Chief of the German Army General Staff who planned Barbarossa and later forged the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht"
On 11 August 1941, his early optimism shattered, Halder wrote in his diary: 'The Russian colossus...has been underestimated by us...whenever a dozen divisions are destroyed the Russians replace them with another dozen.'
Franz Halder served as Chief of the German Army General Staff from 1938 to 1942, directing operational planning for the invasions of Poland, France, and, most consequentially, the Soviet Union. His diary entry of 31 July 1940 records Hitler's decision, delivered at the Berghof, to destroy the USSR; Halder's staff subsequently drafted the Commissar Order mandating summary execution of Red Army political officers, and the Barbarossa Decree granting German soldiers judicial immunity for atrocities in the East. After the war he served as lead consultant to the U.S. Army Historical Division, supervising over 700 former German officers in a systematic effort to suppress evidence of Wehrmacht crimes and fabricate the myth of the 'clean Wehrmacht,' a narrative that shaped Western historiography for decades.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1914–1918Served as staff officer in World War I; awarded Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class
- 1938–1942Chief of the Army General Staff (OKH); directed planning for invasions of Poland, France, the Balkans and the USSR
- 1940.07Berghof conference of 31 July: recorded Hitler's decision to destroy the USSR in his diary; Barbarossa planning commenced
- 1941Drafted Commissar Order and Barbarossa Decree, radicalising warfare on the Eastern Front
- 1942.09Dismissed as Chief of Staff after strategic failures on the Eastern Front and conflict with Hitler
- 1944–1945Arrested for connection to the 20 July plot; imprisoned at Dachau and Flossenbürg concentration camps
- 1947–1961Lead consultant to U.S. Army Historical Division; supervised 700+ former officers, constructing the 'clean Wehrmacht' myth
- 1961Awarded U.S. Meritorious Civilian Service Award, the only German decorated by both Hitler and an American president
Related historical events
- 1914–1918First World WarGerman staff officerHe served as a staff officer in the First World War.
- 1940–1944The Fall of France and the Vichy RegimeDirected planning for the invasion of FranceAs Chief of the Army General Staff, he directed operational planning for the invasion of France.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic WarGerman Army Chief of Staff who recorded the invasion decisionIn his diary entry of 31 July 1940, he recorded Hitler's decision to destroy the USSR, a foundational source for the Barbarossa planning timeline.
Entanglement with the military opposition and imprisonment, 1938–1944
Halder took over as Chief of the Army General Staff on 1 September 1938 from Ludwig Beck, who had resigned in protest at Hitler's war plans. With Beck he belonged to a circle of conspirators that had planned to depose Hitler should Britain react militarily to the Sudeten crisis of 1938, with the army commander-in-chief Walther von Brauchitsch designated to lead the military putsch; Brauchitsch, however, never unambiguously declared his willingness. The Munich Agreement removed any plausible justification for a coup, and the conspiracy, made up mainly of senior officers, collapsed. Halder withdrew from coup plans because he saw no prospect of success. The English-language account puts his position more strongly: he had initiated contacts with the conspirators and was at one point seriously committed to the plot if Hitler started a war, but that threshold was never reached, leaving him on the verge of a breakdown.
A further conspiracy against Hitler arose in the winter of 1939/1940, triggered by his plan to attack France as early as November 1939, and Halder was involved in it. He refused participation, his biographer Christian Hartmann argues, as his "second rejection" of the opposition after September 1938, and subsequently evaded all attempts to win him for a coup; in a conversation with his predecessor Beck on 16 January 1940 he said he would not be harnessed as a "handyman" for a variant of the "Kapp Putsch". On 23 November 1939 he turned down Carl Friedrich Goerdeler's appeal, saying Hitler was a great leader and that "one does not rebel when face to face with the enemy".
His attitude was bound up with political turf battles rather than with disagreement over the regime's racism and antisemitism. On 19 September 1939 he noted in his diary information from Reinhard Heydrich that the SS were beginning their campaign to "clean house" in Poland of Jews, intelligentsia, Catholic clergy and the aristocracy; Halder dismissed the crimes as aberrations and refused one general's request to pursue the SS and police perpetrators.
This past surfaced not in a war crimes trial but in the investigation of the failed 20 July 1944 assassination attempt. The Gestapo arrested Halder on 23 July 1944; he had not been involved in that plot, but the torture of the conspirators revealed the circle of 1938. He, his wife Gertrud and his eldest daughter were imprisoned at Flossenbürg concentration camp. Officially dismissed from the Wehrmacht on 31 January 1945, he was moved shortly before the war's end to Dachau and then deported by the SS to South Tyrol with other special prisoners. In early May 1945 he was liberated there by Wehrmacht soldiers under Captain Wichard von Alvensleben, and after some months in American captivity in Italy he was released in the summer of 1945. This record both constitutes and exposes the "general who resisted Hitler" image that Halder himself promoted after 1945.