Alfred Jodl
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Alfred Jodl (May 10, 1890 – October 16, 1946) was a German military (Wehrmacht) commander, attaining the position of Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) during WWII, acting as deputy to Wilhelm Keitel.
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[edit] Early Career
Jodl was born Alfred Josef Ferdinand Baumgärtler in 1890 in Würzburg, Germany, the son of Officer Alfred Jodl and Therese Baumgärtler, legitimately becoming "Alfred Jodl" upon his parents' marriage in 1899. Educated at Cadet School in Munich, Jodl graduated in 1910 and joined the Bavarian army as an artillery officer. During World War I served as a battery officer on the Western Front 1914-1916, twice being wounded. In 1917 Jodl 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.
Jodl had married Irma Gräfin von Bullion in September 1913. The marriage was unhappy, Irma becoming more and more interested in Jodl's career than in the man himself. The couple had no children.
[edit] Mature Career
Jodl became acquainted with Adolf Hitler in 1923. As an officer was regularly promoted and by 1935 Jodl headed the Abteilung Landesverteidigung im Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) (Chief of the National Defense Section in the High Command of the Army). In the build-up to the Second World War, Jodl 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 in May 1945 he was Chef des Wehrmachtsführungsstabes (Chief of Operation Staff). Jodl was therefore a key figure in German military operations from 1939, supplying advice and technical information directly to Hitler. As testament to his closeness to the German Führer, Jodl was injured in the July Plot against Hitler.
At the end of World War II in Europe Generaloberst Jodl signed the instruments of unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945 in Reims as the representative for Karl Dönitz. Jodl was then arrested and transferred to Flensburg POW camp and later put before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials. Jodl 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 if he held no allegiance to Nazism.
Jodl's wife Irma passed away on April 18, 1944. During their last years together Alfred and Irma had been very distant and cold to each other. While Wilhelm Keitel called his wife almost every day, Alfred Jodl didn't seem to seek contact with Irma. On April 7, 1945 he married former secretary Luise Katharina von Benda (born 1905). She had been a close friend of his first wife.
His wife Luise Jodl managed to attach herself to her husband's defence team. Subsequently interviewed by Gitta Sereny, researching her biography of Albert Speer, Luise Jodl revealed that in many instances the Allied prosecution made charges against Jodl based on documents that they refused to share with the defence. Jodl nevertheless managed to prove that some of the charges made against him were completely untrue, such as the charge that he had helped Hitler gain control of Germany in 1933. He was in one instance aided by a GI clerk who chose to give Luise a document showing that the execution of a group of British commandos in Norway had been legitimate. The GI warned Luise that if she didn’t copy it imediately she would never see it again; "…it was being 'filed'."[1]
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. Jodl's last words were reportedly "My greetings to you, my Germany." Jodl's remains were cremated at Munich, and his ashes were raked out and scattered into the Conwentzbach, a small river flowing into the larger Isar River (an attempt to deny him a permanent burial place). Jodl nonetheless possesses a cenotaph in the family plot in the Fraueninsel Cemetery, Chiemsee, Germany.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer His Battle with Truth, p.578. ISBN 0697768122
