Did you know why German U-boats stopped helping their victims?

German submarines U-156 (foreground) and U-507 rescuing survivors of the Laconia (Photo: Leopold Schuhmacher)

In the early years of World War II, it was common for German submarine commanders to help their torpedoed victims by giving them food, water, basic medical treatment and a compass heading to the nearest landmass. That practice ended after mid-September 1942 thanks to one single event called the Laconia incident, which some historians have since called an Allied war crime.

RMS Laconia was originally a civilian ocean liner which made the first round-the-world cruise in history. She was converted to a troopship during World War II and was used to ferry Italian prisoners of war from South Africa to West Africa in the fall of 1942. On her last trip, she was carrying a crew of 463, 87 civilians, 286 British soldiers, 1,793 Italian prisoners and 103 Polish soldiers who were guarding the Italians.

The Laconia shortly after she was built
(Photo: unknown photographer)

Laconia was armed with guns, which made her a legal target for submarine attacks without warning. Consequently, that was the method of attack employed by Corvette Captain Werner Hartenstein, commander of the U-boat U-156, on the evening of September 12 midway between Liberia and Ascension Island. It was a clean attack and Laconia started sinking.

One of the 6-inch guns of the Laconia
(Photo: Australian War Memorial)

She had enough lifeboats for everyone onboard, but her heavy list made half of the boats inaccessible. The crew rushed for the other boats, leaving the POWs locked up in the cargo hold. Most of the Italians managed to get out by breaking down hatches or climbing up ventilation shafts, then made for the boats or jumped into the sea. Many were bayoneted to death on the deck; many more were shot in the water or had their hands chopped off with an axe when they grabbed the side of a lifeboat. The blood soon attracted frenzied sharks.

Corvette Captain Hartenstein, who sank the Laconia and started the rescue effort (Photo: unknown photographer)

Hartenstein surfaced and was surprised to see the bloody scene with 2,000 men in the water. Realizing that most of them were civilians and POWs, he raised the Red Cross flag and started taking people on. He sent a radio message to the German head of submarine operations after midnight, which resulted in two more German and one Italian submarine joining the rescue effort, and three Vichy French ships heading for the area (though they would only get there later).

Three days after the attack, on September 15, the British passed on a message to the Americans about the sinking of the Laconia, but it was poorly written: it implied the ship had just sunk, and made no mention of Axis rescue operations. Shortly before noon on the same day, the four submarines headed for the Africa coast, crammed full of survivors and towing lifeboats, still displaying the Red Cross.

The next day, U-156 was spotted by an American B-24 Liberator bomber. Hartenstein and a British officer onboard radioed the plane, explaining the situation. Rather than replying, the plane’s captain contacted his base, a secret airbase on Ascension Island. The senior officer on duty was concerned that the U-boat might attack Ascension Island or the Allied ships also heading to pick up Laconia survivors, and replied with an order to sink the submarine. The officer later claimed he thought the rules of war did not allow combat ships to fly the Red Cross flag.

Wideawake Field on Ascension Island, where the order to bomb the rescue effort was given (Photo: National Archives)

The Liberator dropped bombs and depth charges, killing dozens of rescued people and forcing the U-boat to dive to safety, leaving behind the men crowded on the deck. On September 17, one of the other submarines also came under attack by U.S. planes and was forced to dive. In the end, only 1,083 survived out of the 2,741 men, women and children travelling on the Laconia. 1,420 of the 1,658 dead were Italian POWs.

Following the incident, Admiral Karl Dönitz issued the “Laconia order” forbidding U-boats from rescuing survivors (though it still happened sometimes). None of the American pilots or their commander were investigated or punished for bombing a rescue operation, and the incident was almost forgotten, had it not been for the Nuremberg trials. (A War Crime in Any Language) During the trials, a prosecutor tried to cite the Laconia order as proof of Dönitz’s war crimes. The attempt backfired, as it gave Dönitz an opportunity to tell the story behind the order, causing a great deal of embarrassment to the United States.