On this day in 1945, Nazi German war criminal Anton Dostler was executed by firing squad for his participation in killing American POWs
On this day in 1945, Nazi German war criminal Anton Dostler was executed by firing squad for his participation in killing American POWs
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[Context](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Dostler)
Anton Dostler (10 May 1891 – 1 December 1945) was a German General of the Infantry who was executed after the end of World War II for war crimes. He was shot by a United States Army firing squad after being found guilty of ordering the execution of American prisoners of war during the Italian Campaign in March 1944. Dostler was convicted in the first Allied war crimes trials to be held after the end of the war in Europe.
Dostler was taken prisoner of war by the United States Army and, after it discovered the fate of the commando raiding team, was put on trial for war crimes on 8 May 1945. A military tribunal was held at the seat of the Supreme Allied Commander, the Royal Palace in Caserta, on 8 October 1945.[4] In the first Allied war crimes trial, he was accused of carrying out an illegal order. In his defense he maintained that he had not issued the order but had only passed it along to Colonel Almers from Field Marshal Kesselring, and that the execution of the OSS men was a lawful order. Dostler’s plea of superior orders failed before the tribunal, which found that in ordering the mass execution he had acted on his own outside the Führer’s orders. The Military Commission also rejected his plea for clemency, declaring that the mass execution of the commando party was in violation of Article 2 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, which prohibited acts of reprisals against prisoners of war.[5] In its judgment the Commission stated that “no soldier, and still less a Commanding General, can be heard to say that he considered the summary shooting of prisoners of war legitimate, even as a reprisal.”[6]
Under the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare,[7] it was legal to execute spies and saboteurs disguised in civilian clothes or enemy uniforms, but not those captured in uniforms of their own army.[8][9][10] Because the 15 U.S. soldiers were properly dressed in U.S. uniforms behind enemy lines, and not disguised in civilian clothes or enemy uniforms, they should not have been treated as spies but as prisoners of war, a principle which Dostler had violated in enforcing the order for execution.[2][10]
The trial found General Dostler guilty of war crimes, rejecting the “superior orders” defense. He was sentenced to death, and executed in Aversa by a 12-man firing squad at 0800 hours on 1 December 1945.[11] The execution was photographed on black and white still and movie cameras.[12] Immediately after the execution Dostler’s body was lifted onto a stretcher, shrouded inside a white cotton mattress cover, and driven away in an army truck. His body was buried in Grave 93/95 of Section H at Pomezia German War Cemetery.
That post could use a NSFW flair in my opinion.
Killing POWs for the crime of killing POWs. Big brain move.
That said, Nazis were and are the most vile scum of the world.
This feels like a WW2 sub at times. Isn’t there more interesting stuff in today’s Europe? I’d rather look at the 100th old city centre of some random village in Europe than WW2 corpses or executions.