Dönitz: The Last Führer (61 page)

He ran about half a mile, ordering machine guns, mauser pistols and hand grenades to be passed up to the bridge, then turned back. Approaching the rafts again he or his watch officer hailed one on which the chief officer was trying to gather survivors and ordered it closer; as it neared he gave the order to his bridge group to open fire, and the survivors found themselves under a hail of machine gun bullets. Then a signal lamp was trained on them and grenades were hurled, both at the raft and amongst men who had leaped into the water.

Eck repeated this treatment with the third officer’s raft, then spent the rest of the night cruising amongst the wreckage, mainly timber beams and hatchboards on which other survivors were clustering, directing machine gun fire at them. The guns were manned during this time by his watch officer, Hoffmann—who also threw grenades—his engineer, Lenz, a petty officer, a seaman and, most extraordinarily, the U-boat’s doctor, Walter Weisspfenig—all according to the evidence firing quite calmly without excitement over a period of at least five hours. Eck’s defence at his trial was that he was attempting to eliminate all traces of the sinking so that his presence would not be discovered by aircraft which would hunt him down. Since he failed to sink a single raft, the wreckage was timber and the oil slick left by the steamer was bound to reveal the sinking to passing aircraft, the explanation was rejected by the court. The episode came down therefore to cold-blooded murder of defenceless survivors by a number of officers apparently in their right minds during a long period of darkness when the boat might have been speeding away from the area and towards her destination.

It is significant that after this long night the feeling among the crew was such that Eck felt it necessary to explain his actions to them; part of his talk contained the idea that if they were influenced by too much sympathy ‘we must also think of our wives and children who die as the victims of air attack at home’.
¹³⁸
This was of course the precise justification that Dönitz used in the September 1942 orders carried by Eck.

It must be assumed that Eck was acting on the ambiguities in this order or had received a specific order from Dönitz or Schnee at his briefing in Berlin to leave no survivors. Otherwise there was no sense in what he did, indeed it endangered his boat in an area known to be patrolled by aircraft based on Ascension Island and Freetown, Sierra Leone. If there
was no superior order it follows, not only that Eck himself was an unnatural specimen but that his officers and his doctor—whose ethical code should have forbidden the taking of life and who therefore enjoyed privileged status under the Geneva Convention—were also natural barbarians.

The only reasonable explanation of an otherwise inexplicable act is ‘superior orders’; this, however, could not be used in defence since the case of the
Llandovery Castle
tried in a German Court had established that superior orders were no defence for an obviously criminal act. Counsel were, therefore, in an impossible position; they circled round and round the question, raising it with each of the accused but letting it drop immediately without probing. Eck was asked if he had any secret orders not to be divulged to the crew; ‘Yes,’ he replied; he was not asked what they were.
¹³⁹
Hoffmann said without being asked, ‘I had complete trust in the Commander and the righteousness of his orders. I also knew that he had orders and instructions of a secret nature which were not known to me.’ The doctor, Weisspfenig, and the petty officer who had fired a machine gun both testified that they knew the Commander had secret orders. No one was asked about the nature of these orders.

These men were on trial for their lives; therefore it would not be necessary to believe these muffled pleas of ‘superior orders’ if there were any other rational explanation for their conduct. But what other explanation can there be for so deliberate and senseless a massacre?

Perhaps the most significant speech came from a German expert on international law, Professor Wegner, who spoke for the defence; it was on the face of it a ridiculous, endlessly digressive and repetitive speech he gave, designed, it seemed, to show off his knowledge rather than guide the Court on the case. Yet amongst his meanderings the true difficulties shone through: the world had become a different place, too much had happened since the
Llandovery Castle
judgement: ‘The psychology of a whole nation, not to say of the world, has changed …’ He repeated the point later, and later still, ‘an individual forming part of a public force and acting under the authority of the government is not to be held answerable as a private trespasser or malefactor …’

Finally, despairingly, he said, ‘I wanted to make you understand what type of man Eck is. I cannot imagine that anyone will doubt the relevance of superior orders … If you apply the rules of the
Llandovery Castle
case as if nothing had happened at all you will not be doing justice to these men… I can only appeal to you not to apply an old law to a world
which was in revolutionary chaos—to minds which have been changed by the irresistible force of new events.’
¹⁴⁰

Here was the nub of the matter. The Court, of course, could not take such abstract principles into consideration and Eck, his watch officer and his doctor were sentenced to death by shooting, the other accused to terms of imprisonment. Ten days before Eck was executed he was examined on behalf of Dönitz’s defence counsel at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials: ‘Did you ever receive direct orders from Dönitz to shoot at shipwrecked survivors?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever heard that orders had been issued either by Dönitz himself or in his name that survivors from wrecks or anything which might be held to save such survivors should be shot at?’

‘Only now when I was in London did I hear through the British authorities that such orders really did exist.’
¹⁴¹

He went to his death denying that Dönitz, and by implication any other officers at U-boat Command, had any part in his decision to massacre the survivors of the
Peleus
. Among the thousands in the U-boat service who found a hero’s grave, the name Eck must have had special significance with Dönitz to his dying day.

Together with the construction of his new U-boat types, Dönitz’s preoccupations in the first half of 1944 were with practical measures for preserving the European economic space and winning the time necessary to complete the boats in sufficient numbers. In the west this meant throwing back the Anglo-American invasion whenever and wherever it came. The surface fleet could not be considered for this since adequate fighter cover would be lacking, and it came down to minelaying off the enemy embarkation ports, minelaying and fortification along the coasts of Western Europe and, for attacking the landing forces at sea, U-boats—although why he thought the existing U-boat would be able to manage much better without fighter cover than surface units is difficult to understand. There were also midget submarines, manned torpedoes and other manoeuvrable explosive devices under development in a Small Craft division he had set up in 1943. He transferred a particularly inventive and forceful officer from Schniewind’s staff to head this division, Vice Admiral Helmuth Heye; he was to be the
Kriegsmarine
’s Mountbatten.

While Heye set about his task with desperate energy and fanatical
commitment—for it was not expected he would be granted much time—U-boats were held in Biscay ports and in southern and central Norway in readiness to sortie at the first sign of the invasion forces. Dönitz issued the Commander with instructions that since, in case of invasion, the future of the German people depended upon them they should pay no regard to precautions which would be valid in normal circumstances; they should have only one goal before their eyes and in their hearts: ‘
Angriff—ran
—
versenken!
’—‘Attack—forward—sink!’
¹⁴²
He followed this two weeks later on April 11th with an order headed ‘Reckless Attack’:

In view of the powerful air and sea escorts to be expected around an invasion force this was a suicide order; in the event it was not enforced, so it should perhaps be regarded, like his similar decrees to naval units manning the coastal fortifications not to yield a metre of ground,
¹⁴⁴
as exhortation to fanaticism rather than as a literal instruction.

In the east he continued, in opposition to the generals and his own operations staff, to support Hitler’s policy of clinging on to the Crimea regardless; on March 20th Hitler asked him to write down his arguments for holding Odessa—near the base of the peninsula—so that the generals could see it was not only the Führer who was in favour of holding the area. Dönitz instructed his reluctant staff to prepare a document on these lines. His lack of realism was staggering; since this was how he always reacted to imminent defeat it is unnecessary to examine the rationalizations he put forward.

One of his preoccupations at this time of desperate manpower shortage was to ward off demands from the generals for naval personnel and construction workers engaged in his Programme 43. To the military the decisive struggle was on land in the east; when it came to invasion that too would be a land affair. In view of the Navy’s inability to affect the issue at sea this was a reasonable standpoint and Dönitz was very
conscious that Hitler’s support was vital if he were to resist these demands and safeguard his long-term aim of taking the offensive to the enemy—something the generals could never do. He constantly explained the prospects for the renewed ‘tonnage war’ to Hitler in glowing terms, constantly demanded more men for training and construction, aircraft for reconnaissance or attack on carriers supporting enemy convoys; in return there was an obvious requirement to flatter and agree with the Führer’s strategy; yet in view of his record who can say that he employed conscious deception? His own insecurity and, on the other hand, narrow, goal-oriented focus and fanatical drive are sufficient to account for his attitude.

It is certain, too, that National Socialist ardour distorted his vision. Whatever his mix of reasons for supporting Hitler’s strategy, by April events had overtaken it. A Russian thrust forced withdrawal from Odessa. Dönitz’s memorandum arguing the importance of this port for the defence of the area was now used against him by the General Staff anxious to abandon the Crimea before it was too late. He replied that only the Führer could comprehend the entire strategic picture, and retired to his invariable fall-back in defeat: if the Crimea were given up, 30 enemy divisions would be released to attack the Rumanian front.

He was still arguing on these lines when the local Commander began a withdrawal without the Führer’s orders towards the fortress of Sebastopol, and he was arguing that ‘bridgehead Sebastopol’ must be held at all costs, when on May 9th Hitler was at last forced to give the evacuation order. The Navy, which had been ferrying in supplies up to the last moment, turned to evacuating the troops, and succeeded under difficult conditions in taking out over 30,000 including wounded; over 75,000 men and quantitites of arms were left behind.

It was shortly after this débâcle that Dönitz suffered another personal tragedy. At some time after the loss of his son, Peter, in U 954 he had taken advantage of a dispensation whereby senior officers could withdraw a son from the front; the idea, pure National Socialist theory, was to ensure that elements of the best blood survived to enrich the race—senior officers and Party members were by definition of the best blood. Klaus had, therefore, been sent to train as a naval doctor at a special course at Tübingen University.
¹⁴⁵

While still at Tübingen in May that year, Klaus visited naval friends serving in the 5th
Schnell
boat flotilla at Cherbourg. The flotilla was in the front line for reconnaissance sorties off the English south coast to
report any signs of the invasion. Such a sortie was ordered on the night of May 13th during Klaus’s visit and he went along for the ride in S 141 as guest of the commander. It was a calm night with haze and fog patches reducing visibility in places to 1,000 yards, and half an hour after midnight off Selsey Bill S 141’s group of three boats came under fire from destroyers, themselves invisible. These were HMS
Stayner
and the Free French
La Combattante
.
¹⁴⁶
While turning away S 141 received a hit from the French ship which put her steering out of action and, as she continued her turn towards the enemy, another direct hit which caused her to sink. Six survivors were rescued by the destroyers later; Klaus Dönitz was not among them.

According to interrogation reports on the survivors he was an epileptic and drowned after suffering a fit in the sea—a story which excited a Canadian intelligence officer who had been playing records of Karl Dönitz’s speeches over and over again after detecting slight hesitations in his voice which he thought might be signs of epilepsy. This clinched it, he believed; Dönitz had a mild form of epilepsy known to the medical profession as
petit mal
, which Klaus had evidently inherited. Dönitz’s daughter, Ursula, denies this. Nevertheless, if true the story might account for the fact that Klaus had been transferred to the shore staff of the 5th U-flotilla in mid-1942 without having made an operational cruise. Another reason advanced for this transfer was that the head operation necessary after his motorcycle accident rendered him unable to cope with the pressure changes induced in boats fitted with Schnorchel; this is certainly false since the Schnorchel did not come into use until 1944. The question is open; the medical records cannot be traced.