Italy's Ameglia Executions and Ginny II Commando Mission

The Italian hill town of Ameglia rests prettily upon bedrock at the very tip of Liguria. The historic center and its frazioni are a popular destination for Italian and foreign visitors, who come for the renowned beach at Punta Corvo, the riverside walk at Bocca di Magra, or the pretty village of Montemarcello. If not for three memorial plaques, no visitor would suspect that Ameglia's gentle nobility was defiled by a terrible war crime. Within the borders of this innocent town, fifteen American soldiers were executed by the German Army on March 26, 1944, in contravention of the Geneva Prisoner of War Convention. They were ignobly and brutally killed and buried in a mass grave.
Today they are remembered not just by their families nor by those three markers, however. Their deaths led to a judgement which was used as a precedent at the Nuremberg war crime trials and which is now part of the bedrock of modern international law: an illegal military order by a superior is not a defense to a war crime.