General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
Re: STARLING ORDER - Reply from Axel Niestle
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: August 14, 2002 10:03PM
<HTML>Dare I enter the fray....
"it appears the case that the German side suffered their due
penalties when apprehended re war crimes"
While a handful of high ranking Germans were convicted of war crimes, if every German soldier who committed what we now consider to be outside the bounds of the rules of war (shooting POWs, killing civilians, etc) much of the German army that served on the Eastern front would have ended up in front of a firing squad. As well as a lot of other folks, like most of the Japanese army, and more than a few of the Soviet army.
Looking at the past as a historian, not a jurist, (looking to understand events, not judge them), remember that Walker, like most Royal Naval officers of the time, considered submarine warfare against civilian merchantmen to be outside the bounds of the rules of war - the U-boat crew were pirates, not sailors, and having broken the rules of war, deserved the same in return.
The RN felt that U-boat men had done many things outside the rules of war, such as leaving merchant ship crewman to their fates after a sinking (true), or shooting survivors in the water (false, but widely believed to be true at the time). It does not take a mentally ill man, just a very angry one, to do the same in return. 'You leave our crewmen in the water to die after a sinking, well I'll do the same to yours. You shoot our survivors in the water, well I'll depth charge your crewmen....' The thought process is easy to enter into, and was very common in WWII. Do unto them what they do unto us. Not saying this is right, wrong, or indifferent, but that was the thought process.
I might throw in that US submariners captured in the Pacific routinely faced treatment far worse from their captors than the average U-boat man ever did from the Allies. Numerous documented cases of murder, torture and mistreatment of POWs exist, as well as the deliberate massacre of allied crewmen after surviving a sinking. Guess how many Japanese (IJN) officers were brought to trial for those events? (It's a number less than one).
I guess what I am saying is that the moral outrage expressed, given the violence with which WWII was fought on all fronts, is perhaps a bit too strong.</HTML>
"it appears the case that the German side suffered their due
penalties when apprehended re war crimes"
While a handful of high ranking Germans were convicted of war crimes, if every German soldier who committed what we now consider to be outside the bounds of the rules of war (shooting POWs, killing civilians, etc) much of the German army that served on the Eastern front would have ended up in front of a firing squad. As well as a lot of other folks, like most of the Japanese army, and more than a few of the Soviet army.
Looking at the past as a historian, not a jurist, (looking to understand events, not judge them), remember that Walker, like most Royal Naval officers of the time, considered submarine warfare against civilian merchantmen to be outside the bounds of the rules of war - the U-boat crew were pirates, not sailors, and having broken the rules of war, deserved the same in return.
The RN felt that U-boat men had done many things outside the rules of war, such as leaving merchant ship crewman to their fates after a sinking (true), or shooting survivors in the water (false, but widely believed to be true at the time). It does not take a mentally ill man, just a very angry one, to do the same in return. 'You leave our crewmen in the water to die after a sinking, well I'll do the same to yours. You shoot our survivors in the water, well I'll depth charge your crewmen....' The thought process is easy to enter into, and was very common in WWII. Do unto them what they do unto us. Not saying this is right, wrong, or indifferent, but that was the thought process.
I might throw in that US submariners captured in the Pacific routinely faced treatment far worse from their captors than the average U-boat man ever did from the Allies. Numerous documented cases of murder, torture and mistreatment of POWs exist, as well as the deliberate massacre of allied crewmen after surviving a sinking. Guess how many Japanese (IJN) officers were brought to trial for those events? (It's a number less than one).
I guess what I am saying is that the moral outrage expressed, given the violence with which WWII was fought on all fronts, is perhaps a bit too strong.</HTML>
