Alfred Jodl - Early Career, Mature Career

German general, born in Aachen, W Germany. An artillery subaltern in World War 1, he became general of artillery in 1940, the planning genius of the German High Command and Hitler's chief adviser. He was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg (1946), and executed.

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.

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.

Jodl had married Irma Gräfin von Bullion in September 1913.

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). 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 accused of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; 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. While Wilhelm Keitel called his wife almost every day, Alfred Jodl didn't seem to seek contact with Irma.

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.

Jodl pleaded 'not guilty' "before God, before history and my people". 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).