Franz Halder - World War II

World War II

Halder participated in the strategic planning for all operations in 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 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, the generally accepted start of World War II. On 19 September, Halder noted in his diary that he had received information from then SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich that the SS (Einsatzgruppen) 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".

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 12 November 1939, an invasion that both officers believed to be doomed to failure. During a meeting with Hitler on 5 November, 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. This statement enraged Hitler, who then harshly berated Brauchitsch for incompetence. After that meeting, both Halder and Brauchitsch told Carl Friedrich Goerdeler that overthrowing Hitler was simply something that they could not do, and that he should find other officers if that was what he really wanted to do. Equally important, following heavy snowstorms, on 7 November 1939 Hitler put off "X-Day" until further notice, removing the reason that had most motivated Brauchitsch and Halder to consider overthrowing Hitler. On 23 November 1939, Goerdeler met with Halder to ask him to reconsider his attitude. 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. 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 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. Until Hitler was discredited, anyone who acted against him to end the war would be considered a "new November Criminal".
• That 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.
• 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 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 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 that 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 fall 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, hoping that 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 his refusal to remove Hitler at this point would ensure that the blood of millions would be on his hands. Halder told Goerdeler that his oath to Hitler and his belief in Germany`s inevitable victory in the war precluded his acting against the Nazi 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 19 July 1940, Halder was promoted to Generaloberst (literally "senior general" – equivalent to a U.S. 4-star 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 his involvement in the war by restricting him to developing battle plans for only the Eastern Front. On 17 March 1941, in a secret meeting with Halder and the rest of the most senior generals, Hitler stated that Germany was to disregard all of the rules of war in the East, and the war against the Soviet Union was to be a war of extermination. Halder, who was so vocal in arguing with Hitler about military matters, made no protest. On 30 March 1941, in another 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), a:

"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 of Hitler's frequent statements at the same time about the coming war of annihilation against "Judeo-Bolshevism", his generals could not have misunderstood that Hitler's call for the total destruction of the Soviet Union also comprised a call for the total destruction of the Jewish population of the Soviet Union.

In 1941, contrary to his post-war claims, Halder did not oppose the Commissar Order. Rather, he 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 declared in a directive that, in the event of guerrilla attacks, German troops were to impose "collective measures of force" by massacring entire villages. Halder's order was in direct contravention of international agreements banning collective reprisals. 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. Halder appeared on the 29 June 1942 cover of Time magazine.

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 (then finishing the siege of Sevastopol, at the other end of the front) to assist in the attack against Leningrad. Halder also thought that an attack into the Caucasus was ill-advised. Finally, because of Halder’s disagreement with Hitler’s conduct of the war, Hitler concluded that the general no longer possessed an aggressive war mentality. Following a speech in which Hitler announced his plan to find a replacement for Halder, Halder walked out stating "I am leaving", and was retired into the "Fuhrer Reserve" on 24 September 1942.

On 20 July 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 31 January 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 after the SS guards fled. Halder spent the next two years in an Allied prisoner of war camp.