Commando Order

The Commando Order was issued by Adolf Hitler on 18 October 1942 stating that all Allied commandos encountered by German forces in Europe and Africa should be killed immediately, even if in uniform or if they attempted to surrender (prompted by the success of the British Commandos). Any commando or small group of commandos or a similar unit, agents, and saboteurs not in uniform, 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 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 a war crime.

Background

The Commando Order mentioned violations of the Geneva Conventions by Allied commando troops and cites these violations as justification for the order. It is widely believed that an occurrence at Dieppe and on a small raid on the Channel Island of Sark by the Small Scale Raiding Force (with some men of No. 12 Commando) brought Hitler's rage to a head.

Dieppe Raid

Main article: Dieppe Raid

On 19 August 1942, during this raid, a Canadian brigadier took a copy of the operational order ashore against explicit orders.^[4] The order was subsequently discovered on the beach by the Germans and found its way to Hitler. Among the dozens of pages of orders was an instruction to 'bind prisoners'. (The orders were for the 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.^[5][6]

Sark Raid

Main article: Operation Basalt

On the night of 3–4 October 1942, ten men of the British Small Scale Raiding Force and No. 12 Commando (attached) made an offensive raid on the isle of Sark, called Operation Basalt, to reconnoitre, and take some prisoners.

During the raid, five prisoners were taken. To minimize the task of the guard left with the captives, the commandos tied the prisoners' hands. According to the British personnel, one prisoner allegedly started shouting to alert those in a hotel, and was shot dead. The remaining four prisoners were silenced by stuffing their mouths, according to Anders Lassen, with grass. En route to the beach, three prisoners made a break. Whether or not some had freed their hands during the firefight has never been established, nor is it known whether all three broke at the same time. Two are believed to have been shot and one stabbed. The fourth was conveyed safely back to England. Officially-sanctioned German military accounts of the time assert unequivocally that the dead German soldiers were found with their hands bound, and later German military publications make many references to captured Commando instructions ordering the tying of captives' hands behind them, and the use of a particularly painful method of knotting around the thumbs to enable efficient, coercive, single-handed control of the captive.

German response and escalation

A few days after the Sark raid, the Germans issued a propaganda communiqué implying that at least one prisoner had escaped and two were shot while resisting having their hands tied. They also claimed this 'hand-tying' practice was used at Dieppe. Subsequently, on October 9, Berlin announced that 1376 Allied prisoners (mainly Canadians from Dieppe), would henceforth be shackled. The Canadians responded with a like shackling of German prisoners in Canada.^[7]

This tit-for-tat shackling continued until the Swiss achieved agreement with the Canadians to desist on December 12, and with the Germans some time later after they received further assurances from the British. However, by this time many German camps had abandoned the pointless practice or reduced it to merely leaving a pile of shackles in a prison billet as a token.

On October 7, 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.

In effect

On October 18 after much deliberation by High Command lawyers, officers and staff, Hitler issued his Commando Order or Kommandobefehl in secret, with only 12 copies. The following day Army Chief of Staff Alfred Jodl, distributed copies too, 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 that

1. 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 underhand 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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 P.O.W. Camps, etc., - even if only as a temporary measure, is strictly forbidden.

5. 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.

6. 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.

— ^[8]

Allied casualties

The Commando Order was invoked to order the death of an unknown number of Allied Special Forces and behind-the-lines operators of the OSS, SOE, and other special forces elements.^{[citation needed]} "Commandos" of these 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.

The first victims were seven officers of Operation Musketoon, who were shot in Sachsenhausen on the morning of 23 October 1942. In November 1942 British survivors of Operation Freshman were executed. In December 1942 Royal Marine commandos captured during Operation Frankton were executed under this order and further executions were carried out through the remainder of the war.

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.^[9]

In 1944/45, 10 OSS men, including Holt Green of the DAWES mission, and others of the HOUSEBOAT mission were shot at Mauthausen by SS Hauptsturmführer Georg Bachmayer on orders of Ernst Kaltenbrunner.^[10] In 1945, Jack Taylor and the DUPONT mission were captured by the men of Gestapo agent Johann Sanitzer. He asked the RSHA for instructions on a possible deal that Taylor proposed, but Kaltenbrunner's staff reminded "of Hitler's edict that all captured officers attached to foreign missions were to be executed".^[11] Taylor was convicted of espionage, though he claimed to be an ordinary soldier. He was sent to Mauthausen. He survived, barely, but gathered evidence and was eventually a witness at the war crimes trials.^[12]

Legality

The laws of war as accepted by all civilized countries in 1942 were unequivocal on this point: "... it is especially forbidden ... to declare that no quarter will be given". This was established under the Article 23 of the IV Convention – The Laws and Customs of War on Land of the Hague Conventions of 1907.^[13] The Geneva Convention of 1929, that Germany had ratified, defined who should be considered a Prisoner of War on capture, that included enemy soldiers in uniform and how they should be treated. While at the time under both Hague and Geneva it was legal to execute "spies and saboteurs" disguised in civilian clothes,^[14][15] insofar as the Commando Order applied to soldiers in uniform it was in direct and deliberate violation of both the customary laws of war and Germany's treaty obligations.^[16]

Hitler and his subordinates knew that the Commando order was illegal because only twelve copies were printed and special measures were taken to keep it secret.^[17] He also knew the order would be unpopular with the professional military, in particular the part of the order that stated that the order would stand even if captured commandos were in uniform (i.e., plainclothes commandos could be treated as insurgents or spies under international law, as the United States Supreme Court explained in ex parte Quirin, and was confirmed in the Hostages Trial). The order included measures designed to force them to obey despite their lack of enthusiasm.^[18]

Some commanders like Rommel had refused to relay this order to their troops, considering it to be contrary to honourable conduct.^[19] The dishonourable nature of this command was well established and had been so for over a century before the Hague Conventions of 1907. For example: on 28 May 1794,

Inflamed by a most inhuman spirit of revenge, the French legislature now ordered that all the military subjects of the king of Great Britain, when captured, should be put to the sword. The duke of York, in announcing to his troops this atrocious and horrible decree, exhorted them "not to suffer their resentment to lead them to any precipitate act of cruelty on their part, which might sully the reputation they had acquired in the world." He would not believe that the French soldiers, however enslaved, would so disgrace themselves as to obey the nefarious order; and though it appears, from the acknowledgment of a French historian of the campaign, that a general of brigade shot some Hanoverian captives, the execrable law was scarcely in any other instance carried into effect.

—Charles Coote.^[20]

Aftermath

The body of Alfred Jodl after being hanged, 16 October 1946

After the war, German officers who carried out executions under the Commando Order were found guilty at war crimes trials, including the Nuremberg Trials.

The Commando Order was one of the specifications in the charge against Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Jodl, who was convicted and hanged. Another war crimes trial was held in Brunswick (Braunschweig), Germany, against Colonel-General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, Supreme Commander of German forces in Norway 1940-44. The latter was held responsible, among other things, for invoking the Commando Order against survivors of the unsuccessful British commando raid against the Vemork heavy water plant at Rjukan, Norway in 1942 (Operation Freshman). He was sentenced to death in 1946; the sentence was later commuted to 20 years' imprisonment, and he was released in 1953 for reasons of health. He died in 1968.

See also

• Severity Order
• Commissar Order
• Adolf Hitler's Directives
• German High Command orders for Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of War
• German commando operations
  • Gleiwitz incident, 1939
  • Operation Greif, 1944

References

1. ^ [1] USGPO Translation of order
2. ^ The Commando Order
3. ^ Source:"...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." [British National Archives:CAB/129/28].
4. ^ Robertson, Terence The Shame and the Glory
5. ^ http://www.legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2002/09/horror-beyond-dieppe/
6. ^ p.57 Poolton, V & Poolton-Turvey, Jayne Destined to Survive: A Dieppe Veteran's Story 1998 Dundrun Press
7. ^ Vance, Jonathan F. Men in Manacles: The Shackling of Prisoners of War, 1942-1943 The Journal of Military History, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Jul., 1995), pp. 483-504
8. ^ "Hitles Commando Order". Combined Operations. http://www.combinedops.com/Hitlers_Commando_Order.htm. Retrieved 9 May 2010. 
9. ^ Staff. SAS veterans honour wartime comrades who died The Times, 27 September 2008, p.32
10. ^ Persico, p 222, 285, 279
11. ^ Persico, p 137-140. quote is from p 140
12. ^ Persico, p 225, 310-313 Taylor was forced to work on a crew that built a crematorium. He went down to 112 pounds and developed dysentery. He tried to memorize atrocities told to him by other prisoners, in the mutual hope that he could eventually bring justice to the perpetrators. He survived the camp only because a friendly Czech 'trustee' of the Nazi guards, Milos Stransky, had seen his execution order and burned it. After liberation, he returned to the camp to document and gather evidence, including the 'death books' that recorded made-up and true versions of each prisoner's death. The evidence was later used at war crimes trials. He was also a witness at those trials. The rest of the mission, Graf, Ebbing, and Huppmann, were not technically 'foreign soldiers' so the Commando order probably didn't technically apply to them, although they were sentenced to death for being traitors. They escaped and survived.
13. ^ IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land
14. ^ The hostages trial, trial of Wilhelm List and others: Notes held at University of the West of England original source: United Nations War Crimes Commission. Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals. Volume VIII, 1949
15. ^ ex parte Quirin
16. ^ The Hague regulations were found to be customary law by the judges stitting at the Nuremberg Trials (See: Judgement : The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Avalon Project archive at Yale Law School)
17. ^ International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 4, p. 445
18. ^ [2] USGPO Translation of order. Paragraph 3.6
19. ^ Walzer, Michael (2006). Just and unjust wars: a moral argument with historical illustrations (4, revised ed.). Basic Books. p. 38. ISBN 0465037070. 
20. ^ Russell, William; Coote, Charles (1822 "The history of modern Europe: ..."). A. Small. pp. 298,299. 

External links

• "Kommandobefehl" in the original German
• Nuremberg Military Tribunal: Translation of Document 498-PS. Prosecution Exhibit 124

Bibliography

• Persico, Joseph E (1979). Piercing the Reich. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0670554901. 
• Wiggan, Richard (1986). Operation Freshman: The Rjukan Heavy Water Raid 1942. London: William Kimber & Co, Ltd. ISBN 978-0718305710. 
• Berglyd, Jostein (2007). Operation Freshman: The Actions and the Aftermath. Solna: Leandoer & Ekholm. ISBN 978-9197589598.