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24 Mo. L. Rev. 16 (1959)
International Law on Use of Enemy Uniforms As a Stratagem and the Acquittal in the Skorzeny Case

handle is hein.journals/molr24 and id is 28 raw text is: INTERNATIONAL LAW ON USE OF ENEMY UNIFORMS AS A STRATAGEM AND THE ACQUITTAL IN THE SKORZENY CASE MlAxnaLmiA KoEssLER* I. INTRODUCTION Prior to the trial, by an American military commission entitled Military Government Court,' of Otto Skorzeny and his codefendants,2 which trial took place in Dachau between August 18 and September 8, 1947, and ended with an acquittal of all the defendants, the international law on legitimacy or illegitimacy of the use of enemy uniforms as a stratagem was not settled in so far as use outside open combat was con- cerned, as will be later on discussed at some length. One writer has expressed the view that the outcome of that trial supports the view that such deception is permissible if not done in battle.8 However, this is not necessarily so. In the trials conducted by the War Crimes Group of the U.S. Army of occupation in Germany, including the Skorzeny case, the judgments, at variance with the Nuremberg judg- ments, consisted of bare verdicts of guilty or not guilty, in case of con- viction accompanied by announcement of the sentence, but did not contain findings of fact nor anything in the nature of legal reasoning. In certain simple cases the basis of the verdict appears, as a matter of implication, from the verdict itself. But this is otherwise where, as in the subject case, so many facets of fact and law are involved that the acquittal may be ex post facto rationalized on any of several grounds or on two or more of them. It is therefore pointed out in a publication of the United Nations War Crimes Commission that no safe conclusion can be drawn from the *Jur. D., Austrian University of Czernowitz, 1912; M.A., Columbia University, 1941, LL.B., 1945. Employed by U. S. Dep't of the Army as attorney for war crimes trial and military government activities, 1946-49. Engaged for many years in the practice of law in Vienna, Austria. Author of numerous articles in American and European political science and legal periodicals. Member of the California and New York Bars. 1. See Koessler, American War Crimes Trials in Europe, 39 GEO. L.J. 18, 42-45 (1950). 2. The voluminous trial record was perused by the writer through courtesy extended by the War Crimes Division, U.S. Department of the Army. 3. Baxter, So-Called Unprivileged Belligerency, 23 BRar. J. INT' L. 322, 341 (1946).

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