...Even after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came into power in January 1933, German rearmament despite its scale, remained a largely covert operation, carried out using front organizations such as glider clubs for training pilots, sporting clubs, and Nazi SA militia groups for teaching infantry combat techniques.
One of the main objectives of the Nazi regime was to redraw the map of post-World War I Europe. After the Anschluss, as the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich became known, Alfred Jodl was transferred to Linz in annexed Austria to take charge of the 44th artillery regiment as a commander. On the 23rd of August 1939, just one week before the German invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler had appointed Jodl Chief of the Operations Staff of German Armed Forces High Command.
World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
Alfred Jodl acted as a chief of staff during the invasion of Denmark and Norway which was codenamed Operation Weserübung.
Alfred Jodl was then busy drawing up plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union which became known as Operation Barbarossa.
Jodl was also involved in drafting the “Commissar order” which he had signed on the 6th of June, 1941, less than 3 weeks before Operation Barbarossa began.
Jodl also signed the “Commando Order” which ordered and authorized the killing of enemy special operations troops. The allied commandos were to be killed without trial, even when captured in uniform or if they attempted to surrender.
On the 20th of July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Hitler.
Alfred Jodl was present in the Wolf's Lair field headquarters, and he was slightly injured when the bomb exploded.
Following regional surrenders of German forces in Europe, Karl Dönitz, who briefly succeeded Hitler as head of state, sent Alfred Jodl to sign the surrender which was limited to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. However, American General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German forces including those fighting in the East. If this demand had not been met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western front, preventing Germans from fleeing to the West in order to surrender, thereby leaving them in the hands of the advancing Soviet forces. Dönitz ordered Jodl to sign which he did on behalf of the German Armed Forces High Command on the 7th of May 1945 in Reims, France.
After the war, Alfred Jodl was arrested by the British Troops on the 23rd of May 1945 and tried at the Nuremberg Trials which were held against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany.
On the 1st of October 1946 the International Military tribunal found Alfred Jodl guilty on all four counts and sentenced him to death by hanging.
One of the main objectives of the Nazi regime was to redraw the map of post-World War I Europe. After the Anschluss, as the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich became known, Alfred Jodl was transferred to Linz in annexed Austria to take charge of the 44th artillery regiment as a commander. On the 23rd of August 1939, just one week before the German invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler had appointed Jodl Chief of the Operations Staff of German Armed Forces High Command.
World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.
Alfred Jodl acted as a chief of staff during the invasion of Denmark and Norway which was codenamed Operation Weserübung.
Alfred Jodl was then busy drawing up plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union which became known as Operation Barbarossa.
Jodl was also involved in drafting the “Commissar order” which he had signed on the 6th of June, 1941, less than 3 weeks before Operation Barbarossa began.
Jodl also signed the “Commando Order” which ordered and authorized the killing of enemy special operations troops. The allied commandos were to be killed without trial, even when captured in uniform or if they attempted to surrender.
On the 20th of July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Hitler.
Alfred Jodl was present in the Wolf's Lair field headquarters, and he was slightly injured when the bomb exploded.
Following regional surrenders of German forces in Europe, Karl Dönitz, who briefly succeeded Hitler as head of state, sent Alfred Jodl to sign the surrender which was limited to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. However, American General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German forces including those fighting in the East. If this demand had not been met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western front, preventing Germans from fleeing to the West in order to surrender, thereby leaving them in the hands of the advancing Soviet forces. Dönitz ordered Jodl to sign which he did on behalf of the German Armed Forces High Command on the 7th of May 1945 in Reims, France.
After the war, Alfred Jodl was arrested by the British Troops on the 23rd of May 1945 and tried at the Nuremberg Trials which were held against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany.
On the 1st of October 1946 the International Military tribunal found Alfred Jodl guilty on all four counts and sentenced him to death by hanging.
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LearningTranscript
00:00The First of October, 1946, Nuremberg, Germany.
00:11After more than ten months on trial, twenty-one defendants who were among the most important
00:16political, military, and economic leaders of Nazi Germany hear their sentences read.
00:22These high-ranking representatives of the criminal Nazi regime have to finally take
00:26responsibility for their crimes and answer before an international military tribunal
00:31who would punish them for unspeakable atrocities committed during the Second World War.
00:36It is only the first of many war crime trials held after the Second World War, and would
00:41become a warning to war criminals and dictators everywhere.
00:45Once the true extent of the German atrocities, especially against Jews, are revealed, twelve
00:49defendants out of the twenty-one are sentenced to death by hanging.
00:54One of them is a German general, Alfred Jodl.
00:58Alfred Jodl was born out of wedlock on the 10th of May, 1890, in Würzburg, then part
01:05of the German Empire.
01:06His father, who came from a Bavarian military family, was not married to Alfred's mother
01:11Theresa, because as a farmer's daughter, she was considered not good enough to marry
01:16a Bavarian military officer.
01:18They married only in 1899, after his father had retired from military service.
01:23It was only from then on that Alfred bore his name.
01:26Alfred grew up with his younger brother Ferdinand, who would also become an army general.
01:31His uncle, Friedrich Jodl, was a philosopher.
01:34In July 1910, Alfred joined the 4th Field Artillery Regiment of the Bavarian Army.
01:40In the following year, he was assigned to the military school in Munich, and in October
01:441912, he was promoted to lieutenant.
01:48In September 1913, Jodl married Countess Irma von Bullion.
01:52The marriage was childless.
01:55The First World War began on the 28th of July, 1914.
01:59In August the same year, Jodl took part in the Battle of Saarburg, but he was wounded
02:03in the thigh and was not able to return to the troops until March 1915.
02:08For gallantry and action, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class.
02:13In the end of 1916, Jodl was transferred to the Eastern Front, where in 1917, he became
02:19a battery commander of the 72nd Hungarian Field Artillery Regiment.
02:23At the beginning of 1918, he was transferred back to the Western Front as a General Staff
02:28Officer, and in March the same year, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class.
02:33The First World War ended on the 11th of November, 1918, when the German leaders signed the armistice
02:39in the Compagnie Forest in France.
02:42The introduction of new weapons like the machine gun and gas warfare led to enormous
02:46losses and the war claimed the lives of 10 million soldiers.
02:51Property and industry losses were catastrophic.
02:54As a result, the victorious powers imposed a series of treaties upon the defeated powers.
03:00Among the treaties, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the
03:05war and liable for massive material damages.
03:08The treaty imposed harsh penalties on the Germans, including the loss of 13% of its
03:13pre-war territories, extensive reparation payments, and demilitarization of the Rhineland.
03:19The Reichswehr, the German army, was restricted to 100,000 men.
03:24In the new Weimar Republic, which was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, Alfred
03:30Jodl continued his career as a professional soldier.
03:34In 1924, Jodl was transferred to the Ministry of the Reichswehr in Berlin.
03:38While between 1928 and 1932 he was a teacher of tactics and war history, in February 1932
03:46Wilhelm Keitel, his superior, appointed him as a major.
03:49In June the same year, Jodl was appointed a group leader in the operations department
03:54of the Truppenamt, an agency which concealed the existence of prescribed German army general
03:58staff.
03:59Keitel and Jodl were significantly involved in secretly planning, reorganizing, and eventually
04:04enlarging the German army in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
04:10Even after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came into power in January 1933, German re-armament,
04:16despite its scale, remained a largely covert operation, carried out using front organizations
04:22such as glider clubs for training pilots, sporting clubs, and Nazi SA militia groups
04:27for teaching infantry combat techniques.
04:29Later, however, this re-armament policy was openly and massively expanded.
04:35One of the main objectives of the Nazi regime was to redraw the map of post-World War I
04:40Europe.
04:41Hitler and the Nazis considered the post-war international borders unfair and illegitimate.
04:46They claimed that the Germans had been denied the right of self-determination.
04:51Redrawing Europe's borders would allow the Nazis to achieve two main goals.
04:55Annihilate all Germans in a Nazi-German empire and acquire Lebensraum, meaning living space,
05:01in Eastern Europe.
05:02The annexation of Austria would help the Nazis achieve the first goal.
05:06The Anschluss, as the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich became
05:11known, took place over three days between the 11th and 13th of March 1938.
05:17The Anschluss was supported by many Austrians, among them Austrian Nazis, who saw it as a
05:22political, social, and cultural reunification with their brother country Germany.
05:29Thousands turned out to greet Hitler, the native son who was returning to his homeland.
05:34Even though the leaders of the West saw the Anschluss as an invasion, not one government
05:38made a move to stop Hitler, who without interference felt free to embark upon the next step of
05:43his scheme to conquer all of Europe.
05:46At the end of 1938, Alfred Jodl was transferred to Linz and annexed Austria to take charge
05:52of the 44th Artillery Regiment as a commander.
05:55On the 23rd of August 1939, just one week before the German invasion of Poland, Adolf
06:00Hitler had appointed Jodl chief of the operations staff of German Armed Forces High Command.
06:06Established in 1938, the German Armed Forces High Command was a unified military command
06:12controlling Germany's air force, navy, and army.
06:15In reality, the establishment of the High Command allowed Adolf Hitler to consolidate
06:19power as commander-in-chief of the German military.
06:23High Command was led by Wilhelm Keitel, as chief with the rank of Reich Minister, which
06:28essentially made him the second most powerful person in the armed forces hierarchy after
06:33Hitler.
06:34Alfred Jodl became not only the next officer after Keitel, but also Hitler's primary
06:39military advisor in the High Command, responsible in large measure for the strategy and conduct
06:44of operations.
06:47World War II started on the 1st of September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.
06:52The campaign in Poland ended on the 6th of October the same year with Germany and the
06:57Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of the country.
07:01Alfred Jodl acted as a chief of staff during the invasion of Denmark and Norway, which
07:06was codenamed Operation Weserobung.
07:08Nazi Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on the 9th of April 1940.
07:14Strategically, Denmark's importance to Germany was as a staging area for operations in Norway.
07:21In Norway, Germany sought to secure naval bases for use against the British fleet in
07:25the North Sea and to guarantee vital iron ore shipments from neutral Sweden on which
07:30Nazi Germany was dependent.
07:32While the invasion of Denmark lasted less than six hours and was the shortest military
07:36campaign conducted by the Germans during the war, Norway surrendered to Germany only after
07:42two months on the 10th of June 1940.
07:45In a great wave of promotions that followed the Fall of France in June the same month,
07:50Jodl rose directly to general, skipping the rank of lieutenant general.
07:55During the coming months, Alfred Jodl was busy drawing up plans for the invasion of
07:59the Soviet Union, which became known as Operation Barbarossa.
08:04Jodl was also involved in drafting the Commissar Order, which he had signed on the 6th of June
08:091941, less than three weeks before Operation Barbarossa began.
08:14This order instructed the Wehrmacht that any political commissars were to be shut on principle
08:19when captured either in battle or offering resistance.
08:23Political commissars were Soviet Communist Party officials who oversaw its military units
08:28and reported directly to party leaders.
08:31Operation Barbarossa began on Sunday the 22nd of June 1941.
08:35In May 1942, however, the Commissar Order was cancelled at the urging of the German
08:40field commanders, who came up against much stronger resistance when the routine shooting
08:45of the commissars became known to the Soviet soldiers.
08:49The Germans killed not only political commissars but also Soviet prisoners of war, whom they
08:54regarded as an integral part of the so-called Bolshevik menace, and killed them in massive
08:59numbers.
09:01Jodl also signed the Commando Order, which ordered and authorised the killing of enemy
09:06special operations troops.
09:08The Allied commandos were to be killed without trial, even when captured in uniform or if
09:13they attempted to surrender.
09:15During the planning of Case Blue Offensive in southern Russia in summer 1942, there were
09:20repeated disagreements between Jodl and Hitler.
09:24Jodl considered the German forces planned for the invasion to be too weak.
09:28He severely criticised Hitler's intervention in operation planning and the associated splitting
09:32up of Army Group South in early July 1942, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
09:39When the German attack stalled in the run-up to the Caucasus, Jodl countered the Fuhrer's
09:43accusation that the local commanders were to blame for the situation, as they had merely
09:47followed Hitler's orders.
09:49In view of this open confrontation, Hitler planned Jodl's replacement by General Friedrich
09:54Paulus as soon as he would conquer Stalingrad, which never happened.
09:59Even though his criticism led to a cooling of the relationship with the Fuhrer, Jodl,
10:03the same as with his superior Wilhelm Keitel, remained loyal to Hitler, praising him for
10:08his strategic foresight and carrying out whatever the Fuhrer ordered.
10:13In February 1944, Alfred Jodl was promoted to the rank of Colonel General.
10:18On the 18th of April 1944, his wife Irma died.
10:23He remarried one year later on the 7th of April 1945, when he married Luise von Bender,
10:29who had been a close friend of his first wife Irma.
10:32This marriage also remained childless.
10:35On the 20th of July 1944, Klaus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate
10:42Hitler.
10:43Alfred Jodl was present in the Wolfslehr field headquarters and was slightly injured when
10:48the bomb exploded.
10:49In the days that followed, Hitler ordered a massive hunt for conspirators, which continued
10:54for months.
10:56Many of them appeared before the notorious People's Court for show trials, but this
11:00practice was ended as it gave conspirators a platform to condemn the regime.
11:05In the end, more than 7,000 people were arrested and 4,980 of them were executed, often on
11:12the barest evidence.
11:14On the 28th of October 1944, by teletype, Jodl ordered the evacuation of the Norwegian
11:21population and the destruction of all the houses east of the Lungenfjord in the course
11:25of Operation Northern Lights so that they could not help the Russians.
11:29The forced evacuation of more than 40,000 people in northern Norway took place shortly
11:34after and thousands of houses were destroyed.
11:39Adolf Hitler committed suicide on the 30th of April 1945.
11:44Following regional surrenders of German forces in Europe, Karl Dönitz, who briefly succeeded
11:49Hitler as head of state, sent Alfred Jodl to sign the surrender, which was limited to
11:54only those forces still fighting the Western Allies.
11:57However, American General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German
12:01forces, including those fighting in the east.
12:04If this demand had not been met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western Front,
12:09preventing Germans from fleeing to the west in order to surrender, thereby leaving them
12:13in the hands of the advancing Soviet forces.
12:16Dönitz ordered Jodl to sign, which he did on behalf of the German Armed Forces High
12:21Command on the 7th of May 1945 in Reims, France.
12:26A few hours later, a response was received from the Soviet High Command, stating that
12:31the act of surrender in Reims was unacceptable.
12:34They insisted that not Jodl, deputized by Dönitz as civilian head of state, but the
12:39supreme commander of all German forces, Wilhelm Keitel, should personally sign the document.
12:45One of the reasons was a fear of a new stab-in-the-back myth, which maintained that the Imperial German
12:50Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield, but was instead betrayed by certain citizens
12:56on the home front, especially Jews and Communists, who they claimed had surrendered German honor
13:01to a shameful peace.
13:02As a result, a second signing was arranged in Berlin.
13:06On the night of the 8th of May 1945, Nazi Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the definitive
13:12German Instrument of Surrender, which was the legal document that effected the unconditional
13:16surrender of Nazi Germany on all fronts and ended World War II in Europe.
13:23In the end, justice finally caught up with Jodl when he was arrested by the British troops
13:27on the 23rd of May 1945 and tried at the Nuremberg Trials, which were held against representatives
13:34of the defeated Nazi Germany.
13:36He was convicted of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, planning, initiating, and waging
13:42wars of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
13:47Additional charges at his trial included unlawful deportation and abetting execution.
13:52His wife Louisa joined her husband's defense team.
13:56At the trial, Jodl claimed to have known nothing of the death camps at which nearly six million
14:01European Jews met their death and pleaded not guilty before God, before history and
14:06his people.
14:07However, his lies did not help him escape justice.
14:11On the 1st of October 1946, the International Military Tribunal found Alfred Jodl guilty
14:17on all four counts and sentenced him to death by hanging.
14:21His request, as well as those of Wilhelm Keitel and Hermann Goering for a military execution
14:26by firing squad, was denied due to the criminal rather than military nature of his acts.
14:33He was executed by American Army Sergeant John C. Woods, who had no documented pre-war
14:39experience as a hangman.
14:41It is believed that he was deliberately bad at his job to make the ten Nazi war criminals
14:45that he executed that day suffer, as they all died a long, agonizing death.
14:51The Nazis, executed by Sergeant Woods, fell from the gallows with a drop insufficient
14:56to snap their necks, resulting in their death by strangulation, that in some cases lasted
15:01several minutes.
15:03With Alfred Jodl, it was even worse.
15:06After he had said his last words, I salute you, my eternal Germany, Jodl was hanged,
15:12but because he fell from the gallows with insufficient force to snap his neck, his horrible
15:16convulsing lasted eighteen long minutes before he died.
15:21He was fifty-six years old.
15:24After that, his corpse was cremated and scattered in the river Isar.
15:29There were no tears shed for Alfred Jodl.