(Please note. There is another thread devoted to the more general question of the reliability of 'Wikipedia').

In 1946 the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg convicted Alfred Jodl of all the charges brought against him and sentenced him to death. He was hanged and his property was confiscated.

The 'Wikipedia' article on Jodl states:

"Jodl's Nuremberg verdict was controversial in U.S. military circles and in February 28, 1953, a West German court in Munich posthumously acquitted him of all charges. His property, confiscated in 1946, was returned to his widow. However, yielding to U.S. pressure the Bavarian government recanted the court's judgment: on September 3, 1953 the Bavarian state minister of "political liberation" overturned the earlier revocation of the Nuremberg judgment.[3][4]"

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Jodl

On the discussion page on the article there is a debate about whether this is true. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alfred_Jodl

My immediate reaction is that the story about his alleged acquittal is a legend, though it is quite possible that in 1953 Jodl's widow may well have attempted to do something, and perhaps tried regain the property and that a rather limited case was heard in Munich.

I've found a number of websites that echo the story, but none that goes into any detail or explains the background. In many cases those sites have either derived their information from one another and/or a common souce.

In other words, in order to find out what really happened one needs to go outside the web and beyond 'popular' historical works.

On reading about the alleged acquittal, my first reaction was: If this claim is true, why on earth didn't we hear about it ages ago?

I'd welcome comments.

I have no educated comment to make on Alfred Jodl, other than I believe that he was unjustly condemned. Jodl, I think, was a soldier, through and through, and he obeyed 'Higher Authority'. That, is a soldier's job, to obey, not to question the orders of his political masters.
The fact that Keitel was made Field Marsal and Jodl was not, to me, speaks volumes.

Well, bloomsby, I hadn't paid much attention to this issue, but the notion that someone who had been tried and executed could be "acquitted" some years later does boggle the mind. I wouldn't put much past both the German military establishment, which would have had some reason to push for exoneration int he early 50's, and the U.S. at the time, which would have every reason to fight against it.

However, you're right: the online sites offer no firm confirmation of an aquittal. Our personal library on the war ends with the trial and executions. I will try to find some books on the subject at a couple of university libraries and the Chicago Public Library, which has vast resources. I can't guarantee anything, but I'll make an attempt.

Many thanks, Lanfranco. I'm puzzled by the suggestion that a denazification appeals tribunal (Hauptspruchkammer) would have had any authority to try such a case, but I'm not a lawyer.

Would it be possible to search newspaper files at the time, and see what was reported then?

According to this site it wasn't a de-nazification court or an acquittal, but an arbitration hearing by his widow to receive a pension. The second decision in September 1953 "removed the acquittal decision" decided earlier in that year, left the original conviction of 1946 untouched, but granted his widow the pension she requested. Looks like it was legal semantics so that his widow could receive a pension.

http://www.economy-point.org/a/alfred-jodl.html
http://www.economy-point.org/alfred-jodl/p1.htm

The second page lists four sources:

Quote:

---


Literature

• Luise Jodl: Beyond the end: The way of the colonel general Jodl. - Munich: Is enough Mueller, 1987. - ISBN 3784421458
• Bodo Scheurig: Alfred Jodl: Obediently and calamity. - Berlin, Frankfurt/Main: 1991 (expenditure for license high-speed brook: S. Bublies, 1999. ISBN 3926584661)
• Kenneth Macksey: Colonel general Alfred Jodl. In: Gerd R. (Hg.): Hitler's military elite; Volume 1, P. 102-111. - Darmstadt: Primus, 1998. - ISBN 3896780832
• Alan Wilt: Alfred Jodl - Hitler's discussion officer. In: Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring (Hg.): The military elite of the third realm, P. 236-250. - Berlin, Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein, 1995. - ISBN 354833220X





---

Of course, looking at (better) newspapers from the time ought to resolve the question of the actual decisions made by the court(s) and any subsequent action by the Bavarian government.

I agree and I think that one needs to go outside the internet to resolve this.

Incidentally, looking for newspaper reports was in fact suggested on the discussion page of the 'Wikipedia' page but then mocked (!) as follows:

Quote:

---

How are we supposed to find out if the aquital was reported in the press? I think newspaper stories from the time are irrelevant in this case anyway, since West Germany was under military occupation until 1955. As a comparison, are the following events untrue unless we uncover newspaper reports from the time?[3], [4], [5], [6].

---

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alfred_Jodl

By 1953 Germany was no longer under that sort of military occupation. The Allies still had the power to intervene but West Germany was well on the way to regaining almost complete sovereignty.

gtho. Thanks for all your help. I also have a hunch that the main issue was money.

On much of the internet the "acquittal" is taken desperately seriously, however. Some sites make no mention of the financial dimension.

Edit:

a. Common sense suggests that an arbitration hearing would not have any authority to give a verdict on any crime, let alone overturn a conviction by the International Military Tribunal, but would only be competent to deal with matters like damages, pensions and the like.

b. On a lighter note, denazification certificates, especially in the American Zone, were widely referred to as Persil coupons.

Bloomsby, an afternoon at the library turned up almost nothing on this issue, which I found surprising. I did find the following note in Leon Goldensohn's "The Nuremberg Interviews" (Goldensohn being the psychiatrist who was assigned to interview the main trial defendants; his notes and impressions were published in 2004):

"On February 28, 1953, [Jodl] was posthumously exonerated by a German de-Nazification court that found him not guilty of crimes under international law." (p. 137).

Note that the specific term "de-Nazification court" is used. I found this odd, given that three of the Nuremberg defendants, Papen, Schacht, and Fritzsche, were acquitted at the trial but later CONVICTED by de-Nazification courts (they didn't serve much time).

My husband points out that there had been some uneasiness, even among some Allied personnel, regarding the sentences meted out to Jodl and Keitel, given that they were military men. Other high-ranking German officers, such as Doenitz and Kesselring, were not executed; indeed, Kesselring was paroled from prison in 1952. Possibly an attitude that military personnel were not quite in the same war crimes league as other defendants played a role in Jodl's temporary "exoneration" and the decision to grant his widow a pension.

Many thanks, Lanfranco, for going to so much trouble in connection with this. I am most grateful. My thanks to your husband, too.

If one assumes that Jodl was in some sense temporarily acquitted in 1953, it is odd that this isn't much more widely known. It's also strange that websearches don't lead to even one scholarly article in English or German on the subject.

The English-language "Wikipedia" article and the meagre sources given there seem to take the acquittal very seriously.

I wonder if the whole thing has been given a significance that it did not have at the time.

I shall pursue the matter further when I can. In particular, I hope to find something that pre-dates the internet.

I have recently read the fine historical work "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, edited by Robert Gellately. In the chapter on Jodl (page 137), the following is noted: "On February 28, 1953, he was posthumously exonerated by a German de-Nazification court that found him not guilty of crimes under international law."

Many thanks for that reference.

awesome info!!