Anton Dostler Anton Dostler ( Munich , May 10 , 1891 – Aversa , December 1 , 1945 ) was a General of the Infantry in the regular German army during World War II . In the first Allied war trial after the war , Dostler was found guilty of war crime s and executed by a firing squad . Military career . Anton Dostler joined the German Army in 1910 and served as a junior officer during World War I . From the start of World War II to 1940 , he served as Chief of Staff of the 7th Army . Subsequently , he commanded the 57th Infantry Division ( 1941 – 1942 ) , the 163rd Infantry Division ( 1942 ) and after some temporary stand - ins at Corps , was appointed commander of 75th Army Corps ( Jan - July 1944 ) in Italy and then as Cdr . Venetian Coast ( Sept to Nov 1944 ) when its name was changed to 73rd Army Corps , at which he finished the war . Execution of U . S . soldiers . On March 22 , 1944 , fifteen soldiers of the U . S . Army , including two officers , landed on the Italian coast about 15 kilometres north of La Spezia , 400 km ( 250 miles ) behind the then established front , as part of Operation Ginny II . They were all properly dressed in the field uniform of the U . S . Army and carried no civilian clothes . Their objective was to demolish a tunnel at Framura on the important railroad line between La Spezia and Genoa . Two days later , the group was captured by a party of Italian Fascist soldiers and members of the German Wehrmacht . They were taken to La Spezia , where they were confined near the headquarters of the 135th Fortress Brigade , which was under the command of German Colonel Almers . The immediate , superior command was that of the 75th Army Corps , commanded by Dostler . The captured U . S . soldiers were interrogated and one of the U . S . officers revealed the story of the mission . The information , including that it was a commando raid , was then sent to Dostler at the 75th Army Corps . The following day ( March 25 ) , Dostler informed his superior , Field Marshal Albert Kesselring , commanding general of all German forces in Italy , about the captured U . S . commandos and what to do with them . According to Dostler ' s adjutant officer , Kesselring responded by ordering the execution . Later that day , Dostler sent a telegram to the 135th Fortress Brigade ordering that the captured soldiers be executed . This order was an implementation of Hitler ' s secret Commando Order of 1942 which required the immediate execution without trial of commandos and saboteurs . German officers at the 135th Fortress Brigade contacted Dostler in an attempt to achieve a stay of execution . Dostler then sent another telegram ordering Almers to carry out the execution . Two last attempts were made by the officers at the 135th to stop the execution , including some by telephone , because they knew that executing uniformed prisoners of war was a direct violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War . These efforts were unsuccessful and the fifteen Americans were executed on the morning of March 26 , 1944 , at Punta Bianca south of La Spezia , in the municipality of Ameglia . Their bodies were buried in a mass grave that was then camouflage d . Alexander zu Dohna - Schlobitten , a member of Dostler ' s staff who was unaware of the secret Commando Order and who had refused to sign the execution order , was dismissed from the Wehrmacht for insubordination . Trial , execution , and notoriety . Dostler became a prisoner of the Americans on 8 May 1945 and was put before a military tribunal at the seat of the Supreme Allied Commander , the Royal Palace in Caserta , on 8 October 1945 . In the first Allied war trial , he was accused of carrying out an illegal order . In his defense , he maintained that he had not issued the order , but had only passed along an order to Colonel Almers from supreme command , and that the execution of the OSS men was a lawful reprisal . Dostler ' s plea of Superior Orders failed because ordering the execution , he had acted on his own outside the Fuhrer ' s order . The military commission also rejected his plea , declaring that Dostler ' s execution of U . S . soldiers was in violation of Article 2 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War , which prohibited acts of reprisals against prisoners of war . The commission stated that " No soldier , and still less a Commanding General , can be heard to say that he considered the summary shooting of prisoners of war legitimate even as a reprisal . " Under the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare , it was legal to execute " spies and saboteurs " disguised in civilian clothes or enemy uniforms but excluded those who were captured in proper uniforms . Since fifteen U . S . soldiers were properly dressed in U . S . uniforms behind enemy lines and not disguised in civilian clothes or enemy uniforms , they were not to be treated as spies but prisoners of war , which Dostler violated . The trial found General Dostler guilty of war crimes , rejecting the defense of Superior Orders . He was sentenced to death and shot by a firing squad on December 1 , 1945 in Aversa . The execution was photographed on black and white still and movie cameras .