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Post by whitehorse on Oct 16, 2019 19:23:26 GMT
Nazi General Anton Dostler Exucution. He ordered and oversaw the unlawful execution of fifteen captured U.S. soldiers. The soldiers were sent behind the German lines with orders to demolish a tunnel that was being used by the German army as a supply route to the front lines. They were captured and upon learning of their mission, Dostler ordered their execution without trial. The U.S. soldiers were wearing proper military uniforms and carried no civilian or enemy clothing and were in compliance with Hague Convention to be considered non-combatants after their surrender. Under the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, it was legal to execute “spies and saboteurs” disguised in civilian clothes or enemy uniforms but excluded those who were captured in proper uniforms. Since fifteen U.S. soldiers were properly dressed in U.S. uniforms behind enemy lines and not disguised in civilian clothes or enemy uniforms, they were not to be treated as spies but prisoners of war, which Dostler violated. This order was an implementation of Hitler’s secret Commando Order of 1942, which required the immediate execution without trial of commandos and saboteurs.
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Post by Admin on Oct 16, 2019 19:27:42 GMT
Classic case of "I was only obeying orders" As the essential facts of the case —Dostler had ordered the executions, and the Americans were dead—were not in dispute, the accused’s lawyers resorted to the “defense of superior orders.” They claimed that Dostler’s oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler required him to obey the October 1942 Führerbefehl (“Leader Order”), which proclaimed Allied commando units to be in violation of the Geneva Convention and ordered German units encountering such groups to “exterminate them without mercy wherever they find them.” Hitler’s order insisted that even if commandos “appear to be soldiers in uniform,” they must be killed and not be allowed to surrender. Finally, the order stated that if Allied commandos fell into German military hands “through different channels (for example, through the police in occupied territories),” they could not be kept, even temporarily. Instead, military personnel were to immediately deliver the commandos to the Sicherheitsdienst, the “security service” of the SS.
Under oath, Dostler testified he had no choice but to order the execution of the members of the Ginny mission: They had been caught while carrying out a commando raid, and Dostler’s oath to Hitler required him to obey the Führerbefehl, even if that order violated international law
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