Alfred Jodl
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Alfred Jodl (May 10, 1890 – October 16, 1946) was a Wehrmacht leader. During WWII he was Chief of the Operations Staff of the armed forces high command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) and deputy to Wilhelm Keitel. General Jodl was one of the most brilliant minds of German military history. Together with General Wilhelm Keitel he invented the so called Jodl-Keitel-tactic, which is even nowadays used and taught in modern military tactics.
He was born in Würzburg, Germany. Educated at Cadet School in Munich, he graduated in 1910 and joined the Bavarian army as an artillery officer. During World War I he was a battery officer and served on the Western Front 1914-1916, twice being wounded. In 1917 he served briefly on the Eastern Front before returning to the west as a staff officer. After the war Jodl remained in the armed forces and joined the Versailles-limited Reichswehr.
He became acquainted with Adolf Hitler in 1923. He was regularly promoted and by 1935 he headed the Abteilung Landesverteidigung im Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) (Chief of the National Defense Section in the High Command of the Armed Forces). In the build-up to war he was assigned as a Artilleriekommandeur of the 44th Division from October 1938 to August 1939 during the Anschluss, but from then until the end of the war he was Chef des Wehrmachtsführungsstabes (Chief of Operation Staff). Jodl was a key figure in German military operations from then on, supplying advice and technical information to Hitler. He was injured in the July Plot against Hitler.
At the end of World War II in Europe Generaloberst Jodl signed the unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945 in Reims as the representative for Karl Dönitz. He was then arrested and transferred to Flensburg POW camp and later put before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials. He was accused of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war-crimes; and crimes against humanity. Among the charges against him was his distribution of the Commando Order and the Commissar Order. The primary French judge at the Nuremberg Trials, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres protested strongly against Jodl's conviction, stating that it was a miscarriage of justice for a professional soldier to be convicted when he held no allegiance to Nazism.
Jodl pleaded not guilty "before God, before history and my people". Found guilty on all four charges, he was hanged, although he had asked the court to be executed by firing squad. His last words were "My greetings to you, my Germany." His remains were cremated at Dachau concentration camp, and the ashes were raked out and scattered in an unknown river. He has a cenotaph in the family plot in the Fraueninsel Cemetery, Chiemsee, Germany.
On 28th February 1953, Jodl was posthumously exonerated by a German de-Nazification court, which cited Nuremberg Trial judge Donnedieu's statements and found Jodl not guilty of crimes under international law.
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