Orders to Kill Survivors at Sea
The deliberate killing of survivors at sea represents one of the most clearly defined war crimes in international humanitarian law, with prohibitions stretching back more than a century and codified in multiple treaties and military manuals. The fundamental principle underlying these prohibitions is that individuals who are hors de combat — out of combat due to shipwreck, wounds, surrender, or other incapacitation — must not be made the object of attack. This principle applies universally in armed conflicts and represents a core tenet of the laws of war that balances military necessity with humanitarian considerations.
The phrase "hors de combat" ["outside the fight"] is pronounced "or-duh-kom-bah" in American English, with the "h" silent, and "or-duh-kom-ba" in British English. The best way to pronounce it is to say "or" (as in "horse") then "duh" then "kom" (as in "combat") and "bah".
The phrase "hors de combat" originates from French, literally meaning "out of combat," and was adopted into English. The earliest recorded evidence in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a letter written in 1757 by the British politician and diplomat Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773). Benjamin Franklin put the term to use in a 1776 letter, observing that an "arrow sticking in any part of a man puts him hors du [sic] combat till it is extracted." It first appeared in legal and military contexts to describe soldiers who were unable to fight due to injury or surrender, and is now used more broadly to mean any person or thing that is "out of action". Its most prominent use is in international law to define a combatant who is unable to fight due to injury, capture, or surrender, and therefore cannot be targeted.
The prohibition against denying quarter to survivors has deep historical roots in customary international law. The 1863 Lieber Code, promulgated by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, established foundational principles that continue to influence modern law. Article 60 of the Lieber Code states unequivocally that "it is against the usage of modern war to resolve, in hatred and revenge, to give no quarter." Article 71 went further, prescribing the death penalty for anyone who "intentionally inflicts additional wounds on an enemy already wholly disabled, or kills such an enemy." These principles were subsequently incorporated into the 1899 Hague Regulations, which prohibited killing or wounding "an enemy who, having laid down arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion."
The modern legal framework governing the treatment of survivors at sea is primarily established through the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Additional Protocols. Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions mandates that persons taking no active part in hostilities, including those placed hors de combat by any cause, "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely" and specifically prohibits "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds." The Geneva Convention (II) for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea requires that shipwrecked members of armed forces "shall be respected and protected in all circumstances," imposing both negative duties to refrain from attacking them and positive duties to take active steps to safeguard them from harm.
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions provides additional clarity, stating that "a person who is recognized or who, in the circumstances, should be recognized to be hors de combat shall not be made the object of attack." The Protocol further designates "making a person the object of attack in the knowledge that he is hors de combat" as a grave breach, placing it among the most serious violations of international humanitarian law. United States military doctrine fully incorporates these principles, with the U.S. Naval Handbook explicitly listing "denial of quarter" and "offenses against the survivors of ships and aircraft lost at sea, including killing, wounding, or mistreating the shipwrecked" as representative war crimes.
Historical Context: World War II Submarine Warfare
The treatment of survivors at sea during World War II provides crucial historical context for understanding both the operational challenges of naval warfare and the clear legal boundaries separating legitimate military operations from war crimes. The submarine campaigns of World War II, particularly in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, created unprecedented situations where the vulnerability of submarines to air attack conflicted with traditional obligations to rescue survivors. However, the historical record demonstrates a critical distinction between operational orders prohibiting rescue attempts and orders to actively kill survivors—a distinction that carried profound legal and moral implications.
The pivotal event in this history was the Laconia incident of September 1942, which fundamentally altered German submarine operations. When the German U-boat U-156 sank the British troopship Laconia off West Africa, Commander Werner Hartenstein discovered the vessel was carrying nearly 1,800 Italian prisoners of war along with British personnel and civilians. Hartenstein immediately commenced rescue operations, broadcasting messages in English to request Allied assistance and marking his submarine with Red Cross flags. Several German U-boats joined the rescue effort, surfacing to collect survivors and towing lifeboats. However, a U.S. Army Air Force B-24 Liberator bomber from Ascension Island attacked the scene despite the visible rescue operations, damaging U-156 and forcing the submarines to abandon the survivors and submerge.
In response to this incident, Admiral Karl Dönitz issued the "Laconia Order" on September 17, 1942, which stated that "all attempts to rescue members of ships which have been sunk, therefore also fishing out swimmers and putting them into lifeboats, righting capsized lifeboats, handing out provisions and water, have to cease. Rescue runs counter to the most elementary demands of war for the destruction of enemy ships and crews." This order was framed as a necessary measure for submarine self-preservation, reflecting the harsh reality that surfaced submarines engaged in rescue operations were extremely vulnerable to air attack. At the post-war Nuremberg Trials, Dönitz was not convicted for this specific order, as the tribunal acknowledged that Allied submarine commanders, including Admiral Chester Nimitz in the Pacific, had operated under similar doctrines when rescue attempts would endanger their vessels. This established a precedent recognizing "operational necessity" as a defense, though it remained controversial.
However, the Laconia Order must be sharply distinguished from orders or actions to actively kill survivors, which were unequivocally war crimes under international law. The Laconia Order prohibited rendering aid; it did not authorize violence against survivors. The London Naval Protocol of 1936, to which Germany was a signatory, had established rules requiring submarines to place merchant vessel crews and passengers in a place of safety before sinking their ships. While this protocol was largely abandoned by major combatants during World War II due to military exigencies—including by the United States in its Pacific submarine campaign—the prohibition against actively attacking survivors remained absolute. The distinction was clear: failing to rescue survivors due to military necessity might be legally defensible under certain circumstances, but deliberately killing them was not.
War Crimes: Direct Actions Against Survivors
Beyond operational orders limiting rescue attempts, World War II witnessed numerous documented instances where submarine crews actively engaged in killing survivors, actions that constituted clear violations of international law and for which perpetrators were prosecuted as war criminals. These cases established important legal precedents and demonstrated the international community's commitment to enforcing prohibitions against denying quarter to shipwreck survivors, regardless of the operational context or military justifications offered by the accused.
The most notorious case was the Peleus incident of March 1944, which became a landmark prosecution for war crimes at sea. After the German U-boat U-852 sank the Greek freighter Peleus in the South Atlantic, Commander Heinz-Wilhelm Eck ordered his crew to systematically machine-gun survivors on life rafts and in the water for several hours. Eck's stated intention was to eliminate all traces of the sinking to prevent Allied forces from locating his submarine. This action went far beyond any claim of operational necessity or self-defense; it was a deliberate attempt to murder witnesses. After the war, Eck and two of his officers were captured, tried by a British military court, convicted of war crimes, and executed. The Peleus trial established clear legal precedent that orders to kill survivors constituted criminal acts for which commanders bore personal responsibility, regardless of their stated military rationale.
Other documented incidents demonstrated that such actions, while perhaps less systematic than the Peleus case, occurred with disturbing frequency. In May 1940, U-46 under Commander Engelbert Endras surfaced after sinking a small British trawler and fired upon the lifeboat, killing several survivors. In October 1943, survivors of the Greek freighter Antonico reported being fired upon by U-596 using its deck gun after their ship was torpedoed. These incidents, along with others documented in various theaters of the war, established a pattern of criminal behavior that transcended any defensible military necessity. The acts were not incidental to combat operations but rather deliberate targeting of individuals who were manifestly out of combat and entitled to protection under international law.
The post-war tribunals carefully distinguished between different types of conduct. In the Von Leeb case (the German High Command Trial) before the U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1948, the accused were charged with war crimes involving refusal to give quarter to prisoners of war and members of enemy armed forces. The tribunal documented instances where Allied airmen forced to land in Germany were killed by civilian populations while German authorities were instructed not to interfere and prosecutors were told not to bring charges against the killers. These cases reinforced the principle that denying quarter, whether through direct action or deliberate failure to prevent such actions, constituted serious violations of the laws of war for which military and civilian leaders could be held accountable.
Contemporary Allegations and Legal Implications
The principles established through historical precedent and codified in international law remain fully applicable to contemporary conflicts, as recent allegations regarding U.S. military operations demonstrate. On 10 September 2025, Nick Turse at The Intercept reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given an order to "kill everybody" on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean during counter-narcotics operations. According to reporting by the Washington Post and CNN, after an initial missile strike on an alleged drug boat, members of SEAL Team 6 observed two survivors clinging to wreckage. To comply with Hegseth's reported orders, the commander allegedly ordered a second strike to kill the survivors. These reports, based on unnamed sources familiar with the operation, raised immediate legal concerns among military law experts and prompted congressional oversight.
A group of Democrat lawmakers, many of whom were veterans, posted a video 18 November 2025 telling military and intelligence officers to "refuse illegal orders." The lawmakers in the video, which Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin posted, were all military veterans and former intelligence officials who spoke directly to members of the military and intelligence community. “We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military but that trust is at risk,” said the Democratic lawmakers, including Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Reps. Chris DeLuzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Jason Crow of Colorado.
“This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats coming to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders,” they added. “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” They did not call for opposition to any specific policies or orders.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller condemned the video, accusing the Democratic lawmakers of “openly calling for insurrection.” Slotkin responded in a separate post, “This is the law. Passed down from our Founding Fathers, to ensure our military upholds its oath to the Constitution — not a king. Given you’re directing much of a military policy, you should buff up on the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.”
President Donald Trump on 20 November 2025 accused several Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior,” calling for them “be arrested and put on trial” for behavior that could be “punishable by death” he said. “It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand — We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET,” the president wrote in one TruthSocial post. “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” Trump wrote in another post. In a third, he wrote: "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" Trump also reposted multiple posts from other Truth Social users about the video, including one that said, “Hang them George Washington would.”
Hegseth characterized the Post's reporting as "fake news" and defended the operations as "lethal, kinetic strikes" specifically intended to "stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people." However, legal experts noted that regardless of the characterization of the initial strike, an order to kill occupants of a vessel who were no longer able to fight would constitute an order to show "no quarter," which is explicitly prohibited as a war crime under both customary international law and treaty obligations binding on the United States. The legal framework makes no distinction based on the target's designation as "narco-terrorists" or the overall mission's counter-narcotics objectives; once individuals are hors de combat, they are entitled to protection regardless of their prior activities or legal status.
The Washington Post reported "Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell declined to address questions about Hegseth’s order and other details of the operation, including Special Operations involvement. “This entire narrative is completely false,” he said in a statement. “Ongoing operations to dismantle narcoterrorism and to protect the Homeland from deadly drugs have been a resounding success.”
"The commander overseeing the operation from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, told people on the secure conference call that the survivors were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo, according to two people. He ordered the second strike to fulfill Hegseth’s directive that everyone must be killed....
"The boat in the first strike was hit a total of four times, twice to kill the crew and twice more to sink it, four people familiar with the operation said. In subsequent strikes on alleged traffickers that left no survivors, the U.S. military has also fired multiple missiles to remove boats from the waterways, several people familiar with the matter said."
U.S. military doctrine explicitly recognizes these principles and their binding nature on American forces. The U.S. Air Force Pamphlet on the Law of Armed Conflict states that "the law of armed conflicts clearly forbids the killing or wounding of an enemy who is hors de combat" and lists "deliberate refusal of quarter" and "deliberate attack on shipwrecked survivors" as acts involving individual criminal responsibility. The U.S. Naval Handbook provides similar guidance, emphasizing that combatants "cease to be subject to attack when they have individually laid down their arms and indicate clearly their wish to surrender." The Commander's Handbook acknowledges that surrender must be communicated at a time when it can be received and properly acted upon, but explicitly states that once combatants are disabled by wounds or circumstances, they are protected from attack.
The U.S. Rules of Engagement for Operation Desert Storm instructed forces: "Do not engage anyone who has surrendered, is out of battle due to sickness or wounds, [or] is shipwrecked." This language reflects the clear understanding within the U.S. military that shipwrecked individuals, regardless of the circumstances that led to their condition, are protected persons who may not be targeted. The U.S. Military Commissions Acts of 2006 and 2009 further codified these principles, defining "protected persons" to include "military personnel placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, or detention" and establishing that intentional killing of protected persons is triable as murder before military commissions.
Enforcement and Accountability
The alleged Caribbean incident has prompted calls for congressional oversight, with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker vowing "vigorous oversight" of the reported order. The controversy has been further complicated by Hegseth's threat to recall Senator Mark Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and combat veteran, to active duty for possible court-martial after Kelly participated in a video reminding service members of their duty to refuse illegal orders. This response raised additional concerns about the military chain of command and the protection of service members who raise legal and ethical objections to potentially unlawful orders.
The duty to refuse illegal orders is well-established in U.S. military law and reflects the principles established at Nuremberg, where "following orders" was explicitly rejected as a defense to war crimes charges. The Uniform Code of Military Justice requires service members to obey lawful orders but does not require—and in fact prohibits—obedience to orders that are manifestly illegal. An order to kill individuals who are clearly hors de combat would fall into the category of manifestly illegal orders that service members have both the right and duty to refuse. The potential prosecution of a senator for reminding service members of this duty raises serious questions about civilian control of the military and the protection of constitutional rights.
Conclusion
The prohibition against killing survivors at sea stands as one of the clearest and most consistently enforced principles of international humanitarian law. From the Lieber Code of 1863 through the Geneva Conventions and into contemporary military doctrine, the law has consistently held that individuals who are hors de combat—whether through shipwreck, wounds, surrender, or other incapacitation—must not be made the object of attack. Historical precedents from World War II, particularly the prosecution of commanders in cases like the Peleus incident, established that orders to kill survivors constitute serious war crimes for which individual commanders bear personal criminal responsibility.
The critical distinction between operational orders limiting rescue attempts due to military necessity and orders to actively kill survivors remains as relevant today as it was during World War II. While the Laconia Order and similar Allied practices were found to have some justification in operational necessity at Nuremberg, no such defense has ever been successfully raised for deliberate attacks on survivors. Contemporary allegations regarding counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean demonstrate that these principles remain applicable regardless of the mission context or characterization of targets. The designation of individuals as "narco-terrorists" or the framing of strikes as "lethal, kinetic" operations does not alter the fundamental legal obligation to refrain from attacking individuals who are manifestly out of combat and no longer pose a threat.
The enforcement of these principles through congressional oversight, military justice systems, and international tribunals remains essential to maintaining the rule of law in armed conflict. Service members' duty to refuse manifestly illegal orders, and their right to do so without fear of retaliation, represents a crucial safeguard against war crimes. As the international community continues to grapple with evolving forms of armed conflict, from counter-narcotics operations to counterterrorism missions, the fundamental principle that survivors at sea must be protected remains unchanged and non-negotiable, reflecting the minimum standards of humanity that must be maintained even in the midst of armed conflict.
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