page_title: Alfred Jodl
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Alfred Jodl / World War II
context_page_description: Alfred Josef Ferdinand Jodl was a German Generaloberst who served as the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German Armed Forces High Command, throughout World War II.
  After the war, Jodl was indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity at the Allied-organised Nuremberg trials. The principal charges against him related to his signature of the criminal Commando and Commissar Orders. Found guilty on all charges, he was sentenced to death and executed in Nuremberg in 1946.
context_section_description: Jodl's appointment as a major in the operations branch of the Truppenamt in the Army High Command in the last years of the Weimar Republic put him under command of General Ludwig Beck. In September 1939 Jodl first met Adolf Hitler. In the build-up to the Second World War, Jodl was nominally assigned as a commander of the 44th Division from October 1938 to August 1939 after the Anschluss. 
  Jodl was chosen by Hitler to be Chief of Operation Staff of the newly formed Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) on 23 August 1939, just prior to the German invasion of Poland. Jodl acted as a Chief of Staff during the invasion of Denmark and Norway. Following the Fall of France Jodl was optimistic of Germany's success over Britain, on 30 June 1940 writing "The final German victory over England is now only a question of time."
  Jodl signed the Commissar Order of 6 June 1941 (in which Soviet political commissars were to be shot) and the Commando Order of 28 October 1942 (in which Allied commandos, including properly uniformed soldiers as well as combatants wearing civilian clothes, such as Maquis and partisans, were to be executed immediately without trial if captured behind German lines).
  Jodl spent most of the war at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's forward command post in East Prussia. On 1 February 1944, he was promoted to the rank of Generaloberst (Colonel General). Jodl was among those slightly injured during the 20 July plot of 1944 against Hitler where he suffered a concussion from the explosion. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor, on 6 May. 
  At the end of World War II in Europe, Jodl signed the German Instrument of Surrender on 7 May 1945 in Reims as the representative of Dönitz.
caption: Jodl signs the German Instrument of Surrender in Reims on 7 May 1945.
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