“...enemy sabotage unit engaged and destroyed on approaching the coast.”
Whereas, in fact, they had been taken prisoner and then shot like dogs by the SD.
JODL: Yes, I have just said that. Before this contribution of 6 April, I heard nothing about the whole matter, but only on the 10th of May did it come to our knowledge, and then the Armed Forces Operations Staff drew up this note. The whole investigation into these events was made by the Intelligence Service, the office of Canaris, together with its Security Police; it was not the SD; that is wrong; it was the Security Police.
Unfortunately I did not know of these details; the Intelligence Service knew them. I was concerned with the whole question only because I had to edit the Armed Forces communiqué; otherwise I would never have dealt with the Commando Order; I was quite innocent of it.
MR. ROBERTS: Now I just want to show you one more instance. It is 2610-PS.
It is, My Lord, in small Document Book 7a, Page 23, the German small book Page 41.
Now, I want you to notice, Witness, this is the only document which I rely on, which is not one of your own captured contemporaneous German documents. This is a report from the Judge Advocate General’s Department, United States Army. It concerns 15 United States personnel who were shot under this order. If you look at the second page:
“On the night of 22 March 1944, 2 officers and 13 enlisted men of the Special Reconnaissance Battalion of the Army of the United States disembarked from some United States Navy boats and landed on the Italian coast near Stazione di Framura. All 15 men were members of the United States Army and were in the military service of the United States. When they landed they were all properly dressed in the field uniform of the United States Army and they had no civilian clothes. Their mission was to demolish a railroad tunnel on the main line between La Spezia and Genoa. That rail line was being used by the German Forces to supply their fighting forces on the Cassino and Anzio Beachhead fronts.”
That was a good military target, that tunnel, was it not?
JODL: Yes, a military target, absolutely.