The Nuremberg judges rejected Dostler's defense, ruling, in an important precedent (later codified in Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights), that citing superior orders did not relieve soldiers or officers of responsibility for carrying out war crimes.

[1] After being found guilty, Dostler was sentenced to death and executed by a United States Army firing squad.

On 22 March 1944, 15 soldiers of the U.S. Army, including two officers, landed on the Italian coast about 15 kilometers north of La Spezia, 400 km (250 miles) behind the then-established front, as part of Operation Ginny II.

Two days later the group was captured by a combined party of Italian Fascist soldiers and troops from the German Army.

The following day he informed his superior, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, commanding general of all German forces in Italy, about the captured U.S. commandos and asked what to do with them.

His appeals were unsuccessful, and the 15 Americans of the commando raid were executed on the morning of 26 March 1944, at Punta Bianca, south of La Spezia, in the municipality of Ameglia.

[6] In its judgment the Commission stated that "no soldier, and still less a Commanding General, can be heard to say that he considered the summary shooting of prisoners of war legitimate, even as a reprisal.

[13] Immediately after the execution Dostler's body was lifted onto a stretcher, shrouded inside a white cotton mattress cover, and driven away in an army truck.