Many pics here off the beaten path, some I have never seen, including this one



German Wehrmacht General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his execution by a firing squad in a stockade in Aversa, Italy, on December 1, 1945. The General, Commander of the 75th Army Corps, was sentenced to death by an United States Military Commission in Rome for having ordered the shooting of 15 unarmed American prisoners of war, in La Spezia, Italy, on March 26, 1944.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/10/world-war-II-after-the-war/100180/

Thanks for the link, there are some fantastic pictures in there, I don't think I've seen any of them before.

Gary

Being a lover of history, those pictures are fantastic! Thanks for posting!

It gets even better, just noticed this is only part of a 20 part series on the war, reams of more pics here
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/pages/ww2/

I'd like to archive these pics in case the site is taken down, I don't think I've ever seen so many historic pics that I've never seen before at one place.

Great photos here!

Actually, the Dostler trial and execution received quite a lot of coverage a the time. Here are a few more photos - One taken at the moment of his sentence being carried out and one taken afterwards.

I'm sure it was well covered back in the day, I have never heard of him or seen the pics.
The 1st one especially is haunting, looks so clear and almost staged, though of course it was not. Not often you see a pic of direct eye contact with a man who is about to be executed.

Looks like they left some insignia on his uniform. They should've ripped everything off of it before they executed him.

The first picture showing Dostler staring at the camera is so clear because it was originally shot in full color. The remaining pictures are movie camera stills. The entire execution was filmed for newsreel audiences back in the US. Dostler carried out the execution of 15 or so OSS American operatives who had been captured. They were on a mission of sabotage. Apparently the order to execute them came from Kesselring himself. The execution newsreel footage is pretty well known, well at least it has been shown over the decades on tv, just as the execution footage of Skorzeny's men captured at Bastogne in US uniforms are pretty infamous...cheers and regards, Ryan S