Hi Marco,

See: Whittingham, Richard. The Last Mass Execution in the United States – Martial Justice. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997. ISBN: 1-55750-945-X. Copyright: Richard Whittingham, 1997.

The man that was killed was Werner Drechsler (U-118). After U-118 was sunk and he was rescued Drechsler turned traitor and willingly worked for the Allies by presenting himself to other German POWs under an assumed name and intentionally getting them to talk about classified technical U-boat equipment in rooms with hidden microphones.

Eventually he was moved to another POW camp where some of the men he had done this too had also been sent & they recognized him and they beat him & hung him.

I cannot think of a single military man in any country who would not have done the same under the same circumstances. To them Drechsler was clearly a traitor and the information he assisted the enemy with meant death to the U-boat men still fighting the war. The only thing that makes this different is the NAZI government that was running the war on the German side.

Given the nature of the NAZI government we have to ask ourselves if Drechsler was a traitor to Germany (which correctly warrants a death sentence) or just a traitor to the NAZI government, an evil empire that in itself was a traitor to Germany (which would make Drechsler a patriot and a hero to the German people).

However, from the point of view of other U-boat men he was assisting the enemy in killing them and he was betraying the German government and the German people and that made him the worst kind of traitor. Most of them didn’t realize the extent to which the NAZI government was an evil empire and they were just serving their country like the men in the Allied war machine. Drechsler did what he did knowing full well it could mean the death of other U-boat men.

What we may never know is why Drechsler did it. Did he think he was helping the German people or did he do it to help himself or was there some other reason?

In the end Drechsler helped the Allied war effort and it may well have cost the lives of other U-boat men and we (justly or unjustly) executed the men that killed him.

The men that killed him could not have been in a position to see the bigger picture and from their perspective, they did the honorable thing. I also served in the military (U. S. Marine Corps) and I would not have executed them for it. They would have gotten some jail time for doing it on my turf though.

Regards,

Ken Dunn