JODL: There were a great number of operational questions which do not interest the Court; but in the sphere of interest to the Court, there was, for example, Hitler’s intention to renounce the Geneva Convention. I prevented that because I objected.
DR. EXNER: Were there other possibilities of influencing Hitler?
JODL: If it was not possible by open contradiction to prevent something which according to my innermost convictions I should prevent, there was still the means I often employed of using delaying tactics, a kind of passive resistance. I delayed work on the matter and waited for a psychologically favorable moment to bring the question up again.
This procedure, too, was occasionally successful, for example, in the case of the intention to turn certain low-level fliers over to lynch justice. It had no success in the case of the Commando Order.
DR. EXNER: We will speak about that later. The Führer therefore ordered that himself.
The witness Gisevius in answer to questions by the Prosecution, said that “Jodl had a key position with Hitler.”
Did you know this witness by sight, or by hearing about him, or in any other way?
JODL: I did not have that honor. I heard the name of this witness for the first time here, and I saw him for the first time here in Court.
DR. EXNER: What, if anything, could you influence Hitler not to do?
JODL: Obviously, I could give the Führer only an extract of events. In view of his inclination to make emotional decisions I naturally was particularly cautious in presenting unverified reports made by agents. If the witness meant this by his general term of “key position,” he was not wrong. But if he intended it to mean that I kept from the Führer atrocities committed by our own Wehrmacht, or atrocities committed by the SS, then that is absolutely untrue. Besides, how was that witness to know about it?