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The Commando Order was a secret order issued by Adolf Hitler on October 18, 1942 stating that all commandos found in Europe and Africa should be killed immediately, even if in uniform or if they attempted to surrender. 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 or Nazi 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.
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 alleged 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.
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 reconnaissance raid on the isle of Sark, Operation Basalt. In line with standard procedure the acquisition of prisoners was required. The raiders broke into a local's house. The occupant of the house, Frances Pittard, proved very informative and advised there were about 20 Germans in the nearby Dixcart Hotel. She also declined an offer to be taken back to England.
In front of the hotel was a long hut like building, apparently unguarded. This annex comprised a corridor and five rooms wherein were five sleeping Germans, none found to be officers. The men were roused and taken outside where after the commandos decided to go on to the hotel and capture more of the enemy. To minimize the guard left with the captives, the commandos tied the prisoners' hands. One prisoner started shouting to alert those in the hotel and was shot dead with a .38 revolver. The enemy now alerted, incoming fire from the hotel became considerable and the raiders elected to return to the beach with the remaining four prisoners, all of whom had been 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 and provided a gold mine of information. 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.
Dieppe Raid
On August 19, 1942 during this raid, a Canadian brigadier elected (against explicit orders) to take a copy of the operational order ashore.[2] 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.)
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 9th October, Berlin announced that 1376 Allied prisoners (mainly Canadians from Dieppe), would henceforth be shackled. The British responded with a like shackling of German prisoners in Canada.
This tit-for-tat shackling continued until the Swiss achieved agreement with the British 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.
The order 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
From now on all men operating against German troops in so-called commando raids, even if they are in uniform, whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, are to be annihilated to the last man.... Even if these individuals on discovery ... give themselves up as prisoners, no pardon is on any account to be given.
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 23rd October 1942. 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.
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.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. The German Commando Order was in direct and deliberate violation of both the customary laws of war and Germany's treaty obligations.
Hitler and his subordinates knew that the order was illegal - that is obvious by the fact it was prepared in only twelve copies and that special measures were ordered to keep it secret. 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 (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.
Aftermath
After the war, German officers who carried out illegal 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.
The Commando Order was a secret order issued by Adolf Hitler on October 18, 1942 stating that all commandos found in Europe and Africa should be killed immediately, even if in uniform or if they attempted to surrender. 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 or Nazi 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.
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 alleged 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.
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 reconnaissance raid on the isle of Sark, Operation Basalt. In line with standard procedure the acquisition of prisoners was required. The raiders broke into a local's house. The occupant of the house, Frances Pittard, proved very informative and advised there were about 20 Germans in the nearby Dixcart Hotel. She also declined an offer to be taken back to England.
In front of the hotel was a long hut like building, apparently unguarded. This annex comprised a corridor and five rooms wherein were five sleeping Germans, none found to be officers. The men were roused and taken outside where after the commandos decided to go on to the hotel and capture more of the enemy. To minimize the guard left with the captives, the commandos tied the prisoners' hands. One prisoner started shouting to alert those in the hotel and was shot dead with a .38 revolver. The enemy now alerted, incoming fire from the hotel became considerable and the raiders elected to return to the beach with the remaining four prisoners, all of whom had been 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 and provided a gold mine of information. 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.
Dieppe Raid
On August 19, 1942 during this raid, a Canadian brigadier elected (against explicit orders) to take a copy of the operational order ashore.[2] 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.)
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 9th October, Berlin announced that 1376 Allied prisoners (mainly Canadians from Dieppe), would henceforth be shackled. The British responded with a like shackling of German prisoners in Canada.
This tit-for-tat shackling continued until the Swiss achieved agreement with the British 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.
The order 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
From now on all men operating against German troops in so-called commando raids, even if they are in uniform, whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, are to be annihilated to the last man.... Even if these individuals on discovery ... give themselves up as prisoners, no pardon is on any account to be given.
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 23rd October 1942. 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.
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.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. The German Commando Order was in direct and deliberate violation of both the customary laws of war and Germany's treaty obligations.
Hitler and his subordinates knew that the order was illegal - that is obvious by the fact it was prepared in only twelve copies and that special measures were ordered to keep it secret. 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 (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.
Aftermath
After the war, German officers who carried out illegal 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.
