Commando Order The Commando Order was issued by Adolf Hitler on 18 October 1942 stating that all Allied commando s encountered by German forces in Europe and Africa should 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 . This was in fact the second " Commando Order " , the first being issued by Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt on 21 July 1942 , stipulating that parachutists should be handed over to the Gestapo . 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 . 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 occurrences 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 . On 19 August 1942 , during this raid , a Canadian brigadier took a copy of the operational order ashore against explicit orders . 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 . Sark Raid . 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 . 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 , before the Canadians ended the policy , an uprising of German POW ' s occurred at Bowmanville POW camp . At any rate , 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 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 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 : Allied casualties . The Commando Order was invoked to order the death of an unknown number of Allied special operations forces and behind - the - lines operators of the OSS , SOE , and other special forces elements . " 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 . After the captured Royal Marines were executed by a naval firing squad in Bordeaux , the Commander of the Navy Admiral Erich Raeder wrote in the " Seekriegsleitung " war diary that the executions of the Royal Marines were something " new in international law since the soldiers were wearing uniforms " . The American historian Charles Thomas wrote that Raeder ' s remarks about the executions in the " Seekriegsleitung " war diary seemed to be some sort of ironic comment , which might had reflected a bad conscience on the part of Raeder . On 30 July 1943 , the captured seven - man crew of the Royal Norwegian Navy motor torpedo boat " MTB 345 " were executed by the Germans in Bergen , Norway on the basis of the Commando Order . 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 . In March 1944 , fifteen soldiers of the U . S . Army , including two officers , landed on the Italian coast as part of an OSS operation codenamed Ginny II . They were captured and executed . On 24 January 1945 , nine OSS men , including Lt . Holt Green of the Dawes mission , and others of the Houseboat mission , and four British SOE agents , and AP war correspondent Joseph Morton were shot at Mauthausen by SS Hauptsturmführer Georg Bachmayer on orders of Ernst Kaltenbrunner . Joseph Morton was the only Allied correspondent to be executed by the Axis during World War II . In 1945 , Jack Taylor and the Dupont mission were captured by the men of Gestapo agent Johann Sanitzer . Sanitzer asked the RSHA for instructions on a possible deal that Taylor proposed , but Kaltenbrunner ' s staff reminded him " of Hitler ' s edict that all captured officers attached to foreign missions were to be executed " . 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 . War crime . 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 Article 23 ( d ) of the 1907 Hague Convention " IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land " . 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 proper uniforms — and how they should be treated . While at the time under both the Hague and Geneva Conventions , it was legal to execute " spies and saboteurs " disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy , insofar as the Commando Order applied to soldiers in proper uniforms , it was in direct and deliberate violation of both the customary laws of war and Germany ' s treaty obligations . The execution of Allied commandos without trial was also a violation of Article 30 of the 1907 Hague Convention " IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land " , provided that : " A spy taken in the act shall not be punished without previous trial . " This provision only includes soldiers caught behind enemy lines in disguises , and not those wearing proper uniforms . Soldiers in proper uniforms cannot be punished for being lawful combatants and must be treated as prisoners of war upon capture , except those disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy for military operations behind enemy lines . The fact that Hitler ' s staff took special measures to keep the Order secret , including the limitation of its printing to only twelve copies , strongly suggests that they knew it to be illegal . 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 proper uniforms ( in contrast to the usual provision of international law that only commandos disguised in civilian clothes or uniforms of the enemy could be treated as insurgents or spies , as stated in the " Ex parte Quirin " , the " Hostages Trial " , and the " Trial of Otto Skorzeny and others " ) . The order included measures designed to force military staff to obey despite their lack of enthusiasm . Some commanders like Rommel had refused to relay this order to their troops , considering it to be contrary to honourable conduct . The dishonourable nature of this command was well established and had been so for over a century before the Hague Convention of 1907 . For example , on 28 May 1794 , Aftermath . After the war , German officers who carried out executions under the Commando Order were found guilty at war crimes trials , including the Nuremberg Trials . General Anton Dostler , who had ordered the execution of 15 American soldiers of the Ginny II operation in Italy , was sentenced to death and executed in December 1945 . His defense , that he had only relayed superior orders , was rejected at trial . The Commando Order was one of the specifications in the charge against Generaloberst Jodl , who was convicted and hanged . Another officer charged with enforcing the Commando Order at Nuremberg was the Commander of the Navy Erich Raeder . Under cross - examination , Raeder admitted to passing on the Commando Order to the " Kriegsmarine " and to enforcing the Commando Order by ordering the summary execution of two captured British Royal Marines after the Operation Frankton raid at Bordeaux in December 1942 . Raeder testified in his defense that he believed that the Commando Order was a " justified " order , and that the execution of the two Royal Marines was no war crime in his own opinion . 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 1960 .