ITALY: Allies v. Dostler

The mission was as risky as any the O.S.S. ever plotted. Fifteen U.S. soldiers of Italian descent were to slip ashore in rubber boats, 400 miles behind the German lines. On the main-line railway between Genoa and La Spezia, they were to blow up a tunnel which air attack had failed to seal. The mission ended in their death, March 26, 1944, before a Nazi firing squad.

Unlike the Americans he had condemned, stocky, double-chinned General Anton Dostler, 54, got a hearing. Before a U.S. military commission convened in Rome's Palace of Justice, the General said Ja,...