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The Commando Order (German : Kommandobefehl) was issued by the OKW, the high command of the German Armed Forces, on 18 October 1942. This order stated that all Allied commandos captured in Europe and Africa should be summarily executed without trial, even if in proper uniforms or if they attempted to surrender. Any commando or small group of commandos or a similar unit, agents, and saboteurs not in proper uniforms who fell into the hands of the German forces by some means other than direct combat (by being apprehended by the police in occupied territories, for instance), were to be handed over immediately to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, or Security Service) for immediate execution.
According to the OKW, this was to be done in retaliation for their opponents "employing in their conduct of the war, methods which contravene the International Convention of Geneva". The German high command alleged that they had ascertained from "captured orders" that Allied commandos were "instructed not only to tie up prisoners, but also to kill out-of-hand unarmed captives who they think might prove an encumbrance to them, or hinder them in successfully carrying out their aims", and that commandos had been ordered to kill prisoners. [1]
This order, which was issued in secret, made it clear that failure to carry out its directives by any commander or officer would be considered an act of negligence punishable under German military law. [2] It was issued on October 18 by Chief of the OKW Wilhelm Keitel, and only a dozen copies were distributed by Chief of Operations Staff Alfred Jodl the next day, with an appendix stating that it was intended for commanders only, and must not under any circumstances fall into enemy hands. However it was sent as an Ultra message, intercepted, and translated. [3]
It was in fact the second "Commando Order", [4] the first being issued by Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt on 21 July 1942, stipulating that parachutists should be handed over to the Gestapo. [5] Shortly after World War II, at the Nuremberg trials, the Commando Order was found to be a direct breach of the laws of war, and German officers who carried out illegal executions under the Commando Order were found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death, or, in two cases, extended incarceration.
The Commando Order cited alleged violations of the Geneva Conventions by Allied commandos as justification, following incidents at the recent Dieppe Raid and on a small raid on the Channel Island of Sark by the Small Scale Raiding Force, with some men of No. 12 Commando. [6]
On 19 August 1942, during a raid on Dieppe, a Canadian brigadier, William Southam, took a copy of the operational order ashore against explicit orders. [3] [7] [ page needed ] The order was subsequently discovered on the beach by the Germans and found its way to Adolf Hitler. Among the dozens of pages of orders was an instruction to "bind prisoners". The orders were for Canadian forces participating in the raid, and not the commandos. Bodies of shot German prisoners with their hands tied were allegedly found by German forces after the battle. [8] [9]
On the night of 3–4 October 1942, ten men of the Small Scale Raiding Force and No. 12 Commando (attached) made an offensive raid on the German-occupied isle of Sark, called "Operation Basalt", to reconnoitre the island and to take prisoners. [10] : 26
During the raid, five prisoners were captured. To minimise the task of the guard left with the captives, the commandos tied the prisoners' hands behind their backs. According to the commandos, one prisoner started shouting to alert his comrades in a hotel and was shot dead. [10] : 28 The remaining four prisoners were silenced by stuffing their mouths, according to Anders Lassen, with grass. [11] : 73
En route to the beach, three prisoners made a break. Whether or not some had freed their hands during the escape has never been established, and it is unknown whether all three broke at the same time. [11] : 73 One was shot and another stabbed, while the third managed to escape. The fourth was conveyed safely back to England. [11] : 73 [12]
A few days after the Sark raid, the Germans issued a communiqué claiming that at least one prisoner had escaped and two were shot while they were escaping, having had their hands tied. They also claimed the "hand-tying" practise was used at Dieppe. Then, on 9 October Berlin announced that 1,376 Allied prisoners (mainly Canadians from Dieppe) would henceforth be shackled. The Canadians responded with a similar-in-practise shackling of German POWs in Canada. [13]
The tit-for-tat shackling continued until the Swiss achieved agreement with the Canadians to desist on 12 December and with the Germans some time later after they received further assurances from the British. However, before the Canadians ended the policy, there was an uprising of German POWs at Bowmanville POW camp.
On 7 October, Hitler personally penned a note in the Wehrmacht daily communiqué:
In future, all terror and sabotage troops of the British and their accomplices, who do not act like soldiers but rather like bandits, will be treated as such by the German troops and will be ruthlessly eliminated in battle, wherever they appear.[ citation needed ]
This section relies largely or entirely on a single source .(July 2018) |
On 18 October, after much deliberation by High Command lawyers, officers, and staff, Hitler issued the Commando Order or Kommandobefehl in secret, with only 12 copies. The following day Alfred Jodl distributed 22 copies with an appendix stating that the order was "intended for commanders only and must not under any circumstances fall into enemy hands". The order itself stated:
- For a long time now our opponents have been employing in their conduct of the war, methods which contravene the International Convention of Geneva. The members of the so-called Commandos behave in a particularly brutal and underhanded manner; and it has been established that those units recruit criminals not only from their own country but even former convicts set free in enemy territories. From captured orders it emerges that they are instructed not only to tie up prisoners, but also to kill out-of-hand unarmed captives who they think might prove an encumbrance to them, or hinder them in successfully carrying out their aims. Orders have indeed been found in which the killing of prisoners has positively been demanded of them.
- In this connection it has already been notified in an Appendix to Army Orders of 7.10.1942. that in future, Germany will adopt the same methods against these Sabotage units of the British and their Allies; i.e. that, whenever they appear, they shall be ruthlessly destroyed by the German troops.
- I order, therefore:— From now on all men operating against German troops in so-called Commando raids in Europe or in Africa, are to be annihilated to the last man. This is to be carried out whether they be soldiers in uniform, or saboteurs, with or without arms; and whether fighting or seeking to escape; and it is equally immaterial whether they come into action from Ships and Aircraft, or whether they land by parachute. Even if these individuals on discovery make obvious their intention of giving themselves up as prisoners, no pardon is on any account to be given. On this matter a report is to be made on each case to Headquarters for the information of Higher Command.
- Should individual members of these Commandos, such as agents, saboteurs etc., fall into the hands of the Armed Forces through any means – as, for example, through the Police in one of the Occupied Territories – they are to be instantly handed over to the SD
To hold them in military custody – for example in POW camps, etc., – even if only as a temporary measure, is strictly forbidden.
- This order does not apply to the treatment of those enemy soldiers who are taken prisoner or give themselves up in open battle, in the course of normal operations, large-scale attacks; or in major assault landings or airborne operations. Neither does it apply to those who fall into our hands after a sea fight, nor to those enemy soldiers who, after air battle, seek to save their lives by parachute.
- I will hold all Commanders and Officers responsible under Military Law for any omission to carry out this order, whether by failure in their duty to instruct their units accordingly, or if they themselves act contrary to it. [1]
Dozens of Allied special forces soldiers were executed as the result of this order. [14]
"Commandos" of those types captured were turned over to German security and police forces and transported to concentration camps for execution. The Gazette citation reporting the awarding of the G.C. to Yeo-Thomas describes this process in detail.[ citation needed ]
POW Allied airmen were also killed via the "Commando Order". [15] [ better source needed ][ failed verification ]
Victims include:
The laws of war in 1942 stated, "it is especially forbidden... to declare that no quarter will be given". This was established under Article 23 (d) of the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land. [32] The Geneva Convention of 1929, which Germany had ratified, defined who should be considered a prisoner of war on capture, which included enemy soldiers in proper uniforms, and how they should be treated. Under both the Hague and Geneva Conventions, it was legal to execute "spies and saboteurs" disguised in civilian clothes [33] [34] or uniforms of the enemy. [35] [36] The Germans claimed in paragraph one of their order that they were acting only in retaliation in a quid pro quo for claimed Allied violation of the Geneva Convention regarding the execution of prisoners and other heinous acts; [1] however, insofar as the Commando Order applied to soldiers in proper uniforms, [37] it was in direct and deliberate violation of both the customary laws of war and Germany's treaty obligations. [b]
The execution of Allied commandos without trial was also a violation of Article 30 of the 1907 Hague Convention IV – The Laws and Customs of War on Land: "A spy taken in the act shall not be punished without previous trial." [32] That provision includes only soldiers caught behind enemy lines in disguises, and not those wearing proper uniforms. Soldiers in proper uniforms cannot be punished for being lawful combatants and must be treated as prisoners of war upon capture except those disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy for military operations behind enemy lines. [35] [39] [40]
The fact that Hitler's staff took special measures to keep the order secret, including the limitation of its printing to 12 initial copies, strongly suggests that it was known to be illegal. [41] He also knew the order would be unpopular with the professional military, particularly the part that stated it would stand even if captured commandos were in proper uniforms (in contrast to the usual provision of international law that only commandos disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy could be treated as insurgents or spies, as stated in the Ex parte Quirin , the Hostages Trial, and the trial of Otto Skorzeny and others). The order included measures designed to force military staff to obey its provisions. [2]
Some German commanders, including Erwin Rommel, had refused to relay the order to their troops since they considered it to be contrary to honourable conduct. [42]
German officers who carried out executions under the Commando Order were found guilty of war crimes in postwar tribunals, including at the Nuremberg trials. Many claimed in their defence that they themselves risked execution if they had disobeyed the order, but this was disproved. [43]
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl was a German Generaloberst who served as the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht – the German Armed Forces High Command – throughout World War II.
Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny was an Austrian-born German SS-Obersturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including the removal from power of Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy and the Gran Sasso raid which rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity. Skorzeny led Operation Greif in which German soldiers infiltrated Allied lines wearing their enemies' uniforms. As a result, he was charged in 1947 at the Dachau Military Tribunal with breaching the 1907 Hague Convention, but was acquitted.
The Malmedy massacre was a German war crime committed by soldiers of the Waffen-SS on 17 December 1944 at the Baugnez crossroads near the city of Malmedy, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge. Soldiers of Kampfgruppe Peiper summarily killed eighty-four U.S. Army prisoners of war (POWs) who had surrendered after a brief battle. The Waffen-SS soldiers had grouped the U.S. POWs in a farmer's field, where they used machine guns to shoot and kill the grouped POWs; many of the prisoners of war who survived the gunfire of the massacre were killed with a coup de grâce gunshot to the head. A few survived.
Operation Jubilee or the Dieppe Raid was a disastrous Allied amphibious attack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France, during the Second World War. Over 6,050 infantry, predominantly Canadian, supported by a regiment of tanks, were put ashore from a naval force operating under the protection of Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters.
No. 62 Commando or the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) was a British Commando unit of the British Army during the Second World War. The unit was formed around a small group of commandos under the command of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). They carried out a number of raids before being disbanded in 1943.
Operation Basalt was a small British raid conducted during World War II on Sark during the German occupation of the Channel Islands.
Anton Dostler was a German army officer who fought in both World Wars. During World War II, he commanded several units as a General of the Infantry, primarily in Italy. After the Axis defeat, Dostler was executed for war crimes—specifically, ordering the execution of fifteen American prisoners of war in March 1944 during the Italian Campaign.
The Commissar Order was an order issued by the German High Command (OKW) on 6 June 1941 before Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars. It instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet political commissar identified among captured troops be summarily executed as a purported enforcer of the so-called Judeo-Bolshevism ideology in military forces. It is one of a series of criminal orders issued by the Nazi leadership.
In civil and military jurisprudence, summary execution is the putting to death of a person accused of a crime without the benefit of a free and fair trial. The term results from the legal concept of summary justice to punish a summary offense, as in the case of a drumhead court-martial, but the term usually denotes the summary execution of a sentence of death. Under international law, it is a combatant's refusal to accept an opponent's lawful surrender and the combatant's provision of no quarter, by killing the surrendering opponents.
During World War II, the German Wehrmacht committed systematic war crimes, including massacres, mass rape, looting, the exploitation of forced labour, the murder of three million Soviet prisoners of war, and participated in the extermination of Jews. While the Nazi Party's own SS forces was the organization most responsible for the Holocaust, the regular armed forces of the Wehrmacht committed many war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front.
Adolf Hitler's directives, or Führer directives (Führerbefehle), were instructions and strategic plans issued by Adolf Hitler himself over the course of World War II. The directives covered a wide range of subjects, from detailed direction of the Armed Forces' operations during World War II, to the governance of occupied territories and their populations. In addition to being a reflection of his personality and strategic interests, they were also a reflection of the larger philosophy of the Nazi regime.
A war crimes trial is the trial of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law committed during armed conflict.
German military law has a long history.
Operation Checkmate was the codename for a raid on shipping at Haugesund, Norway in April 1943 during the Second World War by British Commandos. The raiding party consisted of seven men of No. 14 (Arctic) Commando who managed to sink one ship using limpet mines. While waiting in hiding for the transport back to the United Kingdom they were captured on 14 and 15 May 1943 and eventually taken to Sachsenhausen and Belsen concentration camps where six of them were executed, victims of the Commando Order. The seventh man died of typhus.
Operation Dryad was a raid on the Casquets lighthouse in the Channel Islands by British Commandos during World War II. The Commandos captured the lighthouse and its occupants and departed leaving no trace that anyone had ever been there.
Operation Greif was a special operation commanded by Waffen-SS commando Otto Skorzeny during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The operation was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, and its purpose was to capture one or more of the bridges over the Meuse river before they could be destroyed. German soldiers, wearing captured British and U.S. Army uniforms and using captured Allied vehicles, were to cause confusion in the rear of the Allied lines. A lack of vehicles, uniforms and equipment limited the operation and it never achieved its original aim of securing the Meuse bridges. Skorzeny's post-war trial set a precedent clarifying article 4 of the Geneva Convention: as the German soldiers removed the Allied uniforms before engaging in combat, they were not to be considered francs-tireurs.
Operations Ginny I and II were two ill-fated sabotage missions conducted by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1944 during the Italian campaign of World War II. Their aim was to blow up railway tunnels that would cut the line of communication to German forces in central Italy. The first mission, Ginny I, occurred on February 27/28, 1944, when fifteen U.S. soldiers attempted to land west of the small town of Framura. However, the OSS team had to abort after they landed on the wrong spot and could not find the tunnel. The second attempt, Ginny II, occurred a month later on March 22 when the same team attempted to land on the same spot. However, they landed again in the wrong place and were captured two days later by the German Army. Although the OSS members were properly uniformed, they were summarily executed on March 26 under Hitler's Commando Order of 1942 at the command of German General Anton Dostler. After the war, Dostler was tried by a military tribunal for the deaths of fifteen Americans, sentenced to death, and executed by a firing squad.
Erich Isselhorst was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) member before and during World War II.
During World War II, Nazi Germany committed a number of atrocities against prisoners of war. German mistreatment and war crimes against prisoners of war (POWs) begun in the first days of the war during their invasion of Poland; with estimated 3,000 Polish POWs murdered in dozens of incidents, However, it was the German treatment of the Soviet prisoners of war that became most infamous: Soviet POWs held by Nazi Germany, primarily in the custody of the German Army were routinely starved and subjected to deadly conditions. Of nearly six million who were captured, around three million died during their imprisonment.
... under which parachutists who were taken prisoner not in connection with battle actions were to be transferred to the Gestapo by whom they were, in fact, killed.