"A. I had in my Corps area the two reserve divisions, namely the 173rd and 187th, to which reference was made before. I also had the Cossack division and toward the end of 1943, I had the 367th Division to which I also referred on direct examination. Then I had a number of other units, which were attached to the division, such as railway security battalions......"
There is very little else to be said of Dehner. If there had been hostage executions in his area on only a few occasions, it might have been necessary to say more. But during October, November, and December, 1943 -- the period when the Rendulic 50-to-1 order was in force -- reports of these massacres were coming into him almost every day. If these crimes had been committed by one of his divisions, we might be able to accept his explanation that hostage executions were solely the business of the divisional commanders. But each of his subordinate units was as murderous as the next.
His initials and signature on some of these necrologies show that he know what was happening. When he did not read the reports, his Chief of Staff told him what was in them. He testified that he spent half of his time personally visiting his subordinate units for the purpose of finding out what was going on. He was as close to the men who pulled the triggers and tied the hangman's knots as any defendant here. It was a practical impossibility for one of his divisional commanders to be promoted without his approval. Yet Dehner now wishes us to believe that there was nothing he could do by way of restraint.
Dehner has the dubious distinction of having one of the worst records, and the most unconvincing defenses, which have been offered to this Tribunal.
When the war against Russia began, Rendulic was the Commanding General of the 52nd Infantry Division. He denies, of course, that he ever executed the Commissar Order. His testimony is in flat contradiction to the official record kept by his staff officers. On 6 September 1941, the division reported that two commissars had been seized and shot.
On 11 September an order was issued to the, component regiments of the division, stating that "former Red Army men in uniform or civilian clothes loafing around, Jews, persons on whom weapons are found, or those who can be pronounced as partisans, are to be shot immediately."
The attitude of Rendulic toward the Jewish question is reflected clearly in this report. Several time it is reported that Jews were used to clean up the streets, evacuated or drafted into the labor service. Along with the two commissars, one Jewish functionary was shot.
In August, 1943. having meanwhile become a four-star General, Rendulic was transferred to Croatia as Commander of the 2nd Panzer Army. He had an overall supervision of the areas occupied by the troops of Dehner's and Leyser's corps. In addition to these; the V SS Corps and tho XXI Mountain Corps were also subordinate to the 2nd Panzer Army. Rendulic is, therefore, accountable not only for the crimes which have been enumerated in connection with our discussion of Leyser and Dehner but he also bears the joint responsibility for a number of other outrages committed in these other corps areas, plus a number which took place within the area of the XV Corps before Leyser became its commander. For example, the Prinz Eugen Division hanged twenty partisans for an attempt to blow up railroad tracks while this division was subordinate to Lueters. Other reports made during the period of Lueters' command of the XV Corps show that 19 partisans were shot: that hostages have been arrested and that the slightest resistance was to be broken by ruthless terror; that 27 Chetniks were to be hanged as a reprisal measure; that two villages were burned down and eight men hanged in another operation; and the one village was burned and 100 bandits shot in another. From tho V SS Corps it was reported that 24 hostages were shot and one hanged in retaliation for the death of a single German soldier.
In connection with reprisal measures and particularly the execution of hostages carried out in the area of the 2nd Panzer Army, the Rendulic order of 15 September, 1943, plays a very important part.
The explanation for it which Rendulic gave was that he merely was making a current compilation of all previous orders on the subject; summarizing which was made necessary because of numerous supplements to the Keitel directive of two years before. Rendulic even tried to use this order to make himself out to be a humanitarian because it prescribed a ratio of only 50:1, whereas the Keitel directive had allowed for a figure of 100:1.
As in the case of the other defendants, the attempt to exonerate himself by pointing to an OKW order is irreconcilable with what he said in other connections. For instance, he claimed on the witness stand to have disregarded absolutely the Fuehrerbefehl of 25 July, 1943, which provided for the transfer of all captured partisans for work in the mines. He says that since in his judgment the labor shortage was more critical in Croatia than it was in the Reich, he simply kept them in spite of the mandate of his Supreme Commander. We have already pointed out that th says he refused to carry out the Commissar Order. The truth is, the hostage order which Rendulic gave was promulgated and passed down because Rendulic believed that it was the proper way to meet the situation. If he had not thought so, he would have disregarded the Keitel directive with all its supplements just as he disregarded other OKW orders when he disagreed with them.
Leyser and Dehner as well as Rendulic constantly tried to minimize the importance of this 50:1 order by saying that it was rescinded early in December so that it was only in effect some 2 ½ months. That, of course, is no answer. But the significant thing is that during this period most of the hanging and shootings took place. The effect which the issuance of this order had on the troop commanders can be clearly seen from the standing instructions subsequently issued by Fischer and Niedholdt during the month of October. This one order is sufficient in itself to convict a dozen men of murder.
But the long register of crimes ascribable to Rendulic contains an infinite variety. It is not confined simply to the killing of hostages. One spectacular item is the conduct of his troops toward their former Allies directly after the Italian surrender.
Mussolini abdicated on 25 July, 1943. The Germans had been apprehensive that the Italian Army would not much longer continue a struggle for which it had never displayed a sensational enthusiasm and this event confirmed their fears. The OKW began planning what the German troops were to do in the event of an Italian capitulation to the Allies. They knew the location and strength of all the Italian units and in August a series of directives were sent out from Berlin alerting the commanding generals in the Balkans to the possibility of an Italian surrender so as to allow them to make whatever tactical arrangements were necessary in order to disarm the Italians and to take over the occupation tasks of the Italian troops if that became necessary.
On the night of 8 September, the surrender terms having been signed by the representatives of his government, Marshal Badoglio, the Italian Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Italian armed forces, issued an order to all Italian troops in the field, informing them of the terms of the surrender agreement and giving them directions as to what they should do. The gist of these directions was that though they were to take no aggressive action against the Germans, the Italian troops were not to allow themselves to be disarmed. Any such attempt on the part of the Germans was to be interpreted as hostile act which the Italian forces should resist to the fullest extent of their power.
The Italian troops in the Balkans were all part of Army Group Est which was composed of two armies, the 9th stationed in Croatia and Albania and the 11th in Greece. The commander of Army Group Est was General Rossi.
Rendulic, upon learning of the Italian capitulation, acted promptly. On 9 September, the operation "Axis" was begun and the German units moved with synchronized swiftness to their pre-arranged positions. On the 10th, the SS Division "Prinz Eugen" reported that its combat teams had "encountered resistance from Italian units" which had refused to capitulate and that dive-bombing attacks by German planes had been employed to induce a more reasonable frame of mind.
Now it was obviously to the best interests of the Germans to persuade the highest Italian commander to order all his troops to give in and be disarmed by the Germans. The commander of the Italian Army Group Est, General Rossi, was among those who refused to disobey Badoglio's instructions It would not do to have the natural resentment on the part of many of the Italian troops toward being ignominiously disarmed and made prisoners of way by the Germans stiffened by the attitude of the highest Italian commander, so in the very next day, 11 September, a capitulation agreement was signed by the Italian General D'Almazzo, the Commander of the Italian 9th Army.
Meanwhile, the day after the Italian surrender to the Allies, Keitel had issued an order directing what was to be done with Italian soldiers who refused to continue fighting on the German side. After being disarmed, they were to be considered as prisoners of war, the skilled workers among them to be sent to work in the German armament factories, and all the others to be used as slave laborers, on the construction of the so-called East Wall.
On 11 September, the same day that General D'Almazzo signed the capitulation agreement, Rendulic ordered that wherever Italian troops continued to offer resistance they were to be given a short-term ultimatum saying that unless the resistance cessed, the commanders responsible for it would be shot as frames tireurs. The next day he issued another order to General Lueters, providing that in case of destruction of arms, ammunition etc. by the Italians, one officer of the divisional staff and fifty men of the division concerned would be shot to death, in addition to the culprits. The Italian commanders were to remain in charge of their men during the evacuation from the coastal areas to certain surrender points designated by the Germans in the interior of Croatia. Any Italian soldier who arrived at the entraining station without his arms would be shot to death, together with his unit leader, and if any motorized vehicle were destroyed, one officer and ten men would be shot.
Another order the next day provided that if any of the Italian troops refused to do as they were ordered, "severest measures of compulsion, reprisal measures (shootings to death)" were to be applied.
In spite of the order of D'Almazzo, several Italian divisions refused to surrender to the Germans.
One of those was the "Bergamo" Division stationed at Split and another was the Division "Taurinense" in Albania. Various smaller Italian units also refused to lick the German boot.
The SS Division "Prinz Eugen" was dispatched to Split to subdue the "Bergamo Division." Apparently the resistance it encountered was too stiff for the 92nd motorized Regiment was dispatched to help out in quelling the revolt which centered around the Italian General Roncaglio. By 28 September, the XV mountain Corps to which the "Prinz Eugen" Division was subordinated, was able to report that the majority of the Roncaglio Division had been taken prisoner and that 300 of its captured officers would be executed in accordance with the Keitel order of 15 September. The entry in the war diary of the XV Mountain Corps for 27 September reads: "commanding general has called investigation to ascertain guilty officers." The reference apparently is to Rendulic. The next day the XV Corps again instructed the SS Division "Prinz Eugen" to proceed according to previous orders -- "officers to be shot to death by summary court martial, non--commissioned officers and men to be deported East for compulsory labor employment." Accordingly, the division delivered 9,400 Italian prisoners for transport to work camps in the East.
General Roncaglio was flown to Belgrade at the special request of Rendulic. A number of other Italian officers, including 3 generals, were retained for execution. The precise number of Italian officers who were shot by the Germans cannot be seen from the captured documents, and, of course, Rendulic claims he does not know. On 30 September, however, the 3 generals were killed at Split and on the following day the shooting of "45 additional guilty Italian officers" was reported. On 3 October, an "additional 9 officers of the Bergamo Division" were reported shot, and on 12 October, "4 more officers of the Taurinense were shot as reprisal." We need not attempt to catalogue all of the reported executions. They continued, however, until at least 26 November when reprisal measures were reported to have been carried out against 8 more Italian officers.
The facts summarized here are not in dispute. What are the excuses and explanations which General Rendulic offers?
His defense is best fundamentally upon the capitulation agreement which D'Almazzo signed which, he argues, was a bona fide contract that D'Almazzo was authorized to make so far as he, Rendulic, know at the time. Of course, in order to sustain this argument, Rendulic had to deny that he knew anything about Badoglio's surrender proclamation of 8 September and he also had to profess his belief in D'Almazzo's authority.
One document which the prosecution introduced in rebuttal blows all of these contentions sky-high. It shows that in actuality Rendulic knew of Badoglio's surrender on the very day it was announced. On that day, 8 September, at 2150 hours, the 2nd Panzer Army informed its three subordinate corps that "according to the declaration of Marshal Badoglio, the Italians are fighting together with the Allies and refuse any sort of surrender of weapons."
The teletype message went on to say that "according to radio Cairo, Italian troops in the Balkans are subordinate to the American General Wilson." Rendulic, therefore, knew perfectly well that no Italian officer in the Balkans could sign an agreement to surrender to the Germans without directly violating the order of his superior.
But here is the amazing thing which this document discloses: It appears that on 11 September, three days after the Badoglio proclamation, Rendulic personally went to Tirna and Albania, by air with a company of German parachutists and arrested General Rossi and his Chief of Staff. This happened at noon. At two o'clock the diary reveals that General D'Almazzo was installed in Rossi's place "and is to receive his instructions concerning concentration and orderly withdrawal of his units from the Commander-in-Chief of the 2nd Panzer Army." The installation apparently took place at General Bader's headquarters in Belgrade. Rendulic had done a good day's work. He had captured and deposed one Italian commander, flown to Belgrade and installed D'Almazzo in his stead and concluded a surrender agreement all on the same day.
This completely topples the Italian surrender agreement defense behind which Rendulic attempted to hide. It incidentally shows that not an iota of credence can be placed on any of the testimony he made on the witness stand. He knew when he was testifying that this whole story was fiction from start to finish and that this vaunted "agreement" with the Italian Commander-in-Chief was nothing but a shame.
COURT NO. V, CASE NO. VII.
The introduction of this document into evidence eliminates the necessity of a prolonged argument over the law of surrender agreements. It is evident that before an agreement can be binding on anyone, both parties must act in good faith and have authority or at least colorable authority to contract. It would be a simple life indeed if we could merely kidnap everyone who would not accede to our terms and install a ventriloquist's dummy in his stead.
The last action of Rendulic to be noted concerns the devastation of northern Norway. The story here is a simple one. The Finns had gotten their fill of the war and had decided that further resistance against the Russians was stupid. The German troops were given two weeks' notice to evacuate the country. The 20th Mountain Army, under Rendulic, was stationed in northern Finland, primarily to secure the airfields and ports which had served as bases for German air and sea attacks on Allied convoys going to Murmansk and Archangel. Another important task had been the protection of the vital nickel mines at Kolosjoki.
Actually, the Finns did not sign an armistice with Russia until six weeks after they had notified the Germans of their intention, but even this additional time did not enable the latter to retreat in a comfortable and leisurely fashion.
On 4 October, the OKW ordered that Rendulic have his troops in the course of their withdrawal destroy all installations which might be of use to the enemy. This order ended with the instruction that:
"the entire population of Norway capable of bearing arms is to be taken along as far as marches permit and to be turned over to "the Reich commissar Norway for compulsory labor employment.
"Finnish hostages are to be taken along as the situation requires."
Rendulic denied that any Finnish hostages had ever been taken. The documents introduced in the course of his cross-examination completely disprove this. Apparently they were seized as so-called security hostages to be shot in case the Finnish troops interfered with the German destruction of bridges and other installations, including the machinery of the nickel mines.
The line of the German march from northern Finland and westward into the Norwegian province of Finnmark. The Russians had closed in during the latter part of September, but advanced rather slowly. It took them almost two weeks to advance the last 100 kilometers before they got to the banks of the Tana River, some 50 miles west of the Norwegian-Finnish border. The German rear guard patrols lost contact with the Russians at that point because the Russians never attempted to penetrate any further into Norway. In other words, the main body of the Russians halted on approximately the 21st of October.
On 28 October the OKW issued a second order to Rendulic. It provided that since the population of northern Norway had displayed an unwillingness to evacuate their homeland, Hitler had agreed to Terboven's suggestion that the evacuation be made compulsory and that all habitable dwellings be burned down or destroyed. The next day Rendulic passed down a similar order, practically incorporating Jodi's language, to his subordinate units. It contains a remark, "Pity for the civilian population is out of place."
Now since Rendulic seeks to justify the issuance of this order on the ground of military necessity, a few points should be considered.
First, at the time it was given, none of his troops had seen a Russian for more than a week. Second, Rendulic knew that the Russians had made no attempt to cross the Tana and that they probably would make none. He knew this for a number of reasons. Also, by following the Germans as far as they did, the Russians had dangerously extended their lines of supply and for them to have made an expedition into Norway would have necessitated the establishment of a major supply base in northern Finland which they had not attempted to do. The number of troops which the Russians had committed in northern Finland was insufficient to carry out an invasion of Norway. Rendulic knew this not only through reports of his spies and agents but also through his aerial reconnaissance. It is true that the weather was not favorable for flying during this period but, General Dahl testified that during part of the day reconnaissance flying was possible and, we know that Rendulic had reconnaissance planes at his disposal. Even if he did not, he had other sources of information about the number and movements of the Russian troops. The area over which the Russians were advancing had been occupied by the Germans for a long time and had only recently been evacuated by them. It is safe to assume that it had been liberally sprinkled with German spies and agents who remained behind for this specific purpose of furnishing intelligence about the Russians. The Germans intercepted Russian radio messages and had also interrogated Russian prisoners of war.
General Ferdinand Jodl who was one of the corps commanders in the 20th Mountain Army at that time testified that the order to evacuate Finnmark and to apply the scorched earth policy to it was so plainly unnecessary from the point of view of military necessity that if he were given the order to do it again, he would resign his commission before carrying it out.
At any rate, it was carried out with the thoroughness which the German Army has always displayed in such actions. Everything was laid waste -- fishermen's huts, earthen dugouts of the Laplanders, churches, schools, power plants, telephone and telegraph lines, boats and roads. In the darkness and cold of the Artic winter, tens of thousands were driven from their homes. The able-bodied were marched off and the old, the sick, and the children were transported by ship. "Pity for the population is out of place," Rendulic had said. All this Rendulic seeks to justify on the ground of military necessity. The only reason for this vandalism which could possibly be related to military necessity is the destruction of roads and communications. There was only one highway, however, which ran from north to south. Yet the Germans acting under this specific order of Rendulic not only destroyed every dwelling place, barn and other evidence of civilization in the vicinity of the highway out throughout an area 40 miles on either side of the highway. The destruction began in October, and was continued until the German surrender to the Allies.
In some instances, a general who puts forward a plea of military necessity to charges of wanton devastation makes his accuser appear to be substituting afterthought. It is perhaps rare for a case of devastation to be so completely unjustifiable as this one. Military necessity has been used more than any other excuse to defend the causing of misery to non-combatants. In this instance it obviously had no application. Were we to explore the inner recesses of a mind brutal capable of ordering this senseless waste, we would be leaving the realm of law and entering that of psychiatry.
It is enough for us to show that the action was futile, vicious and unreasonable.
Part of the clue to this callousness toward his fellow creatures may be found in his political credo. We have refrained from dwelling on the political and ideological tenets of these defendants to any extent. But with Rendulic, to pass over these things is to ignore the very pulse of the machine. For politics, and particularly Nazi politics, have played quite as important a role in his life as has the pursuit of his profession as a soldier.
Rendulic was attracted by Nazi doctrine from the beginning. He joined the Party in 1932 and belonged to it until it was made illegal by the Austrian government. Immediately after the Anschluss, he was re-baptized and soon became one of its outstanding advocates within the ranks of the professional soldiers. He enjoyed Hitler's confidence and friendship to an extent that was almost unique. So securely entrenched did he feel himself to be in the affections of Hitler that he did not hesitate upon occasion to disagree with or even insult one of the other royal favorites. He snarled at Kasche, lectured Terboven, screamed at Koch and berated Eigruber with impunity.
He constantly urged that the troops be saturated with Nazi concepts. On the witness stand he cynically explained that troops who believed in ideology fought better than troops who did not, and that it made no difference to him what ideology was used so long as it had the desired effect. To discuss all the philosophical implications of that remark would require another address the length of this one.
Rendulic was eminently successful in convincing the Nazi Party leaders of the sincerity of his devotion to their cause.
It is probably no accident that he, the most active and articulate Nazi in the dock, also is by far the most decorated defendant. He was even awarded the coveted Golden Party Badge, which was not a military honor at all but merely a recognition of usefulness to the Party.
We are not trying Rendulic for his political affiliations. They are significant here only in that if we seek an explanation for the spoor of blood and ashes which he left behind him, the only possible answer seems to be in the obscene mantlings of the master-philosophers to whose faith he was so active a servant.
LANZ After General Hubert Lanz refused to carry out a Hitler order to attack when in February 1943 he commanded what amounted to an army in Russia, he was relieved of his command and sent home.
Significantly enough, General Lanz, who almost more than any other defendant made superior orders a part of his defense, admitted that other than being relieved of his command nothing disastrous happened to him as a result of his disobedience. He was not discharged from the Army, his pension was not cut off, he was not court martialed nor were any recriminatory measures taken against his family. After resticating at home for four or five months, Lanz applied for another assignment and on 25 August 1943, was named Commanding General of the XXII Mountain Corps in Greece. Such was the disastrous result of his defiance of a Fuehrerbefehl.
On the 9th of September 1943, Lanz flew to Joannina and took charge of the XXIInd Mountain Corps with its subordinate 1st Mountain and 104th Light Infantry Divisions. Immediately, Lanz faced the task of disarming the Italian units within his corps area.
General Vecchiarelli, commander of the 11th Italian Army, agreed to the German demands, but the leaders of the Italian garrisons on the islands of Cephalonia and Corfu refused to be bound by his compant. Lanz himself flew to Cehpalonia on the 12th of September 1943, and talked with Gandin, the Italian commander there, who stated that he could not surrender because his orders were "unclear". Lanz says that he could see no excuse for Gandin's recalcitrance, because since Gandin was subordinate to Vecchiarelli, he was plainly bound by the latter's capitulation agreement.
In order to justify his own attitude, Lanz has to pretend that he had no knowledge of the terms of the ItalianAllied armistice of 8 September, though those terms were announced to the German government by Badoglio himself and were published in all German newspapers on the 12th of September. As we have just seen, Badoglio's proclamation was known to Rendulic and his staff on the same night that it was delivered. Lanz could scarcely have been less informed than another segment of the same Army Group F. Gandin, in stating that his orders were "unclear", could only have meant that he had already received orders from Marshal Badaglio, which contradicted the orders which Gandin had received from Vecchiarelli. Knowing full well that Vecchiarelli had also received orders from Badoglio not to surrender, so that the capitulation agreement was void for lack of authority, Gandin did the only thing possible - he obeyed the orders of his commander-in-chief and the head of his government. Gandin was regarded as pro-German, which indicates that he would have been inclined to surrender, had his sinse of duty not overridden his personal predilictions.
Lanz maintains that following their talk on the 12th of September 1943, Gandin promised, in return for an "order" from Lanz, to surrender his troops and arms, and that in later refusing to do so he broke his pledge. We have only Lanz's testimony with respect to Gandin's alleged "promise", but what we do know is that Lanz himself on both the 14th and the 17th of September acted in bad faith towards Gandin. On both of those days, Lanz had leaflets dropped to the Italian troops on Cephalonia stating that if they surrendered, the Germans would transport all of them back to their homeland. Such procedure was, of course, entirely out of the question and Lanz knew it. We have already mentioned the Keitel orders of 9 and 15 September which provided for the shipment of Italian soldiers to the East. If there was, therefore, any violation of an agreement on Gandin's part, Lanz is hardly the one to complain.
Fighting broke out between the German and Italian units on Cephalonia and after bringing up reinforcements, the Germans eventually defeated the Italian Detachment.
On 23 September Gandin was captured with all his staff, and on 24 September Lanz's own corps report related that Gandin and his entire staff had been given "special treatment according to the Fuehrer order". Lanz asserts that those Italian officers -- their precise numberhe cannot of course recall -- were shot only after court martial procedure. His report mentions no such procedure. Further, it is evident from merely a casual inspection of the documents concerning the Italian surrender that a court martial, when it was held, was only a hasty formality with a predetermined result.
The German losses in fighting for Cephalonia were between 80 and 100 soldiers, while the corresponding Italian losses were, according to Lan'z own report, "600 killed or shot." Lanz maintains that the language "killed or shot" is of no particular significance: that all the Italian losses were the result of the combat action. This explanation is of course patently untrue. Certain of those 600 persons -in addition to General Gandin and his entire staff -- were shot after their capture.
The history of what happened to the Italian garrison on Corfu is much the same. Again, the commander refused to abide by Vecchiarelli's surrender agreement, and fighting broke out, with disastrous consequences for the Italians. Lanz estimated German losses during that action at about 250 and Italian losses at about 1000 men. His own reports, however, indicate that not only were all Italian soldiers on Corfu executed upon capture, but that 4000 other Italians were "killed or shot." Again, the small German and huge Italian losses make it quite clear that the greater part of the Italian losses were suffered after their capture, and not during the course of the fighting. Lanz himself remembered and admitted that the island's Italian commandant had been executed in the same way and for the same reasons as General Gandin. But though the 1st Mountain Division was primarily employed in the action against Corfu, the Ic officer of that division, Colonel Rothfuchs, had the temerity to state in an Affidavit that he knew nothing at all about the execution of Italian officers on Corfu.
The failure of Rothfuchs to appear for cross-examination by the Prosecution is understandable.
Lanz's excuses for his conduct toward his former Italian allies are as numerous as they are illogical and confused. He contends that if it had not been for his stand in the matter, more Italian officers would have been executed. To support this, he mentions having received a Hitler order instructing him to execute all of the Italian members of the Gandin division. He flatly refused, he claims, to even consider executing the Italian troops and, with an extra burst of magnanimity, even refused to execute any but the "guilty" officers responsible for the revolt. But this is not borne out by the facts. There is not a single notation in any of the reports or way diaries of Army Group E, the XXII Corps or any of its subordinate units to confirm Lanz's references to this imaginary Hitler order. The fact is that even the OKW order of 15 September 1943 limited punishment to those Italian officers who were "responsible" for fomenting the Italian resistance against disarmament.
Lanz also argues that Gandin had a duty to obey Vecchiarelli's orders to surrender. It has already been pointed out that Vecchiarelli's capitulation agreement was the product of bad faith on the part of the Germans, who knew that he had no authority to make it. When Gandin knew that his immediate superior was guilty of treason, he was not bound to tar himself with the same brush.
Lanz further maintains that Gandin's actions were criminal because he fought, although there had been no declaration of war by Italy against Germany. It is difficult to see what is criminal about selfdefense. These isolated groups of Italians committed no hostile act against the Germans. So far as the evidence shows, they were willing to spend the rest of the war vacationing on the isles of Greece.
They had shown no disposition to start a private war with the Wehrmacht. Every shot that they fired was to defend themselves against the German attack. This contention of Lanz is completely illogical. He is saying that if the Italians had initiated an offensive against the Germans after a declaration of war, he would have treated them better than he did when they waited for the Germans to attack them. In other words, he is saying that they should be penalized for their pacific behavior.
Then Lanz maintains that Gandin's actions were analogous to the actions of a prisoner of war who mutinied against his captor. This contention, obviously, is expost facto rationalization. The concept of mutiny never entered the picture at all. The OKW orders never mentioned the word but talked only of shooting the Italian officers who resisted "as francs-tireur". Rendulic's own reports indicate that his treatment of Rencaglia was based upon the theory that Roncaglia's actions made him a franc-tireur.
Moreover, if execution after capture was the usual way of dealing with a mutineer, why did Lanz's reports mention that Gandin and his staff were being given "special treatment"?
There must be a relationship of superior and inferior before there can be an insubordination which leads to mutiny can take place. The Italian resistors were, of course, not subordinate to the German troops. If it be argued that Gandin had been guilty of mutiny towards Vecchiarelli, then naturally one asks why the Germans had authority to punish such mutiny and why no representatives of Vecchiarelli sat on the court martials which passed sentence upon Gandin and his staff.
Certain sections of German law were cited in support of the contention that the executed officers were mutineers. Those sections on their face are inapplicable to the Italian situation. They relate to acts of foreign civilians, not foreign military personnel. Moreover, if those sections do have the meaning ascribed to them, they are flatly in contravention of the Hague Rules of Land Warfare regarding the criteria prerequisite for belligerent status.