ITALY: Allies v. Dostler

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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, he had ordered the O.S.S. men shot. They wore no insignia, had turned their field jackets inside out. A Führerbefehl (order from Hitler) had decreed death for captured commandos and saboteurs. When junior officers protested, he countermanded his order, asked higher-ups what to do. Field Marshal General Albert Kesselring's headquarters said shoot the captives; after that, he had no alternative.

Aware that they were setting a momentous precedent (see INTERNATIONAL), the five U.S. officers serving as commissioners mulled the question of responsibility. But if they forgave Dostler for following orders, the only war criminal left would be Hitler. When they had decided, grave-faced Corporal Albert Hirschman of the O.S.S. translated the verdict for impassive General Dostler: "To be shot to death by musketry."