Jodl signed surrender in Reims

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kDrJCBnISac


On 6 May 1945, Jodl was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by Grand admiral Karl D;nitz, who had succeeded Hitler on 30 April 1945 as head of Germany and its armed forces.[10]

Following regional surrenders of German forces in Europe, Jodl was sent by D;nitz to respond to the demand for "immediate, simultaneous and unconditional surrender on all fronts."[11] Jodl signed the German Instrument of Surrender on 7 May 1945 in Reims on behalf of the OKW.[12] The surrender to all the Allies was concluded on 8 May in Berlin. On 13 May, on the arrest of Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Jodl succeeded him as Chief of OKW.[13]

Trial and conviction

Jodl being arrested by British troops on 23 May 1945, near Flensburg
Jodl was arrested, along with the rest of the Flensburg Government of D;nitz, by British troops on 23 May 1945 and transferred to Camp Ashcan and later put before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials. He 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 classes of prisoners of war were to be summarily executed upon capture. When confronted with the 1941 mass shootings of Soviet POWs, Jodl claimed the only prisoners shot were "not those that could not, but those that did not want to walk".[14]

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, to Nazi concentration camps. Although he denied his role in this activity of the regime, the court sustained his complicity based on the evidence it had examined, with the French judge, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, dissenting.


Jodl's body after his execution, 16 October 1946
His wife Luise attached herself to her husband's defence team.[15][better source needed] Subsequently, interviewed by Gitta Sereny, researching her biography of Albert Speer, Luise alleged that in many instances the Allied prosecution made charges against Jodl based on documents that they refused to share with the defence. Jodl nevertheless proved that some of the charges made against him were untrue, such as the charge that he had helped Hitler gain control of Germany in 1933.[16]

Jodl pleaded not guilty "before God, before history and my people". Found guilty on all four charges, he was hanged at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946.[17][better source needed] Jodl's last words were reportedly "I salute you, my eternal Germany" ("Ich gr;;e Dich, mein ewiges Deutschland").[18]

His remains, like those of the other nine executed men and Hermann G;ring (who had killed himself prior to his scheduled execution), were cremated at Ostfriedhof and the ashes were scattered in the Wenzbach, a small tributary of the River Isar[19][20][21] to prevent the establishment of a permanent burial site which might be enshrined by Neo-Nazis. A cross commemorating him was later added to the family grave on the Frauenchiemsee in Bavaria. In 2018, the local council ordered the cross to be removed;[22] however, in March 2019, a Munich Court upheld Jodl's relatives' right to maintain the family grave, while noting the family's willingness to remove his name.[23][24]

Posthumous legal action
On 28 February 1953, after his widow Luise sued to reclaim her pension and his estate, a West German denazification court posthumously declared Jodl not guilty of breaking international law, based on Henri Donnedieu de Vabres's 1949 disapproval of Jodl's conviction.[25][26] This not guilty declaration was revoked by the Minister of Political Liberation for Bavaria on 3 September 1953, following objections from the United States; the consequences of the acquittal on Jodl's estate were, however, maintained.[2