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Hitler had signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, and with his eastern flank protected-as well as a standing alliance with a fascist dictatorship in Italy-Germany launched air attacks on Britain. A year later, an increasingly bellicose Germany invaded Poland, an act that launched World War II.
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Jodl had planned the specifics of the invasion, but alarmed European leaders signed a peace agreement with Germany a few weeks later that allowed Hitler to simply annex part of Czechoslovakia. In the late summer of 1938 German troops were massing on Germany's border with Czechoslovakia. From 1938 to August of 1939 Jodl served as Artillery Commander of the 44th Division, and was posted in both Vienna, the Austrian capital, and Brno, a city in the former Czechoslovakia. In 1938 the German border to be defended widened considerably when Austria was annexed and became part of the country-an act that took place with almost no resistance. By 1936 Jodl had advanced to the rank of colonel and to the post of head of the National Defense Section in the High Command of the Armed Forces. Hitler also began violating the terms of the Versailles treaty by re-arming.
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Yet the Nazi political platform blamed its Jewish citizens for many of Germany's economic woes, and imposed an increasingly drastic series of laws that restricted the civil rights of German Jews. During this period Hitler was consolidating power and winning support for an economic course that brought some measure of stability and prosperity. Jodl served as head of Army operations until 1935. Hitler became German Chancellor early the next year. By 1932 Jodl had returned to service in the Army itself and was head of its Operations Department. Such conditions gave rise to a political movement called National Socialism, a right-wing fascist movement led by another World War I veteran, Adolf Hitler. He was perhaps fortunate to have a steady post, for the country's economy was in ruins and the unemployment rate was dangerously high. Jodl remained in the service of the military, though a leadership vacuum and a near-revolution had made mutinies quite common among the demoralized armed forces in the final months of the war.ĭuring the 1920s Jodl served the newly-created Weimar Republic in Germany's Ministry of War and in the intelligence service.
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At the war's end, imperial Germany was soundly defeated, and the Treaty of Versailles dictated that its armed forces would be limited to 100,000 men the treaty also curtailed Germany's use of heavy artillery, tanks, submarines, and the famed Luftwaffe (air force). Jodl's official public record began with his service during World War I in the Bavarian Army, where he was an artillery expert. Sources place Alfred Jodl's date of birth around 1892, and there is little information about his life prior to his military career. For his military strategies and orders that led to deaths of enemy troops and civilians throughout Europe, Jodl was arrested in 1945 and hanged a year later with several other top Nazis as a war criminal. 1892-1946) was a top German military officer during World War II and part of the leadership cadre around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. He pleaded ‘not guilty’ and claimed to have known nothing of the death camps at which nearly six million European Jews met their death but the court sentenced him to death for his brutality and he was hanged.Alfred Jodl (ca.
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He was convicted of making a plan of action regarding the destruction of the United States and Britain and also for many other accusations which were supported by documented evidence. He was held responsible for murdering innocent people, when he issued an order of Hitler's that German military units in Russia could act with heedless brutality. After the German forces lost to the Allied forces in the World War II, he was arrested along with his other colleagues. It was alleged that his actions resulted in death of millions of innocent jews. He was a war criminal, who was convicted and sentenced to death for conspiring, with Hitler, to start a war which took millions of lives. Alfred Jodl was a top German military commander during the World War II and one of the leading spearheads of the Nazi movement.
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