near
Flensburg Jodl was arrested, along with the rest of the
Flensburg Government of Dönitz, by British troops on 23 May 1945 and transferred to
Camp Ashcan and later put before the International Military Tribunal at the
Nuremberg trials. He was accused of
conspiracy to commit
crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging
wars of aggression,
war crimes and
crimes against humanity. 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. 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". Additional charges at his trial included unlawful deportation and abetting execution. Presented as evidence was his signature on an order that transferred Danish citizens, including Jews, to
Nazi concentration camps. Although he denied his role in this activity of the regime, the court found him complicit based on the evidence it had examined, with the French judge,
Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, dissenting. His wife Luise attached herself to her husband's defence team. Subsequently, interviewed by
Gitta Sereny, researching her biography of
Albert Speer, Luise alleged that in many instances the Allied prosecution made charges against Jodl based on documents that they refused to share with the defence. Jodl nevertheless proved that some of the charges made against him were untrue, such as the charge that he had helped Hitler gain control of Germany in 1933. Jodl pleaded not guilty "before God, before history and my people". Found guilty on all four charges, he was hanged at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October 1946. Jodl's last words were reportedly "I salute you, my eternal Germany" (). His remains, like those of the other nine executed men and
Hermann Göring (who had killed himself prior to his scheduled execution), were cremated at
Ostfriedhof and the ashes were scattered in the
Wenzbach, a small tributary of the River
Isar to prevent the establishment of a permanent burial site which might be enshrined by
Neo-Nazis. A cross commemorating him was later added to the family grave on the
Frauenchiemsee in Bavaria. In 2018, the local council ordered the cross to be removed; however, in March 2019, a Munich court upheld Jodl's relatives' right to maintain the family grave, while noting the family's willingness to remove his name. ==Posthumous legal action==