The Massacre of Kondomari was orchestrated by a paratrooper what was convicted of war crimes in what year?
Massacre of Kondomari The Massacre of Kondomari (Greek: Σφαγή στο Κοντομαρί ) refers to the execution of male civilians from the village of Kondomari in Crete by an firing squad consisting of German paratroopers on 2 June 1941 during World War II. The shooting was the first of a series of reprisals in Crete. It was orchestrated by Generaloberst Kurt Student, in retaliation for the participation of Cretans in the Battle of Crete which had ended with the surrender of the island two days earlier. The massacre was photographed by a German army war propaganda correspondent whose negatives were discovered 39 years later in the federal German archives by a Greek journalist.
Joseph Morton (correspondent) Joseph "Joe" Morton was an American war correspondent for the Associated Press (AP) in the European Theater during World War II. On December 26, 1944, a Nazi counter-partisan unit named "Edelweiss" stormed a log cabin high on Homolka Mountain in today's Slovakia which housed 15 Allied intelligence officers, a Slovak officer, a Slovak-American interpreter, two Slovak civilian resistance fighters, and Morton himself, covering an OSS operation in the country for a story. Although the Allied officers were duly uniformed and Morton had a war correspondent ID in order to be treated as prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention (1929), the SS headquarters, in compliance with Commando Order, which stated that all Allied commandos should be killed immediately without trial even those in proper uniforms, ordered the summary execution of Allied officers and others caught in the act. On January 24, 1945, Joseph Morton, along with 13 Allied officers, was executed at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. He was the only Allied correspondent to be executed by the Axis during World War II.