Alfred Jodl : Execution, Retrail

I have a question about what Alfred Jodl, something that I very recently became aware of.

Alfred Jodl was at end of the war Cheif of Staff of the OKW and tried at the Nuremburg tribunal. He had 4 charges against him, he pled not guilty and was found guilty on all 4 counts. He was sentenced to death, requested firing squad but was hanged. Now here comes where I get confused. 7 years after his death they apparently give him another trail in Munich in 53 I believe, they found him innocent on all 4 counts.

So I am wonder does that mean he was innocent after all and they executed an innocent men?
Or perhaps the second trail had a bias towards him?
or was there some evidence that was later discovered that proved his innocence?

Any help trying to understand this is greatly appreciated.

 

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Stalin wanted to shoot 100,000 officers as a starter but Churchill insisted on something more structured , after some discussion ,a big show trial was agreed upon

from.... http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~warcrime/EU-intro.htm

The indictment accused twenty-three men of having committed some or all of the four crimes enumerated.
The first count indicted all of them for the crime of participating in a common plan or conspiracy.
The second indicted sixteen of them for having committed crimes against peace.
The third accused eighteen of them of having committed war crimes,
and the fourth pointed at eighteen of them again, this time for committing crimes against humanity.
The SS, SD, Gestapo, the SA, and the general staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces
were also put on trial as criminal organizations.


Jodl is indicted on all four counts. From 1935 to 1938 he was chief of the National Defence Section in the High Command. After a year in command of troops in August, 1939, he returned to become Chief of the Operations Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces. Although his immediate superior was defendant Keitel, he reported directly to Hitler on operational matters. In the strict military sense, Jodl was the actual planner of the war and responsible in large measure for the strategy and conduct of operations.

from http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judjodl.htm

Jodl defends himself on the ground he was a soldier sworn to obedience, and not a politician; and that his staff and planning work left him no time for other matters. He said that when he signed or initialled orders, memoranda and letters, he did so for Hitler and often in the absence of Keitel. Though he claims that as a soldier he had to obey Hitler, he says that he often tried to obstruct certain measures by delay, which occasionally proved successful as when he resisted Hitler's demand that a directive be issued to lynch allied " terror fliers."


jold is found guilty on all four counts witch is death

guilt on three counts is perpetual imprisonment

Jold wasn't the worst case and seems to have been a decent Nazi , however he was guilty of waging wars of aggression at least ,
His argument that he was "only the chief of staff of the high command of the wermacht " seems surreal .

Despite the threat of starvation and the struggle involved in putting a broken nation and broken lives back together,
and despite the mixed opinions on it, most Germans were aware that Nuremberg was taking place.
Furthermore, although many disagreed with the trial's very existence, most of them felt that it was being conducted fairly
(the defense attorneys involved with the cases, even though most had strong pro-Nazi tendencies, agreed).
Yet these high levels of awareness and feelings that the trial was being conducted fairly did not
necessarily translate to high levels of approval, for although the Germans bitterly held their leaders
accountable after the war, some of them held them accountable not for the war crimes
they had committed but simply for the crime of losing.

The conviction of rudolf hess to life imprisonment was definitely more doggy .

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I have a strong feeling he also knew about the atrocities as at least during the early phase several Wehrmact top officers sent reports or even stopped the Killing. So Jodl knew all this as he was in charge. As far as I know there were no measures to stop the einsatzgruppen.