1. Franz Halder was a German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942.
61 Facts About Franz Halder
1. 2.
Franz Halder had his staff draft both the Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree that allowed German soldiers to execute Soviet citizens for any reason without fear of later prosecution, leading to numerous war crimes and atrocities during the campaign.
3.
Franz Halder participated in the strategic planning for the 1939 German invasion of Poland.
4.
That summer Franz Halder engaged in a long-running and divisive dispute with Hitler over strategy.
5.
Franz Halder oversaw the writing of over 2,500 historical documents by 700 former German officers, whom he instructed to remove material detrimental to the image of the German armed forces.
6.
Franz Halder used his influence to foster a false history of the German-Soviet conflict in which the German army fought a "noble war" and which denied its war crimes.
7.
Franz Halder succeeded in his aim of exonerating the German Army: first with the US military, then amongst widening circles of politicians and eventually in American popular culture.
8.
Franz Halder was born in Wurzburg, the son of an officer.
9.
Franz Halder was educated at the Bavarian War Academy, graduating in 1914.
10.
Franz Halder then became the director of the Manoeuvres Staff of the Wehrmacht.
11.
Between October 1937 and February 1938, Franz Halder served as director of the Training Branch, on the General Staff of the Army, in Berlin.
12.
On 1 February 1938, Franz Halder was promoted to general of the Artillery.
13.
Franz Halder was approached by conservative nationalist officers about heading the envisaged coup d'etat should Hitler start a war, but he declined.
14.
Franz Halder discussed the situation informally with US diplomat Raymond Geist and indicated that the Army feared that Hitler was about to start a war with the West.
15.
Franz Halder participated in the strategic planning for the Invasion of Poland.
16.
Franz Halder's plans authorised the SS to carry out security tasks on behalf of the army that included the imprisonment or execution of Polish citizens, whether Jewish or gentile.
17.
Franz Halder was aware of The Holocaust but did not object to the murders.
18.
Franz Halder dismissed the crimes as aberrations and refused one general's request to pursue the SS and police perpetrators.
19.
On 23 November 1939 Carl Friedrich Goerdeler met with Franz Halder to ask him to reconsider his decision.
20.
Franz Halder refused, saying that Hitler was a great leader, and "one does not rebel when face to face with the enemy".
21.
On 19 July 1940, Franz Halder was promoted to generaloberst and began to receive undisclosed monthly extralegal payments from Hitler that effectively doubled his already large wage.
22.
On 30 March 1941 Franz Halder attended the conference where Hitler described the planned invasion to about 200 senior Wehrmacht officers.
23.
Franz Halder later wrote in his diary, summarising Hitler's remarks:.
24.
Franz Halder was instrumental in the subsequent preparation and implementation of war crimes during the invasion of the Soviet Union.
25.
Franz Halder had his staff draft both the Commissar Order and the Barbarossa Decree without Hitler's instruction or interference.
26.
Franz Halder insisted that a clause be added to the Barbarossa Decree giving officers the right to raze whole villages and execute the inhabitants.
27.
Ulrich von Hassell, discussing the orders given by Franz Halder, said the conquered population were being controlled by despotism.
28.
Franz Halder added that Germans were being turned into a type of being that previously existed only in enemy propaganda.
29.
Franz Halder determined the strategy for Typhoon, and it was endorsed by Hitler.
30.
Franz Halder vehemently pushed for a blitzkrieg assault on Moscow and believed if the capital could be taken the war would be won.
31.
On one occasion Hitler said Franz Halder had spent World War I in an office "sitting on that same swivel stool".
32.
Franz Halder was imprisoned at both the Flossenburg and Dachau concentration camps.
33.
Franz Halder had no complaints about the quarters or provisions and was not treated poorly.
34.
Franz Halder was in VIP company that included former French premier Leon Blum and former Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg.
35.
On 31 January 1945, Franz Halder was officially dismissed from the army.
36.
The commanders under Franz Halder including Erich Hoepner, Erich von Manstein and Walter von Reichenau gave antisemitic speeches and orders.
37.
On 5 May 1945, Franz Halder was arrested by the advancing American troops and was interned awaiting trial or release.
38.
Franz Halder was relieved not to be part of the Nuremberg trials; instead, he was tried in a German court on charges of aiding the Nazi regime.
39.
Franz Halder denied any knowledge of the regime's atrocities and claimed to be outside the decision-making process; he was found not guilty.
40.
Franz Halder was working for the American Historical Division providing information on the Soviet Union, and the Americans refused to allow the retrial.
41.
Franz Halder played a key role in creating the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
42.
Franz Halder believed America should do everything it could to secure Germany as a military ally against the Soviet Union in the growing Cold War.
43.
Franz Halder oversaw the German section of the research program which became known as the "Franz Halder Group".
44.
Franz Halder's group produced over 2,500 major historical manuscripts from over 700 distinct German authors detailing World War II.
45.
Franz Halder used the group to reinvent war-time history using truth, half-truth, distortion and lies.
46.
Franz Halder set up a "control group" of trusted former Nazi officers who vetted all the manuscripts and, if necessary, required authors to change their content.
47.
Franz Halder expected to be addressed as "General" by the writing teams and behaved as their commanding officer while dealing with their manuscripts.
48.
Franz Halder's aim was to exonerate German army personnel of the atrocities they had committed.
49.
Franz Halder laid down a version of history that all the writers had to abide by.
50.
Franz Halder enjoyed a privileged position, as the few historians working on World War II history in the 1950s had to obtain historical information from Halder and his group.
51.
Franz Halder's instructions were sent down the chain of command and were recorded by former field marshal Georg von Kuchler.
52.
Franz Halder sought to distance himself and the German army from Hitler, Nazism and war crimes.
53.
Franz Halder claimed to have been against the Russian campaign and that he had warned Hitler against his "adventure" in the East.
54.
Franz Halder omitted any mention of the Barbarossa Decree that he had helped formulate or the Commissar Order which he had supported and disseminated.
55.
Franz Halder claimed implausibly that the invasion of the Soviet Union was a defensive measure.
56.
Franz Halder had coached former Nazi officers on how to make incriminating evidence disappear.
57.
Franz Halder succeeded in his aim of rehabilitating the German officer corps, first with the US military, then widening circles of politics and finally millions of Americans.
58.
In 1949 Franz Halder wrote Hitler als Feldherr which was translated into English as Hitler as Commander and published in 1950.
59.
Franz Halder's myth-making was not concentrated solely on absolving himself and the German army from war crimes; he created two strategic and operational myths.
60.
Rear Admiral Walter Ansel who had worked with Franz Halder while researching Operation Sea Lion, the planned Invasion of England, recommended he become an associate of the United States Naval Institute.
61.
Franz Halder thus became the only German to be decorated by both Adolf Hitler and an American president.