Franz Ritter Halder (June
30, 1884 – April 2, 1972) was a German
General and the head of the Army General Staff from 1938 until September, 1942, when he
was dismissed after frequent disagreements with Adolf Hitler.
Early life
Halder was
born in Würzburg
to General
Max Halder. In 1902 he joined the 3rd
Royal Bavarian
Field
Artillery Regiment
in Munich
.
He was
promoted to Lieutenant in 1904 upon graduation from War School in Munich, then he
attended Artillery School (1906–07) and the Bavarian Staff
College
(War Academy) (1911–1914), both in
Munich.
World War I
In
1914 during
World War
I, Halder became an Ordnance Officer, serving in the
Headquarters of the Bavarian 3rd Army Corps. In August,
1915 he was promoted to
Hauptmann (Captain) on the General Staff of the
Crown Prince of Bavaria's 6th Infantry Division. During
1917 he served as a
General
Staff officer in the Headquarters of the 2nd Army, before being
transferred to the 4th Army.
Interwar era
Between
1919 and
1920
Halder served with the
Reichswehr War
Ministry Training Branch. Between
1921 and
1923 he was a Tactics Instructor with the
Wehrkreis VII in
Munich.
In March 1924 Halder was promoted to
Major and
by 1926 he served as the Director of Operations
(Oberquartiermeister of Operations: O.Qu.I.) on the General Staff
of the Wehrkreis VII in Munich. In February 1929 he was promoted to
Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant Colonel),
and from October 1929 through late 1931 he served on the Training
staff in the Reichswehr Ministry.
After
being promoted to Oberst (Colonel) in December 1931, Halder served
as the Chief of Staff, Wehrkreis Kdo VI, in Münster
(Westphalia) through early 1934.
During the
1930s the German military staff thought that
Poland
might attack the detached German province of
East Prussia. As such, they
reviewed plans as to how to defend East Prussia.
After being promoted to
Generalmajor
(Major-General—then the German Army equivalent of a US Army
Brigadier General) in October 1934, Halder served as the Commander
of the 7th Infantry Division in Munich.
Recognized as a fine staff officer and planner, in August 1936
Halder was promoted to
Generalleutnant (Lieutenant-General—then
equivalent to a US Army Major General). He then became the director
of the Manoeuvres Staff.
Shortly thereafter, he became director of the
Training Branch (Oberquartiermeister of Training, O.Qu.II), on the
General Staff of the Army, in Berlin
between
October 1937 and February 1938. During this period he
directed important training maneuvers, the largest held since the
reintroduction of
conscription in
1935.
On February 1, 1938 Halder was promoted to General der Artillerie
(equivalent to a US Army Lieutenant General). Around this date
General
Wilhelm Keitel was attempting
to reorganize the entire upper leadership of the
German Army. Keitel had asked Halder to
become Chief of the General Staff (Oberquartiermeister of
operations, training & supply; O.Qu.I ) and report to General
Walther von Reichenau.
However, Halder declined as he felt he could not work with
Reichenau very well, due to a personality dispute. As Keitel
recognized Halder's superior military planning skills, Keitel met
with Hitler and enticed him to appoint General
Walther von Brauchitsch as
commander-in-chief of the German Army. Halder then accepted
becoming Chief of the General Staff of the Army (Oberkommando des
Heeres) on September 1, 1938, and succeeded General
Ludwig Beck.
A week
later, Halder presented plans to Hitler on how to invade Czechoslovakia
with a pincer movement by General Gerd von Rundstedt and General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb.
Instead,
Hitler directed that Reichenau should make the main thrust into
Prague
. Neither plan was necessary once
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain brokered the
"
Munich Agreement", by surrendering
the Czech region of
Sudetenland to
Germany. Just before Chamberlain capitulated to Hitler, Halder — in
an attempt to avoid war — discussed with several other generals the
idea of removing Hitler from power. However, on
September 29 Chamberlain gave in to Hitler’s
demands, and Halder’s plot to remove Hitler died as peace had been
preserved. Two days later, on
October 1,
German troops entered the Sudetenland.
World War II
During the spring of 1939, Halder began participating in drafting
the invasion plans of Poland. Halder stated that he thought Polish
soldiers were stupid, and thought the war could be over within 2–3
weeks.
On September 1, 1939 Germany
invaded Poland and thereby started
World War II.
On September 19
Halder noted in his diary that he had received information from the
SS
Commander
Reinhard Heydrich that the SS was
beginning its campaign to "clean house" in Poland of Jews and all intelligentsia. This led to future
criticism by historians that Halder knew about the
killings of Jews much earlier than he later
acknowledged during post-World War II interviews, and that he
failed to object to such killings. Halder noted in his diary his
doubts "about the measures intended by Himmler".
During November 1939, Halder conspired with General Brauchitsch
that he would support Brauchitsch if he were to try to curtail
Hitler’s plans for further expansion of the war, but Brauchitsch
declined (the so-called
Zossen
Conspiracy). While Halder opposed Hitler’s expanded war plans,
like all officers he had taken a personal loyalty oath to Hitler.
Thus, he felt unable to take direct action against the Führer. At
one point, Halder thought the situation to be so desperate that he
considered shooting Hitler himself. A Colonel close to Halder noted
in his diary that "Amid tears, Halder had said for weeks that he
had a pistol in his pocket every time he went to Emil [cover name
for Hitler] in order to possibly gun him down."
At the
end of 1939, Halder oversaw development of the invasion plans of
France
, the
Low Countries, and the Balkans. Halder initially doubted that
Germany could successfully invade France.
General Erich von Manstein's bold plan for
invading France through the Ardennes Forest
proved successful, and ultimately led to the
capture of France. On July 19, 1940 Halder was promoted to
Generaloberst (Colonel-General).
In
August, he began working on Operation Barbarossa, the invasion plan
for the Soviet
Union
. Shortly thereafter, to curtail Halder’s
military-command power, Hitler limited the General's involvement in
the war by restricting him to developing battle plans for only the
Eastern Front . Halder
appeared on the June 29, 1942 cover of
Time magazine.
Franz Halder
During the summer of 1942 Halder told Hitler that he was
underestimating the number of Russian military units; Hitler argued
that the Russians were nearly broken. Furthermore, Hitler did not
like Halder’s objections to sending General Manstein’s 11th Army to
assist in the
attack against
Leningrad. Halder also had thought that the German attack into
the Caucasus was ill advised. Finally, because of Halder’s
disagreement with Hitler’s conduct of the war, Hitler decided that
the General no longer possessed an aggressive war mentality, and
therefore retired Halder into the "Fuhrer Reserve" on September 24,
1942.
On July 20, 1944 a group of German army officers
attempted to assassinate Hitler.
The following day
Halder was arrested by the Gestapo
, although he was not involved in the assassination
attempt. As Hitler considered Halder a possible
leader who could overthrow him, Halder was imprisoned at both the
Flossenbürg
and the Dachau concentration camps
. On January 31, 1945 Halder was officially
dismissed from the army.
Together with some members of the July 20 plot and other notable prisoners he was
transferred to
Tyrol, where he was liberated by US
troops on May 4 after the SS guards
fled. Halder spent the next two years in a
prisoner of war camp.
After World War II
During the 1950s, Halder worked as a war historian advisor to the
U.S. Army Historical Division. During the early 1950s Halder
advised on the redevelopment of the post-WWII German army (see:
Searle's "Wehrmacht Generals").
He died in 1972 in Aschau im
Chiemgau
, Bavaria.
Awards
Publications
Halder authored
Hitler als Feldherr in German (1949) which
was translated into English as
Hitler as War Lord (1950);
and
The Halder Diaries (1976).
The latter diaries
were later used by American
historian William
Shirer, as a major primary source
for his monumental work The Rise and Fall of the
Third Reich, along with other confidential documents and
manuscripts.
In reviewing Halder's personality, the British author
Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote: "Halder is a
military snob, believing that no amateur can ever understand the
mysteries of war." Author
Kenneth
Macksey wrote: "Quick, shrewd and witty, he was a brilliant
specialist in operational and training matters and the son of a
distinguished general. He supported Beck's resistance to Hitler,
but when it came to a crunch was no real help. Flirt as he did, in
September, with those opposed to Hitler, he toed the party line
when extreme pressure was exerted for the return of the Sudetenland
and its German nationals by the Czechs to Germany." Many see Halder
as a soldier of the older Prussian school variety. Like General
Field Marshal von Manstein, an officer "bound to duty and
oath."
For other insights regarding Halder's capabilities, see: Christian
Hartmann and Sergei Slutsch,
Franz Halder und die
Kriegsvorbereitungen im Frühjahr 1939. Eine Ansprache des
Generalstabschefs des Heeres in the journal
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (July 1997);
Christian Hartmann,
Halder: Generalstabschef Hitlers:
1939-1942, (1991), and
Hitler's Generals, edited by
Correlli Barnett.
The historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies II in
The
Myth of the Eastern Front (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
argue that, after 1945, Halder played a key role in creating a
false and mythic view of the Nazi-Soviet war in which the
Wehrmacht was largely blameless for both Germany's
military defeat and its war crimes.
Searle, Alaric.
Wehrmacht Generals, West German Society, and
the Debate on Rearmament, 1949-1959, Praeger Pub., 2003.
Notes
- Hitler Strikes Poland, pp. 22, 116 and 176
- Frieser, Karl-Heinz and John T. Greenwood, "The Blitzkrieg
Legend", Naval Institute Press, 2005, ISBN 1591142946
- Hartmann, Christian: Halder. Generalstabschef Hitlers
1938-1942, Paderborn: Schoeningh 1991, ISBN 3506774840
References
- Burdick, Charles, Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf. (1988). The Halder
War Diary 1939-1942. New York: Presidio Press. ISBN
0-89141-302-2.
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