grüss, the raised right arm, but we swallowed that too.”

    Where there Nazis in the navy? Of course, there were. Not members per se, but men practicing the Nazi ideology. An example....

    Wolfgang Lüth was a devoted follower of the Nazi party. Although not a member of the party, he fully embraced the ideology. He even boasted publicly that he had sunk a Jewish ship, the Sigurds Faulbaums. But he was embarrassed to be told that "his Jewish ship” had at one time belonged to a German shipping firm, Max Faulbaums, and was ‘certainly not Jewish.’

    In Lüth’s famed lecture, “Problems of Leadership,” he claimed to have given his crews lectures on history and politics. He would make Sunday speeches to the crew on the Reich’s history, great leaders and spoke directly about Hitler on April 20 although he avoided ‘overtly political speeches. “The men must know what they are fighting for and they must be willing to give their lives for it.” One can assume that when he mentions politics, he is certainly referring to National Socialism, which he practiced. But it must be noted that his form as Nazi-ism was outdated. He still spoke of the struggle as though it were 1933, but never defended the ideology of the Final Solution.(It is interesting to note that Lüth's references to Hitler and National Socialism have been edited from most reprints of this lecture.)

    What is interesting is that the crew of U 181 doesn't remember any of these 'speeches.' Lüth admittedly wouldn't speak of politics with his crew, but when speaking before fellow Wehrmacht officers at the lecture, he fully embraced National Socialism. He was a highly decorated officer receiving the adulation of the populace and therefore did not have to publicly express his political views. But he did so and his views are crystal clear.

    There were several notable incidents of anti-Nazi behavior from the officers in the U-bootwaffe. Amoung those, Reinhard Suhren, Han-Joachim Brans, and the ill-fated Oskar Kusch, commander of U 154, who was court-martialed and sentenced to death by firing squad for his anti-Nazi statements. Kusch was turned in by his first watch officer, Oberleutnant Ulrich Abel, who was a member of NSDAP and held the post of party district leader in Hamburg before joining the navy. Obviously, Abel's beliefs did not stop when he 'renounced' his membership before joining the Kriegsmarine.

    As to war crimes, there is one documented case of high crimes on the high seas (the Peleus and Eck case), but any other claims end there. Besides Eck and his officers, only two other men from the u-boat service were convicted of war crimes (Dönitz and Karl-Heinz Moehle. —Moehle admitted that he told his young commander trainees that he had interpreted the Laconia order to mean that survivors should be killed. Note: Heinz Eck was one of the officers that he trained at U-boat Commander’s school. Moehle testified against Dönitz at Nüremburg seemingly in exchange for a light sentence to his confessions. Moehle received 5 years in prison.)

    All of this having been said, I want to inject that I am drawn to the Kriegsmarine for the ‘hard, clean war’ that they fought as opposed to their brethren on land. I believe that Nazi-ism existed in the navy to degree. But there are thousands of officer and sailors that never embraced the Nazi party. To make it clear, I am not saying that the Kriegsmarine was Nazified, but I am just countering the original statement that the Kriegsmarine was completely devoid of Nazis. The facts show that it was not.

    Btw, I have been a student of the u-bootwaffe for almost 30 years. Sorry that my first post to this forum was long winded… :D I will try to keep them shorter in the future. :rolleyes: I look forward to some interesting discussions. [​IMG]

    (Edited for clarity)

    [ 01 August 2002, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: herr_kaleun ]
     
  15. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    Welcome Herr K ! thank you for a full posting ! You will also find that even at the end the Luftwaffe was also not devoid of some pretty interesting gents with some strange social ties.
    I consider JG 7 the top Me 262 Geschwader for everyone's consideration......what a mess this fighter wing was, though most proably the top scoring Luftwaffe unit in 1945 against Allied and Soviet forces in the air. The Geschwader has never had a treffen that I am aware of and during a signing for a print by Jerry Crandall showing Me 262's of the Geschwadern stab several noted pilots of the wing bowed out as they would not sit by side with several of their countrymen for a hand signing, due to just this major problem....national socialism at it's finest.

    Gruß

    E
     
  16. Otto

    Otto Spambot Nemesis Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    I have been following this thread since it started, it is one of the better ones around, very interesting stuff.

    Herr Kaleun, Welcome to the Forums! Please don't shorten your posts on our accounts, most of us agree that more is better, especially if they come from someone with a background like yours. Great information, thanks. Also,I added your Grey Wolves site to the links page on the ww2n.com site.

    BTW, I think the Hardegen Avatar suits you. ;)
     
  17. Herr Kaleun

    Herr Kaleun Member

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    @Otto...Thank you for the kind words. I look forward to swapping stories on and discussing the Battle for the Atlantic. It has become my passion in the past few years...Glad you agree with my choice of avatar ;)

    @Erich....Interesting about the signing session. I had not heard of that before. Lots of 'fur rubbed the wrong way' in the German Armed Forces from National Socialism.

    I am trying to locate how Moehle was treated by his comrades after the war from his testimony against Dönitz. So far, I have found that he was shunned which was to be expected.
     
  18. Friedrich

    Friedrich Expert

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    Wilkommen, Herr Kaleun!!! It is good to have some U-boote expert around here! I recomend to you to check my posts on the "Atlantic Naval Conflict" topics... :rolleyes:

    Yes, I agree with all your thoughts in the Kriegsmarine and the nazism. But we should be clear in something, not just for this thread, not all nazis were the same thing. We cannot compare Dönitz, Raeder, Speer, Schacht, etc. with nazi pigs like Kaltenbrunner, Streicher, Sauckel, Bormann, etc.

    And much less we can compare party mambers and butchers like the later I mentioned with the average German people who were pride of what they were and of what they were told. My grandfather, by example, was not a party member, but he was and stills being a devoted (I shouldn't say it, but anyway) nazi.

    And we all must accept that nearly all the people in the avatars were devoted nazis. Rommel, Dietrich, Rudel, Hartmann, Lüth, Kretschmer, etc. all had respect and admiration for the achievements of Adolf Hitler and his "gang"... Perhaps in a minor scale, but anyway.
     
  19. Jumbo_Wilson

    Jumbo_Wilson Member

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    It's getting into shaky ground Friedrich but you comments do not only apply to Germany. Before Munich at any rate there were many pro-Hitler voices across Europe (Better Hitler than Blum etc...). The US Nazi Party packed out Madison Square Gardens, The Daily Mail in Britain was a fervent Hitler supporter. Churchill, although always hostile to Hitler, was favourably impressed by Mussolini and supported him until Musso sidled up to Adolf.

    I get the impression with traditional Conservatives like Donitz and Rommel that they were going to serve their country right or wrong. Joining the Nazi party, especially after the June assasination attempts was one way of surviving. For the many who joined after 1933 it was often to gain preferential promotion rather than any deep-seated ideological commitment. To the Conservatives Hitler saved the country from Communism, social unrest and anarchy. Their growing disillusionment with him is a well told story.

    A German friend of mine's father was in the pre-war SS. On the outbreak of war he joined a Wehrmacht Regiment which was well known for keeping it's people - he did not want to be in the Waffen SS. Keeping his card came in useful twice. Once, in Normandy when an SS Casualty station was turning away non-SS members he got his wounds treated. Second after the war, in the rubble, a he reported a young tearaway to the occupation authorities. They suggested he adopt the boy to give him "moral guidance". He asked whether as a former SS member he would give the sort of moral guidance they wanted.
    The authorities dropped the idea...

    Jumbo
     
  20. Herr Kaleun

    Herr Kaleun Member

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    @Friedrich....Thanks for the welcome....I will check into your previous posts.

    **gets cold beverage, settles into chair**

    OK....off to the other boards! :D
     

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