Branch: Heer
Born: 10 May 1990 in Würzburg, Germany.
Died: 16 October 1946 in Nuremberg, Germany.
Ranks:
Generaloberst
General der Infanterie
Generalleutnant
Generalmajor
Oberst
Oberstleutnant
Major
Hauptmann
Oberleutnant
Leutnant
Fähnrich
Decorations:
Iron Cross 1914
2nd Class 20 November 1914
1st Class 3 May 1918
Wound Badge
Cross of Honor in 1934
Anschluss Medal
Sudetenland Medal
Iron Cross
2nd Class 30 September 1939
1st Class 23 December 1939
Wound Badge 20 July 1944
Golden Party Badge 30 January 1943
Order of Michael the Brave
3rd Class 23 December 1943
2nd Class 23 December 1943
Order of the Cross of Liberty 1st Class with Swords 25 March
1942
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
Knight's Cross on 6 May 1945
Oak Leaves on 10 May 1945
Commands:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl was born on 10 May 1990 and became
a German military commander, attaining the position of Chief
of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando
der Wehrmacht, or OKW) during World War II, acting as deputy
to
Wilhelm
Keitel. At Nuremberg he was tried, sentenced to death
and hanged as a war criminal.
Alfred Jodl was born out of wedlock as Alfred Josef Ferdinand
Baumgärtler in Würzburg, Germany, the son of Officer
Alfred Jodl and Therese Baumgärtler, assuming the surname
Alfred Jodl upon his parents' marriage in 1899. He was educated
at Cadet School in Munich, from which he graduated in 1910.
General Ferdinand Alfred Jodl was his younger brother. The
philosopher and psychologist Friedrich Alfred Jodl at the
University of Vienna was his uncle.
After schooling, Alfred Jodl joined the army as an artillery
officer. During World War I he served as a battery officer
on the Western Front from 1914 to 1916, twice being wounded.
In 1917 Alfred Jodl served briefly on the Eastern Front before
returning to the west as a staff officer. After the war Alfred
Jodl remained in the armed forces and joined the Versailles-limited
Reichswehr.
Alfred Jodl had married Irma Gräfin von Bullion, a woman
five years his senior from an aristocratic Swabian family,
in September 1913. She died in Königsberg in the spring
of 1944 from pneumonia, contracted after major spinal surgery.
In November 1944, Alfred Jodl married Luise von Benda, a family
friend.
Alfred Jodl's appointment as a major in the operations branch
of the Truppenamt in the Army High Command in the last days
of the Weimar Republic put him under command of General
Ludwig
Beck, who recognised Alfred Jodl as a man with a
future, although it was only on September 1939 that
Alfred Jodl met with
Adolf
Hitler for the first time. In the build-up to World War
II, Alfred Jodl was nominally 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 in May
1945 he was Chef des Wehrmachtsführungsstabes (Chief
of Operation Staff OKW). Alfred Jodl acted as a Chief of Staff
during the swift occupation of Denmark and Norway. During
the campaign,
Adolf
Hitler interfered only when the German destroyer flotilla
was demolished outside Narvik and wanted the German forces
there to retreat into Sweden. Alfred Jodl successfully thwarted
Adolf Hitler's
orders. Alfred Jodl disagreed with
Adolf
Hitler for the second time during the summer offensive
of 1942.
Adolf
Hitler dispatched Alfred Jodl to the Caucasus to visit
Field-Marshal
Wilhelm
von List to find out why the oil fields had not been captured.
Alfred Jodl returned only to corroborate
Wilhelm
von List's reports that the troops were at their last
gasp.
During the Battle of Britain Alfred Jodl was optimistic
of Britain's demise and on 30 June 1940 wrote The
final German victory over England is now only a question
of time.
Alfred Jodl signed the Commando Order of 28 October 1942
(in which Allied Commandos, including uniformed soldiers
as well as combatants wearing civilian clothes such as Maquis
and Partisans were not to be treated as POWs) and the Commissar
Order of 6 June 1941 (in which Soviet Political Commissioners
were to be shot).
He was injured during the 20 July plot of 1944 against
Adolf Hitler.
Because of this, Alfred Jodl was awarded the special wounded
badge alongside several other leading Nazi figures. He was
also rather vocal about his suspicions that others had not
endured wounds as strong as his own, often downplaying the
effects of the plot on others.
At the end of World War II in Europe, Alfred Jodl signed
the instruments of unconditional surrender on 7 May 1945
in Reims as the representative of
Karl
Dönitz.
Alfred Jodl was arrested and transferred to Flensburg POW
camp and later put before the International Military Tribunal
at the Nuremberg Trials. Alfred Jodl was accused of conspiracy
to commit crimes against peace planning, initiating and waging
wars of aggression war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The principal charges against him related to his signature
of the Commando Order and the Commissar Order, both of which
ordered that certain prisoners were to be summarily executed.
Additional charges at his trial included unlawful deportation
and abetting execution. Presented as evidence was his signature
on an order that transferred Danish citizens, including Jews
and other civilians, to concentration camps. Although he denied
his role in the crime, the court sustained his complicity
based on the given evidence.
His wife Luise attached herself to her husband's defence
team.
Subsequently interviewed by Gitta Sereny, researching her
biography of
Albert
Speer, Luise alleged that in many instances the Allied
prosecution made charges against Alfred Jodl based on documents
that they refused to share with the defence Alfred Jodl
nevertheless proved that some of the charges made against
him were untrue, such as the charge that he had helped
Adolf
Hitler gain control of Germany in 1933. Alfred Jodl pleaded
not guilty before God, before history and my people.
Found guilty on all four charges, he was hanged with
Wilhelm
Keitel, on 16 October 1946
although he had asked the court to be executed by firing
squad.
Alfred Jodl's last words were reportedly Ich grüße
Dich, mein ewiges Deutschland - My greetings to you, my
eternal Germany. He was declared dead 18 minutes later.
His remains were cremated at Munich, and his ashes raked out
and scattered into the Isar River (effectively an attempt
to prevent the establishment of a permanent burial site to
those nationalist groups who might seek to congregate there
an example of this being Benito Mussolini's grave in Predappio,
Italy). A cenotaph in the family plot in the Fraueninsel Cemetery,
in Chiemsee, Germany is dedicated to him.
On 28 February 1953, the München Hauptspruchkammer (Main
denazification court) declared Alfred Jodl not guilty of the
main charges brought against him at Nuremberg, citing the
French CO-President of the Tribunal, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres,
who had in 1946 called the verdict against Alfred Jodl a mistake. His property, which had been confiscated in 1946, was
returned to his widow. The declaration was revoked on 3 September
1953 by the Minister of Political Liberation for Bavaria,
supported by many western allied generals.
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