Franz Halder

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Franz Halder
Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1970-052-08, Franz Halder.jpg
Franz Halder
Born 30 June 1884
Würzburg, Germany
Died 2 April 1972 (aged 87)
Aschau im Chiemgau, Bavaria
Allegiance German Empire German Empire (to 1918)
Germany Weimar Republic (to 1933)
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany
Years of service 1902–1945
Rank Generaloberst
Battles/wars World War I
World War II
Awards Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes

Franz 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.

Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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. 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 invasion plan was necessary once Mussolini persuaded Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain back to the bargaining table in Munich. In the run up to the war, Halder — in an attempt to avoid what they were certain would be a catastrophic war for Germany — was the main actor in a plot with several other generals in the Wehrmacht and Abwehr to remove Hitler from power. The plotters had even put it all in place, ready to go at Halder's command, if Hitler gave the order to proceed with the planned invasion. The plot included a plan to kill Hitler and say "he died trying to escape" (they all agreed he would be too dangerous to keep alive).[1] However, on September 29 Chamberlain capitulated to Hitler’s demands, and the British and French surrendered the largely German populated Czech region of Sudetenland to Germany, with Hitler promising to stop there. (Which promise Hitler broke the following spring.) Halder put an immediate stop to the coup attempt, only hours away from reality, as peace had been preserved - for the moment. There would be no war with France and England over the Sudetenland. Hitler's popularity reached an all-time high. A coup then was not possible, nor desirable. The catastrophe Halder and the other generals feared was averted. On October 1, German troops entered the Sudetenland.

[edit] 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 Himmler".[2]

During November 1939, Halder conspired with General Brauchitsch. Halder declared 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). Brauchitsch and Halder had decided to overthrow 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.[3] During a meeting with Hitler on November 5, Brauchitsch had attempted to talk 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 Hitler who harshly berated Brauchitsch for incompetence.[4] After that meeting, both Halder and Brauchitsch told Carl Friedrich Goerdeler that overthrowing Hitler was simply something that they could not do, and he should find other officers if that was what he really wanted to do. [5] Equally important, on November 7, 1939 following heavy snowstorms, Hitler put off "X-Day" until further notice, which removed the reason that had most motivated Brauchitsch and Halder to consider overthrowing Hitler.[6] On November 23, 1939, Goerdeler met with Halder to ask him to re-consider his attitude.[7] Halder gave Goerdeler the following reasons why he wanted nothing to do with any plot to overthrow Hitler:

  • That General Erich 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 Ludendorff one of Germany's greatest heroes.[8] 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".[9] Even if Hitler were to launch an invasion of France that signally failed, most people would still support Hitler, just as the failure of the Kaiserschlacht had failed to hurt Ludendorff's reputation as it should have, so the Army could do nothing to overthrow Hitler until the unlikely event that his prestige was badly damaged.[10] Until Hitler was discredited, anyone who acted against him to end the war would be a "new November Criminal".
  • That Hitler was a great leader, and there was nobody to replace him.[11]
  • Most of the younger officers in the Army were extreme National Socialists who would not join a putsch.[12]
  • Hitler deserved "a last chance to deliver the German people from the slavery of English capitalism".[13]
  • Finally, "one does not rebel when face to face with the enemy".[14]

Despite all of Goerdeler's best efforts, Halder would not change his mind.[15]

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.[16] 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."[16]

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.[17] 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.[18] Halder refused Goerdeler's request.[19] Goerdeler told Halder that too many people had already died in the war, and this refusal to remove Hitler at this point would ensure that the blood of millions would be on his hands.[19] Halder told Goerdeler that his oath to Hitler and his belief in Germany`s inevitable victory in the war preluded his acting against the Nazi regime.[19] 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.[19]

On July 19, 1940 Halder was promoted to Generaloberst (literally "colonel general" – rank of a senior Army or Army Group 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, Hitler limited the General's involvement in the war by restricting him to developing battle plans for only the Eastern Front[citation needed]. On March 17, 1941 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.[20] Halder, who was so vocal in arguing with Hitler about military matters, made no protest.[21] On March 30, 1941 in a secret speech to his leading generals, 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."[22]

Though General Halder's notes did not record any mention of Jews, the German historian Andreas Hillgruber argued that because Hitler's frequent statements at the same time about the coming war of annihilation against "Judeo-Bolshevism", that his generals would have implicitly understood 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.[22]

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".[23] 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.[24] In December 1941, Halder was not happy when Hitler fired 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.[19] 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. Halder's wife Gertrud chose to and was allowed to accompany her husband into imprisonment. On January 31, 1945 Halder was officially dismissed from the army. In the last days of April 1945, together with some members of families of the July 20 plot and other 'special' prisoners he was transferred to the South Tyrol, where the entire group of nearly 140 prisoners was liberated from their SS guards by members of the Wehrmacht, and then turned over to US troops on May 4 [25] after the SS guards fled. Halder spent the next two years in an Allied prisoner of war camp.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Publications

Halder wrote 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.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Joachim Fest, Plotting Hitler's Death, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996), 91.
  2. ^ Hitler Strikes Poland, pp. 22, 116 and 176
  3. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 pages 470-472
  4. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 471.
  5. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 pages 471-472.
  6. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 472.
  7. ^ Wheeler-Bennett page 474.
  8. ^ Wheeler-Bennett page 474.
  9. ^ Wheeler-Bennett page 474.
  10. ^ Wheeler-Bennett page 474.
  11. ^ Wheeler-Bennett page 474.
  12. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 474.
  13. ^ Wheeler-Bennett page 474.
  14. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 474.
  15. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 474.
  16. ^ a b Frieser, Karl-Heinz and John T. Greenwood, "The Blitzkrieg Legend", Naval Institute Press, 2005, ISBN 1591142946
  17. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 494.
  18. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 493.
  19. ^ a b c d e Wheeler-Bennett, page 493.
  20. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 pages 512–513.
  21. ^ Wheeler-Bennett, John The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967 page 513.
  22. ^ a b Hillgruber 1989, pp 95–96.
  23. ^ Förster, Jürgen "The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union", page 502
  24. ^ Förster, Jürgen "The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union", page 501
  25. ^ Hartmann, Christian: Halder. Generalstabschef Hitlers 1938–1942, Paderborn: Schoeningh 1991, ISBN 3506774840
  26. ^ "The Private War Journal of Generaloberst Franz Halder – Summary Guide". Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/summary/xp70-001.shtml. Retrieved 2007-07-03. 
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Preceded by
Ludwig Beck		 Chief of the Army General Staff
September 1938 – September 1942		 Succeeded by
Kurt Zeitzler
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Henry Arnold		 Cover of Time Magazine
29 June 1942		 Succeeded by
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