Branch: Heer
Born: 30 June 1884, Würzburg, Germany.
Died: 2 April 1972, Aschau im Chiemgau, Bavaria.
Ranks:
Generaloberst
Decorations:
1914 Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class
1939 Clasps to the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, 27 October 1939)
Prussian Royal House Order of Hohenzollern, Knight's Cross
with Swords
Bavarian Military Merit Order, 4th Class with Crown and Swords
Saxon Albert Order, Knight 1st Class with Swords
Austro-Hungarian Military Merit Cross, 3rd Class with War
Decoration
Cross of Honor (Ehrenkreuz für Frontkämpfer)
U.S. Meritorious Civilian Service Award 1961
Commands:
Other: Personnel
Articles:
Franz Halder 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 to 1907 and the Bavarian Staff College (War Academy)
1911 to 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 6th Army (at that time commanded
by Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria). 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, equal to a U.S./British
Major general as the German Army had no brigades or Brigadier
general rank (as neither did the Red Army) 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 (rank of a corps
commander, hence equivalent to a US Army Lieutenant 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
(which the German Army considered a full General, equivalent
to a US Army four-star General). Around this date General
Wilhelm
Keitel was attempting to reorganize the entire upper leadership
of the German Army.
Wilhelm
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
Walther
von Reichenau very well, due to a personality dispute.
As
Wilhelm
Keitel recognized Halder's superior military planning
skills,
Wilhelm
Keitel met with
Adolf
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
Adolf
Hitler on how to invade Czechoslovakia with a pincer movement
by General Gerd von Rundstedt and General
Wilhelm
Ritter von Leeb. Instead,
Adolf
Hitler directed that
Walther
von 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
Adolf
Hitler, Halder in an attempt to avoid war discussed with
several other generals the idea of removing
Adolf
Hitler from power. However, on September 29 Chamberlain
gave in to
Adolf
Hitler's demands, and Halder's plot to remove
Adolf
Hitler died as peace had been preserved. Two days later,
on October 1, German troops entered the Sudetenland.
World War II
Halder participated in the strategic planning for all operations
of the first part of the war. For his role in the planning
and preparing of the invasion of Poland he received the Knight's
Cross of the Iron Cross on 27 October 1939.
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, intelligentsia, Catholic Clergy,
and the aristocracy. 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
Heydrich
Himmler.
During November 1939, Halder conspired with General
Walther
von Brauchitsch. Halder declared that he would support
Walther
von Brauchitsch if he were to try to curtail
Adolf
Hitler's plans for further expansion of the war, but Brauchitsch
declined (the so-called Zossen Conspiracy). Brauchitsch and
Halder had decided to overthrow
Adolf
Hitler after the latter had fixed X-day for the invasion
of France for November 12, 1939 an invasion that both officers
believed to be doomed to fail.During a meeting with
Adolf
Hitler on November 5,
Walther
von Brauchitsch had attempted to talk
Adolf
Hitler into putting off X-day by saying that morale in
the German Army was worse than what it was in 1918, a statement
that enraged
Adolf
Hitler who harshly berated Brauchitsch for incompetence.After
that meeting, both Halder and
Walther
von Brauchitsch told Carl Friedrich Goerdeler that overthrowing
Adolf Hitler
was simply something that they could not do, and he should
find other officers if he that was what he really wanted to.Equally
important, on November 7, 1939 following heavy snowstorms,
Adolf Hitler
put off X-Day until further notice, which removed the reason
that had most motivated
Walther
von Brauchitsch and Halder to consider overthrowing
Adolf
Hitler. On November 23, 1939, Goerdeler met with Halder
to ask him to re-consider his attitude.Halder gave Goerdeler
the following reasons why he wanted nothing to do with any
plot to overthrow
Adolf
Hitler.
That General
Erich
von Ludendorff had launched the Kaiserschlacht in March
1918, which led directly to Germany's defeat in November 1918,
yet most people in Germany still considered
Erich
von Ludendorff one of Germany's greatest heroes.By contrast,
the men who staged the November Revolution and signed the
armistice that took Germany out of a losing war were hated
all over the Reich as the November Criminals.Even if
Adolf
Hitler were to launch an invasion of France that signally
failed, most people would still support
Adolf
Hitler, just as the failure of the Kaiserschlacht had
failed to hurt
Erich
von Ludendorff reputation as it should have, so the Army
could do nothing to overthrow
Adolf
Hitler until the unlikely event that his prestige was
badly damaged.Until
Adolf
Hitler was discredited, anyone who acted against him to
end the war would be a new November Criminal.
That
Adolf Hitler
was a great leader, and there was nobody to replace him.
Most of the younger officers in the Army were extreme National
Socialists who would not join a putsch.
Adolf Hitler
deserved a last chance to deliver the German people from the
slavery of English capitalism.
Finally, one does not rebel when face to face with the enemy.
Despite all of Goerdeler's best efforts, Halder would not
change his mind.
While Halder opposed
Adolf
Hitler's expanded war plans, like all officers he had
taken a personal loyalty oath to
Adolf
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
Adolf
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
Adolf 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. In late
1939-early 1940 Halder was an opponent of Operation Weserübung,
which he believed was doomed to failure, and made certain
the OKH had nothing to do with the planning for Weserübung,
which was entirely the work of OKW and the OKM.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. In early April 1940, Halder had a secret
meeting with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, who asked him to consider
a putsch while the Phoney War was still on, while the British
and French were still open to a negotiated peace.Halder refused
Goerdeler's request. Goerdeler told Halder that too many people
had already died in the war, and this refusal to remove
Adolf
Hitler at this point would ensure that the blood of millions
would be on his hands.Halder told Goerdeler that his oath
to
Adolf Hitler
and his belief in Germany`s inevitable victory in the war
preluded his acting against the National Socialist Regime.Halder
told Goerdeler that The military situation of Germany, particularly
on account of the pact of non-aggression with Russia is such
that a breach of my oath to the Führer could not possibly
be justified, that only if Germany was faced with total defeat
would he consider breaking his oath, and that Goerdeler was
a fool to believe that World War II could be ended with a
compromise peace.
On July 19, 1940 Halder was promoted to Generaloberst literally
colonel general rank of a senior Army or Heeresgruppen commander,
used in peacetime only for the C-in-C of the German Army and
having no exact U.S. Army equivalent. In August, he began
working on Operation Barbarossa, the invasion plan for the
Soviet Union. Shortly thereafter, to curtail Halder's military-command
power,
Adolf Hitler
limited the General's involvement in the war by restricting
him to developing battle plans for only the Eastern Front.
On March 17, 1941
Adolf
Hitler in a secret meeting with Halder and the rest of
the most senior Generals stated that for Barbarossa, Germany
was to disregard all of the rules of war, and the war against
the Soviet Union was to be a war of extermination.Halder,
who was so vocal in arguing with
Adolf
Hitler about military matters, made no protest. On March
30, 1941 in a secret speech to his leading generals,
Adolf
Hitler described the sort of war he wanted Operation Barbarossa
to be according to the notes taken by Halder as:
Struggle between two ideologies. Scathing evaluation of Bolshevism,
equals antisocial criminality. Communism immense future danger...This
a fight to the finish. If we do not accept this, we shall
beat the enemy, but in thirty years we shall again confront
the Communist foe. We don't make war to preserve the enemy...Struggle
against Russia: Extermination of Bolshevik Commissars and
of the Communist intelligentsia...Commissars and GPU personnel
are criminals and must be treated as such. The struggle will
differ from that in the west. In the east harshness now means
mildness for the future.
Though General Halder's notes did not record any mention of
Jews, the German historian Andreas Hillgruber argued that
because
Adolf Hitler's
frequent statements at the same time about the coming war
of annihilation against Judeo-Bolshevism, that his generals
would have implicitly understood
Adolf
Hitler's call for the total destruction of the Soviet
Union as also comprising a call for the total destruction
of the Jewish population of the Soviet Union.
In 1941, Halder, contrary to what he was to claim after the
war did not oppose the Commissar Order, and instead welcomed
it writing that Troops must participate in the ideological
battle in the Eastern campaign to the end. As part of the
planning for Barbarossa, Halder in a directive declared that
in the event of guerilla attacks, German troops were to impose
collective measures of force by massacring entire villages.In
December 1941, Halder was not happy when
Adolf
Hitler fired von
Walther
von Brauchitsch and assumed the command of OKH himself,
but chose to stay on as the best way of ensuring that Germany
won the war.Halder appeared on the June 29, 1942 cover of
Time magazine.
During the summer of 1942 Halder told
Adolf
Hitler that he was underestimating the number of Russian
military units
Adolf
Hitler argued that the Russians were nearly broken. Furthermore,
Adolf Hitler
did not like Halder's objections to sending General
Erich
von 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
Adolf
Hitler's conduct of the war,
Adolf
Hitler decided that the General no longer possessed an
aggressive war mentality, and therefore retired Halder into
the Führer Reserve on September 24, 1942.
On July 20, 1944 a group of German army officers attempted
to assassinate
Adolf
Hitler. The following day Halder was arrested by the Gestapo,
although he was not involved in the assassination attempt.
As
Adolf 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-World War
II German army (see: Searle's Wehrmacht Generals). He died
in 1972 in Aschau im Chiemgau, Bavaria.
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