Command command

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With the Commando Order the transfer was issued on October 18, 1942 Adolf Hitler , members of Allied commandos (Engl. Commandos ) to kill immediately or Sicherheitsdienst to pass (SD). The order was made out by the Wehrmacht Command Staff in the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) as a "secret matter of command", signed by Hitler and distributed in twelve copies to the highest Wehrmacht agencies.

The order of command constituted a violation of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations and the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 1929 and was cited by the prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals as evidence of war crimes committed.

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As an introduction, the order states that the opponents are using methods in their warfare that are “outside the international agreements of Geneva”. Some of the members of such commandos would be recruited from released criminals. Allied orders had now been found in which the commandos were instructed to generally kill overwhelmed opponents.

Therefore, from now on, sabotage troops should be dealt with as previously announced in the addition to the Wehrmacht report on October 7, 1942. Even if they are uniformed soldiers, parachutists or destroyers without weapons, they should be cut down to the last man in combat and no pardon should be granted. The OKW should be reported.

If individual members of such commandos came into the hands of the Wehrmacht by other means - for example through the police of the occupied countries - they should be handed over to the SD immediately.

This arrangement should not be used in normal combat operations such as large-scale landing operations or large-scale airborne operations. The order signed by Hitler ends with the words: "I will make all commanders and officers legally responsible for not carrying out this order who have either neglected their duty to instruct the troops about this order or who act contrary to this order."

Additional command with explanation

On October 19, 1942, Alfred Jodl "following the decree on the extermination of terrorist and sabotage troops" put into circulation an "additional order from the Führer", which "must under no circumstances fall into the hands of the enemy ".

In this, Hitler explains why he “saw himself compelled” to issue the strict order to destroy enemy sabotage troops and to make failure to comply with severe punishment. The partisan war in the east could trigger a serious crisis; England and America had now decided - albeit under different names - to conduct such a war. This type of war is safe for the opponent, as long as he relies on surrender without a fight to be able to claim the protection of the Geneva Conventions for himself. From now on, the armed forces report will laconically announce that the sabotage squad has been arrested and killed down to the last man.

Further interpretations

After the Allies landed in Normandy , they also dropped uniformed paratroopers and troops in the hinterland. On June 25, 1944, the OKW replied to a request from Commander-in-Chief West that the Führer’s order for the destruction of terrorist and sabotage troops from 1942 was upheld: “All members of terrorist and sabotage troops found outside the immediate combat area, including basically all of them Parachutists expect to be knocked down in combat. In special cases they have to be handed over to the SD. ”The document is signed by Wilhelm Keitel and bears the initials of Walter Warlimont and Jodl.

The Armed Forces Joint Staff suggested, moreover, before July 22, 1944 English to apply the "Commando Order" on the relatives of American and Soviet military missions, which one in Yugoslavia had made in partisan battles. The OKW's deliberations on this question are contained in a document signed by Warlimont.

execution

A handover to the SD resulted in the execution. In 1943, for example, a commando company cutter was brought up off the Norwegian coast. The corresponding message ends with the words "Führer command carried out by SD".

Other documents that were presented in the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals show several cases in which members of the Wehrmacht obeyed the command. So were z. B. shot dead uniformed British soldiers who had entered Norway with a tug in 1942.

Revocation of the order

The command order was revoked by Keitel in March or April 1945, at the very end of the war.

In court, Colonel HJ Phillimore asked the witness Gerhard Wagner : “You thought at the time that you would lose the war and that it would be better to withdraw the command?” Wagner replied: “I do not know why the high command of the Wehrmacht has canceled orders. "

background

A “ Second Front ” in the west demanded by the Soviet Union in 1942 was still a long way off. The Allies shifted to limited disruptive actions in the coastal areas from Greece to Norway, in which cargo sailors or submarines deployed combat commands to attack airports, docks, military bases or military facilities. Speed, deception and camouflage played an important role. In order to be able to go into hiding and withdraw quickly, the Allied commandos also used nightly surprise attacks with knives and dangerous handcuffs with gags.

The historian Manfred Messerschmidt describes the command order as a reaction by Hitler to the Allied test landing near Dieppe (August 19, 1942). In Dieppe, British documents had come into German hands. German prisoners of war were handcuffed, which was ordered in a British deployment order. Some German soldiers reported that they were tied up by Allied soldiers in such a way that the slightest movement threatened to self-choke. A British manual recommended that prisoners of war should only survive to a reasonable extent. Janusz Piekałkiewicz cites the British command company " Basalt " on October 4, 1942 on the Channel Island of Sark as the occasion . Four German soldiers were handcuffed there. They were killed while retreating.

The use of "destroyers" and parachutists came as no surprise. In 1938 the OKW measures had discussed, which led in August 1940 to a transfer, uniformed enemy paratroopers were "treated in international law as a fighting soldier." In the command command they were now called "terrorist and sabotage troops" and their combatant status generally and without possibility of judicial review denied. The defense under Wilhelm Canaris tried in vain not at least the regular uniformed saboteurs as volunteers to be classified and thus remain within the limits of international law. Hitler rejected several drafts for which Jodl and Warlimont had left the troops with little room for interpretation, and he himself formulated the final version of the order.

Responsibilities

Trial against Anton Dostler, Caserta, 1945

General Anton Dostler was the first German officer to answer before a court in Caserta because of his individual role in the shooting of members of the commando and was sentenced to death on October 12, 1945 .

In the trial against the main war criminals , the results compiled in January 1944 were presented to the German Wehrmacht investigation agency, which was supposed to document violations of international law by the enemy since 1939. According to documents from the Reich Security Main Office , British soldiers had been arrested in five cases and shot according to the Fuehrer's order. The Wehrmacht investigation agency came to the conclusion: So far, "the 'Commando' participants have not been able to prove any particular violations of international law".

In court, Keitel, who had confirmed the command order after the Allied landing in Normandy and later extended it to the Allied units fighting with the partisans, stated in his defense that he himself did not believe in the legality of the order. However, he claims that he could not withhold Hitler from the publication.

Jodl claimed that Hitler had asked him to work out drafts for the execution order. He did not do this; Nor did he submit to Hitler a draft that his staff had drafted of their own accord. Rather, he had Hitler say that he was unable to comply with the request. Hitler wrote these two orders himself. He, Jodl, had only distributed these orders in the course of business and only provided the explanatory order to the commanders with a special confidentiality provision.

Gerd von Rundstedt explained: “We military commanders have taken a very negative view of the command order and have made it ineffective ourselves through verbal discussions with our staff. The attitude of the military leaders to Hitler's command order was so negative from the start that Hitler not only had to write this order personally, but was also forced to threaten unusually harsh penalties for non-compliance. "

Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg OKW trial, 1947/48

In contrast, Prosecutor Telford Taylor pointed out: “Under German military law, a subordinate is liable to prosecution if he obeys an order from a superior if the subordinate knows that the order requires the commission of a general or military crime. The order of command required a murder to be committed , and every German officer involved in the order knew this very well. When Hitler ordered this order to be issued, it was known to the top of the Wehrmacht that it was calling for murders to be committed. The responsibility for resolving this question lay with the group named in the indictment. The chiefs of the OKW, OKH , OKL and OKM had to decide whether they should refuse to issue a criminal order or whether they wanted to pass one on to the commanders-in-chief in the field. [...] There is no evidence that a single member of the group has openly protested or declared his refusal to carry out the order. In general, the result was that the order was made known to a large part of the Wehrmacht. This put the subordinate commanders in the same position as their superiors. "

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Printed as Document 498-PS in: IMT (Ed.): The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Court. Volume XXVI (= document volume 2). Reprint Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2522-2 , pp. 100-102.
  2. ^ Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, July 27, 1929, Art. 50
  3. ↑ According to Manfred Messerschmidt: What was right at that time ... Augsburg 1996, ISBN 3-88474-487-9 , p. 180 even Jodl had never seen this alleged Allied order.
  4. ↑ Quoted in the IMT: The Nuremberg Trial ... Vol. XV, p. 347.
  5. ↑ Document 503-PS, printed in IMT: Der Nürnberger Prozess ... Vol. XXVI, (= document volume 2) pp. 115–120.
  6. ↑ Document 551-PS, reproduced in; IMT: The Nuremberg Trial ... Vol. XXVI, (= document volume 2) pp. 141–146.
  7. ↑ Document 1279-PS, printed in: IMT: Der Nürnberger Prozess ... Vol. XXVII (= document volume 3) pp. 94–98.
  8. ↑ Document 526-PS, printed in: IMT: Der Nürnberger Prozess ... Vol. XXVI (= document volume 2) p. 131 f.
  9. ↑ IMT: Nürnberger Prozess Vol. XXXVI (= Document Volume 2), pp. 121–132.
  10. ↑ IMT: The Nuremberg Trial, Vol. XIII, p. 562.
  11. ^ Stalin's message of July 23, 1942, printed in: Janusz Piekalkiewicz: Invasion France 1942. Munich 1979, ISBN 3-517-00670-X , p. 35.
  12. ↑ a b Manfred Messerschmidt: What Was Right Back then ... , p. 170.
  13. ↑ a b Manfred Messerschmidt: What was right then ... , p. 171.
  14. ↑ a b Bernhard Chiari [u. a.]: The German War Society 1939 to 1945 - Volume 9/2: Exploitation, Interpretations, Exclusion , On behalf of MGFA ed. by Jörg Echternkamp , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 978-3-421-06528-5 , p. 792.
  15. ^ Janusz Piekalkiewicz: Invasion France 1942, p. 47.
  16. ↑ Manfred Messerschmidt: What was right then ... , p. 177 f.
  17. ↑ Document 057-UK in: IMT: Nürnberger Prozess, vol. XXXIX (= document volume 15), p. 121 (quotation).
  18. ↑ IMT: Nürnberger Prozess, Vol. I, p. 326.
  19. ↑ IMT: Nürnberger Prozess, Vol. XIX, pp. 37-38.
  20. ↑ IMT: Nürnberger Prozess, Vol. XXI, p. 34.
  21. ↑ IMT: Nürnberger Prozess, Volume XXII, p. 325 f.