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Franz Halder (30 June 1884 – 2 April 1972) was a German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942. During World War II, he directed the planning and implementation of Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Halder became instrumental in the radicalisation of warfare on the Eastern Front. He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order (issued on 6 June 1941) and the Barbarossa decree (signed on 13 May 1941) that allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason without fear of later prosecution, leading to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign. After the war, he had a decisive role in the development of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
Halder began his military service in 1914. In 1937 he met and became a supporter of Adolf Hitler. Halder participated in the strategic planning for the 1939 German invasion of Poland. The plans authorised the SS to carry out security taskson behalf of the armythat included the imprisonment or execution of Poles. In July 1940 he began planning for the Axis powers invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, which began on 22 June 1941. That summer Halder engaged in a long-running and divisive dispute with Hitler over strategy. Hitler removed Halder from command in September 1942. After the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, Halder was arrested as it came to light that he had been involved in an earlier plot, leading to his imprisonment. As chief of OKH General Staff, he had kept extensive notes, later published as The Halder Diaries.
After World War II Halder served as a lead consultant for the US Army Historical Division. He oversaw the writing of over 2,500 historical documents by 700 former German officers, whom he instructed to remove material detrimental to the image of the German armed forces. Halder used his influence to foster a false history of the German-Soviet conflict in which the German army fought a "noble war" and which denied its war crimes. The US Army overlooked Halder's apologia because Halder's group was providing military insights on the Soviet Union that it deemed important in the light of the Cold War. Halder succeeded in his aim of exonerating the German Army: first with the US military, then amongst widening circles of politicians and eventually in American popular culture. In 1961, he was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award.
On 1 February 1938, Halder was promoted to general of the Artillery. He was appointed chief of the General Staff of the Army High Command on 1 September. He succeeded General Ludwig Beck who had resigned on 18 August amid the Sudetenland crisis. Halder was approached by conservative nationalist officers about heading the envisaged coup d'état should Hitler start a war, but he declined. Halder discussed the situation informally with US diplomat Raymond Geist and indicated that the Army feared that Hitler was about to start a war with the West. In any case, the war was averted by the conclusion of the Munich Agreement that ceded Sudetenland to Germany.
At the end of 1939, Halder oversaw the development of the invasion plans of France, the Low Countries and the Balkans. During a meeting with Hitler on 5 November Walther von Brauchitsch, the Army commander-in-chief, attempted to talk Hitler into putting off the invasion of France. Hitler refused and berated Brauchitsch for incompetence. As a consequence, Halder and Brauchitsch discussed overthrowing Hitler because they feared the invasion was doomed. They decided against the idea. On 23 November 1939 Carl Friedrich Goerdeler met with Halder to ask him to reconsider his decision. He refused, saying that Hitler was a great leader, and "one does not rebel when face to face with the enemy". Halder's contemplation of resistance to Hitler owed more to political turf battles than it did to disagreement over the regime's racism and antisemitism.
General Erich von Manstein's bold plan for invading France through the Ardennes proved successful, and ultimately led to the fall of France. On 19 July 1940, Halder was promoted to generaloberst (colonel-general) and began to receive undisclosed monthly extralegal payments from Hitler that effectively doubled his already large wage. The payments helped ensure his loyalty to Hitler and reduced his qualms over sending millions of men to their deaths.
Halder was instrumental in the subsequent preparation and implementation of war crimes during the invasion of the Soviet Union. He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order and the Barbarossa decree without Hitler's instruction or interference. The author of the orders was Eugen Müller, who reported on his work directly to Halder. The Commissar Order required political commissars to be executed immediately when captured. Halder also insisted that a clause be added to the Barbarossa decree giving officers the right to raze whole villages and execute the inhabitants. The decree freed soldiers from any form of prosecution for war crimes committed in the East. The decree had no specific target: Soviet citizens could be killed at any time and for any reason. Until this time only the SS could kill citizens without fear of later prosecution. These orders allowed officers throughout the army to execute citizens with no repercussions. Ulrich von Hassell, discussing the orders given by Halder, said the conquered population were being controlled by despotism. He added that Germans were being turned into a type of being that previously existed only in enemy propaganda. Omer Bartov described the orders as "the barbarisation of warfare".
The offensive began on 22 June 1941 where the German forces initially met muted resistance. Halder brashly wrote in his diary on 3 July that the war was already won. Nicolaus von Below reported that this confidence was shared at Fuhrer Headquarters in the month of July. Halder's confidence was dashed with dramatic effect in early August with the arrival of new intelligence information from his Foreign Armies East. He wrote in his diary on 11 August that he had underestimated the "Russian colossus". At the start of the campaign, he had reckoned the enemy had 200 divisions, but now 360 had been counted. He added: "We destroy a dozen of them, then the Russians put another dozen in their place." In mid-August, the German advance had stalled, and at the same time, effective long-term defence was impossible so far from friendly territory. Halder wrote of the situation: "Everything that has so far been achieved is for nothing." During that summer, Hitler and the Army General Staff led by Halder had been engaged in a long and divisive dispute over strategy. By mid-September, it was clear Operation Barbarossa had failed in its central objective to quickly overcome the Soviet Union.
The Barbarossa decree and Commissar Order became a fundamental aspect of the battle for Moscow. By this time, thousands of Soviet civilians and defenceless prisoners in already occupied Russia were being murdered every day. The killings were unprecedented in the modern era and radicalised the defence of Moscow. On 5 December Operation Typhoon was over. Halder wrote in his diary there was no more strength and a withdrawal may be necessary. The withdrawal, when it came, was dictated by the Soviet army. The crisis on the battlefield prompted Hitler to remove von Brauchitsch and assume command of OKH himself.
Halder vehemently pushed for a blitzkrieg assault on Moscow and believed if the capital could be taken the war would be won. However, he did not understand the fundamental underpinnings of blitzkrieg and the impossibility of carrying out a lightning war in the vast expanse of the Soviet Union. Even if Moscow had fallen, Stalin would have moved his base of operations farther east and the war would have continued.
David Stahel writes: "The Soviet Union was nothing less than a militarised juggernaut and, while deeply wounded in Germany's 1941 campaign, there is no evidence to suggest it was about to collapse either politically or militarily." The responsibility for the failure fell on Halder, Hitler and Fedor von Bock. The war in the Soviet Union and the winter that followed was one of the worst chapters in the history of the German army—there were over one million casualties.
The Soviet army had adopted a new strategy known as the "elastic defence" that was highly uncharacteristic of prior engagements and left the German army closing in on an enemy that had already left. Confusion ensued leading to the failure of the campaign. Bock was removed as Commander of Army Group B, replaced by Maximillian von Weichs and Halder was marginalised. The relationship between Hitler and Halder became strained. Halder's diary entries became increasingly sarcastic, and Hitler mocked him. On one occasion Hitler said Halder had spent World War I in an office "sitting on that same swivel stool". On 24 September Hitler replaced Halder as Chief of Staff of the OKH with Kurt Zeitzler and retired him to the Führer Reserve.
During the trial the prosecuting attorney gained access to Halder's personal diary which detailed his formulation of the Barbarossa decree and Commissar Order so he was subsequently sent for retrial. Halder was working for the American Historical Division providing information on the Soviet Union, and the Americans refused to allow the retrial. It was dropped in September 1950.
As the Cold War progressed, the military intelligence provided by the German section of the US Army Historical Division became increasingly important to the Americans. Halder oversaw the German section of the research program which became known as the "Halder Group". His group produced over 2,500 major historical manuscripts from over 700 distinct German authors detailing World War II. Halder used the group to reinvent war-time history using truth, half-truth, distortion and lies. He set up a "control group" of trusted former Nazi officers who vetted all the manuscripts and, if necessary, required authors to change their content. Halder's deputy in the group was Adolf Heusinger who was also working for the Gehlen Organization, the United States military intelligence organisation in Germany. Halder expected to be addressed as "General" by the writing teams and behaved as their commanding officer while dealing with their manuscripts. His aim was to exonerate German army personnel of the atrocities they had committed.
Halder laid down a version of history that all the writers had to abide by. This version stated that the army was the victim of Hitler, and they had opposed him at every opportunity. The writers had to emphasise the "decent" form of war conducted by the army and blame the SS for the criminal operations. He enjoyed a privileged position, as the few historians working on World War II history in the 1950s had to obtain historical information from Halder and his group. His influence extended to newspaper editors and authors. Halder's instructions were sent down the chain of command and were recorded by former field marshal Georg von Küchler. They said: "It is German deeds, seen from the German standpoint, that are to be recorded; this will constitute a memorial to our troops", "no criticism of measures ordered by the leadership" is allowed and no one is to be "incriminated in any way," instead the achievements of the Wehrmacht were to be emphasised. The military historian Bernd Wegner, examining Halder's work, wrote: "The writing of German history on the Second World War, and in particular on the Russian front, was for over two decades, and in part up to the present day—and to a far greater extent than most people realize—the work of the defeated." Wolfram Wette wrote, "In the work of the Historical Division the traces of the war of annihilation for which the Wehrmacht leadership was responsible were covered up".
Halder sought to distance himself and the German army from Hitler, Nazism and war crimes. He claimed to have been against the Russian campaign and that he had warned Hitler against his "adventure" in the East. He omitted any mention of the Barbarossa decree that he had helped formulate or the Commissar Order which he had supported and disseminated. Halder also claimed implausibly that the invasion of the Soviet Union was a defensive measure.
The Americans were aware the manuscripts contained numerous apologia. However, they also contained intelligence that the Americans viewed as important in the event of a war between the US and the Soviet Union. Halder had coached former Nazi officers on how to make incriminating evidence disappear. Many of the officers he coached such as Heinz Guderian went on to write best-selling biographies that broadened the appeal of the apologia. Halder succeeded in his aim of rehabilitating the German officer corps, first with the US military, then widening circles of politics and finally millions of Americans.
In 1949 Halder wrote Hitler als Feldherr which was translated into English as Hitler as Commander and published in 1950. The work contains the central ideas behind the myth of the clean Wehrmacht that were subsequently reproduced in countless histories and memoirs. The book describes an idealised commander who is then compared to Hitler. The commander is noble, wise, against the war in the East and free of any guilt. Hitler alone is responsible for the evil committed; his complete immorality is contrasted with the moral behaviour of the commander who has done no wrong.
Halder's myth-making was not concentrated solely on absolving himself and the German army from war crimes; he also created two strategic and operational myths. The first is that Hitler alone was responsible for the military blunders during the invasion of the Soviet Union. The second myth is that the blitzkrieg campaign he so strongly advocated would have resulted in the capture of Moscow and won the war for Germany. The historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies writing in The Myth of the Eastern Front said "Franz Halder embodies better than any other high German officer the dramatic difference between myth and reality as it emerged after World War II".
During the 1960s, Halder became akin to a "historical icon", fielding questions from historians and general public alike. Halder died in 1972 in Aschau im Chiemgau, Bavaria.
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