Alfred Jodl (ca. 1892-1946) was a top German military officer during World War II and part of the leadership cadre around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. 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.

Sources place Alfred Jodl's date of birth around 1892, and there is little information about his life prior to his military career. Jodl's official public record began with his service during World War I in the Bavarian Army, where he was an artillery expert. 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 remained in the...