… comes around. Here’s an interpretation. If there is something you are doing, and you are having a lot of fun doing it, then beware. What you are doing may eventually come back to you. What goes around, comes around. It was a lesson brought home to 70 years ago to members of the political parties and the military staff who had for years waged unprovoked war on neighboring countries and had looted and destroyed with little regard for the consequences, especially to themselves.
Seventy years ago it all came crashing down to the Fascists, the Nazis and the Japanese Imperial regime. The conflicts they initiated after a short while turned viciously against them, and they now found themselves under the heel of their former victims. For the ring leaders there was a heavy price to pay. For the gentleman pictured above the debt came due on this date. He is German General of the Infantry Anton Dostler. There is some background:
The Commando Order (German: Kommandobefehl) was issued by Adolf Hitler on 18 October 1942 stating that all Alliedcommandos encountered by German forces in Europe and Africashould be killed immediately without trial, even 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 military forces by some means other than direct combat (through the police in occupied territories, for instance) were to be handed over immediately to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, Security Service). The order, which was issued in secret, made it clear that failure to carry out these orders by any commander or officer would be considered to be an act of negligence punishable under German military law.[1] This was in fact the second “Commando Order”,[2] the first being issued by Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt on 21 July 1942, stipulating that parachutists should be handed over to the Gestapo.[3] 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.
In March 1944 a contingent of American soldiers infiltrated behind enemy lines in Italy with the the aim to demolish a railroad tunnel at Framura. They were captured by Italian soldiers loyal to the the defunct Benito Mussolini regime and handed over to German forces commanded by Anton Dostler. Dostler was directed by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring to execute the soldiers. There was resistance to the execution by lower level officers, because this sort of action was a well-recognized war crime. Dostler insisted, and all fifteen of the American contingent were shot on 26 March 1944. Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten, a member of Dostler’s staff who refused to sign off on the order, was dismissed from the Wehrmacht. An attempt was made to conceal the crime by burying the bodies in a mass grave that was then camouflaged.
The killing of these American troops by the Wehrmacht was not unique. Notably:
After the Normandy landings, 34 SAS soldiers and a USAAF pilot were captured during Operation Bulbasket and executed. Most were shot, but three were killed by lethal injection while recovering from wounds in hospital.
As Wehrmacht forces in Germany were preparing to surrender on 8 May 1945, Dostler was taken prisoner by the American Army. The execution of the Americans was not discovered until later:
The mission was not accomplished. The men did not return. Nothing was heard of them until after VE-Day, when OSS found 15 bodies in a seaside grave.
Dostler was charged with war crimes in the execution of the soldiers and a military trial held at the Royal Palace in Caserta found him guilty. On 1 December 1945 a firing squad of American soldiers executed Dostler. He was the first German officer charged and the first executed following the war. His trial was a forerunner for the war crime trials held the following year in Munich.
The Americans photographed the entire execution procedure with still and movie cameras. This procedure seems to have been unique among Axis military and political figures executed by the Allies following the war. The photo above depicts the final seconds in the life of Anton Dostler.
Skeptical Analysis 