Īdditional charges at his trial included unlawful deportation and abetting execution. 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". 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. He was accused of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Jodl was arrested, along with the rest of the Flensburg government of Dönitz, by British troops on and transferred to Camp Ashcan POW camp and later put before the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials. Jodl being arrested by British troops on, near Flensburg
On 13 May, on the arrest of Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, Jodl succeeded him as chief of OKW. The surrender to all the Allies was concluded on 8 May in Berlin. įollowing regional surrenders of German forces in Europe, Jodl was sent by Dönitz to respond to the demand for "immediate, simultaneous and unconditional surrender on all fronts." Jodl signed the German Instrument of Surrender on in Reims on behalf of the OKW. On, Jodl was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by Großadmiral Karl Dönitz, who had succeeded Hitler on 30 April 1945 as head of Germany and its armed forces. He was among those slightly injured during the 20 July plot of 1944 against Hitler, during which, and from the explosion, he suffered a concussion. On 1 February 1944, he was promoted to the rank of Generaloberst (colonel general). Jodl spent most of the war at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's forward command post in East Prussia. Jodl, seated between Wilhelm Oxenius and Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, signs the German Instrument of Surrender in Reims on.