 In 1945 he served as Judge Advocate at the war crimes trial in Hamburg of former personnel of the German submarine "U-852", the so-called "Peleus" affair.The U-boat captain, Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, was accused of ordering his crew to open fire on the survivors of a Greek ship, the SS "Peleus", which they had just torpedoed and sunk.Eck and two of his junior officers were executed by firing squad; he was the only U-boat commander of the war to be convicted of war crimes committed at sea.