Alfred Jodl (10 May 1890-16 October 1946) was the Chief of the Operations Staff of the OKW of Nazi Germany, effectively serving as chief of staff to Adolf Hitler himself. Jodl was Hitler's representative in the Wehrmacht, and he was hanged after being found guilty of war crimes in the Nuremberg Trials.
Biography[]
Alfred Jodl was born on 10 May 1890 in Wuerzburg, Bavaria, German Empire, the brother of future German general Ferdinand Jodl. Alfred Jodl graduated from a cadet school in 1910 and served in an artillery battery of the Imperial German Army during World War I. During the last months of the war, Jodl was transferred to the General Staff, and he remained in the General Staff even after the war, remaining in the Reichswehr and serving under Ludwig Beck.
In August 1939, Jodl was appointed Chief of Staff of the OKW (the German army's high command) by Adolf Hitler, and he was almost entirely responsible for executing the invasion of Scandinavia in the spring of 1940. Jodl also believed that, following the battle of France, the fall of the United Kingdom would only be a matter of time. On 6 June 1941, he signed the Commissar Order, which allowed for Wehrmacht soldiers to summarily executed Soviet Red Army political officers; he also signed a 28 October 1942 order that instructed German troops to summarily execute Allied commandos and partisans upon capture. On 7 May 1945, however, Jodl would be the one who was forced to sign Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers at Reims in France, and Jodl's optimism was crushed.
Jodl was held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during World War II, and he was one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 and 1946. He was found guilty of four charges (the Commissar Order, the Commando Act, unlawful deportation, and abetting execution) and sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. On 16 October 1946, he said "I greet you, my eternal Germany" before he was hanged at the gallows in Nuremberg, West Germany.
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