Anton Dostler -- Facts, Info, and Encyclopedia article(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25)
In the first allied war trial after the war, Dostler was tried and found guilty of (A crime committed in wartime; violation of rules of war) war crimes and sentenced to death by (A squad formed to fire volleys at a military funeral or to carry out a military execution) firing squad.
In the trial, Dostler was accused of carrying out an illegal order, while Dostler maintained that he did not issue the order, but only passed along an order to General Almers from supreme command.
Officers at the 135th Fortress Brigade contacted Dostler to bring a stay of the execution.
AntonDostler was accused of having ordered the shooting of fifteen American prisoners of war in violation of the Regulations attached to the Hague Convention Number IV of 1907, and of long-established laws and customs of war.
AntonDostler was charged with violations of the laws of war in that, as commander of the 75
Dostler himself said that under the oath to Hitler he understood that it was mandatory upon him to obey all orders received from the Führer or under his authority.
Dostler ordered that they be executed, at which point the captured soldiers revealed that they were in fact Americans.
Dostler's adjutant officer reported to him that Kesselring, in response, had instead ordered the soldiers to be executed.
Thus General Dostler was convicted on the "hearsay" testimony of a turned-informant in U.S. custody, otherwise unverifiable, asserting that the captured troops had been in uniform, and that Dostler had directly issued the order.
International Military Tribunal "Blue Series," Vol. 4, p. 450(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25)
The trial of this case consumed 4 days, and the findings and sentence were announced on the morning of 12 October 1945.
All 15 men were placed under interrogation in "La Spezia and they were held in custody until the morning of 26 March1944, when they were all executed by a firing squad.
These men were never tried nor were they brought before any court or given any hearing; they were shot by order of AntonDostler, then general commanding the 75th German Army Corps.
Major Roche was the Judge Advocate of an American Military Commission which tried General AntonDostler, formerly Commander of the 75th German Army Corps, for the unlawful execution of 15 members of the United States Armed Forces.
All fifteen men were placed under interrogation in La Spezia and they were held in custody until the morning of 26 March1944 when they were all executed by a firing squad.
AntonDostler, as these findings and sentence appear in the original record of the trial and as they were announced in open court at Rome, Italy on 12 October 1945:
Dostler Trial(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25)
AntonDostler: The Death Sentence (Executed on the 12th October 1945)
Former Wehrmacht Generaloberst AntonDostler convicted in Case No.2 (The "Dostler" Trial), which was held before a U.S Military court at Rome, from October 8-10, 1945.
TIME Magazine Archive Article -- One for Fifteen -- Dec. 10, 1945(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25)
The first Nazi general to be executed for war crimes fell before a U.S. firing squad in Aversa, Italy last week.
General AntonDostler was shot because he had ordered the execution of 15 American soldiers who were captured behind German lines in March 1944 while trying to blow up a railroad tunnel.
Dostler's defense was that he acted on Hitler's orders.
Major Roche was the Judge Advocate of an American Military Commission which tried General AntonDostler, formerly Commander of the 75th German Army Corps, for the unlawful execution of fifteen members of the United States armed forces.
All fifteen men were placed under interrogation in La Spezia and they were held in custody until the morning of 26th March, 1944, when they were all executed by a firing squad.
Sentence: And again in closed session and upon secret written ballot, at least two-thirds of all the members of the Commission concurring, sentences you: to be shot to death by musketry." Now the order of 18th October, 1942, remained in force, so far as we know, until the end of the war.
AntonDostler, General - Commander of the 75th German Army Corps.
After several attempts to catch the partisans, the SS began systematically rounding up all the inhabitants of all the villages and executing them.
Tried as a war criminal for ordering the summary execution of two officers and 13 enlisted Americans who were captured on a special operations mission.
Trial of General AntonDostler, [hereinafter the Dostler Case]United States MilitaryCommission, 8-12 October, 1945, Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals, The United NationsWar Crimes Commission, Volume I, London, HMSO, 1949.
Those arguments present a startlinganalogy to the arguments raised by defendants at the post World War II Nuremburg trials, andelsewhere, that, because they were required by national law to obey superior orders, they had anabsolute defense against war crimes committed in carrying out those orders.
The point is, of course,that whatever their validity under U.S. national law, they present no defense to an otherwise validcharge of a war crime under international law.
Bound Volume 24(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25)
The whole group was compromised and captured and subjected to the Führerbefehl issued the previous year which stated that all commando-type troops were to be shot.
After the war, General AntonDostler was tried for war crimes — the first German general to face such charges — and he paid the supreme penalty in front of a US Army firing squad.
Other stories featured include the two major explosions which took place at the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey in 1940, little known incidents which claimed the lives of ten men.
www.afterthebattle.com /bvol24.htm (361 words)
ABOLISH-LIST DEATH PENALTY NEWS, August '03 - Feb '04: Re: 20(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25)
AntonDostler early on fopr his part in killing
The Americans shot General der Artillerie andgt; andgt; AntonDostler early on fopr his part in killing POWs. Obersturmnannfuerher andgt; andgt; Kappler, head of the Rome SS, was given a life sentence, and just recently andgt; andgt; died in prison. andgt;
The Americans shot andgt; General der Artillerie Anton Dostler early on fopr his part in
I am attaching a picture of Ardell Klemme in the cockpit of his P-47.
We were the prisoners of Lt. Commander Georg Sessler of the Kriegsmarine who was on the staff of General AntonDostler.
Sessler testified at the trial of Dostler, who was courtmartialed and later shot for having ordered the execution of about 20 commandos near LaSpezia, I believe, in 1943.
After their bodies were found and exhumed, Livio was reburied in the Florence U.S. Military Cemetery in Italy."
German Gen. AntonDostler, who ordered the executions, was tried as a war criminal in October 1945 and executed two months later.
Four other Vieceli siblings are also listed on the memorial: Gildo, Delores' late husband; Louis, also deceased; Frank, now 97, of Jeannette, and Blanche Vieceli Wells, also of Jeannette, who was a member of the Women's Army Corps.
