Franz Halder (30 June 1884 – 2 April 1972) was a German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942.

He had his staff draft both the Commissar Order (issued on 6 June 1941) and the Barbarossa Decree (signed on 13 May 1941) 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.

The plans authorised the SS to carry out security tasks – on behalf of the army – that included the imprisonment or execution of Poles.

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.

[3] Halder was approached by conservative nationalist officers about heading the envisaged coup d'état should Hitler start a war, but he declined.

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.

His 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.

[10] Halder's contemplation of resistance to Hitler owed more to political turf battles than it did to disagreement over the regime's racism and antisemitism.

On 19 July 1940, Halder was promoted to generaloberst (colonel-general) and began to receive undisclosed monthly extralegal payments from Hitler that effectively doubled his already large wage.

[16] Halder also insisted that a clause be added to the Barbarossa Decree giving officers the right to raze whole villages and execute the inhabitants.

[21] Halder's confidence was dashed with dramatic effect in early August with the arrival of new intelligence information from his Foreign Armies East.

"[24] During that summer, Hitler and the Army General Staff led by Halder had been engaged in a long and divisive dispute over strategy.

[16] In early October, the German forces encircled the bulk of the Soviet armies defending the capital city in the Vyazma and Bryansk pocket.

However, he did not understand the fundamental underpinnings of blitzkrieg and the impossibility of carrying out a lightning war in the vast expanse of the Soviet Union.

[33] David Stahel writes: "The Soviet Union was nothing less than a militarised juggernaut and, while deeply wounded in Germany's 1941 campaign, there is no evidence to suggest it was about to collapse either politically or militarily.

Bock was removed as Commander of Army Group B, replaced by Maximillian von Weichs and Halder was marginalised.

[42] On 24 September Hitler replaced Halder as Chief of Staff of the OKH with Kurt Zeitzler and retired him to the Führer Reserve.

[50] During the trial the prosecuting attorney gained access to Halder's personal diary which detailed his formulation of the Barbarossa Decree and Commissar Order so he was subsequently sent for retrial.

It aimed to portray the German armed forces as apolitical and largely innocent of the crimes committed by the Nazi regime.

[53] The document was written at the suggestion of American General William J. Donovan, who later founded the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and viewed the Soviet Union as a global threat to world peace.

[54] As the Cold War progressed, the military intelligence provided by the German section of the US Army Historical Division became increasingly important to the Americans.

[56] His group produced over 2,500 major historical manuscripts from over 700 distinct German authors detailing World War II.

[52] He set up a "control group" of trusted former Nazi officers who vetted all the manuscripts and, if necessary, required authors to change their content.

[57] Halder's deputy in the group was Adolf Heusinger who was also working for the Gehlen Organization, the United States military intelligence organisation in Germany.

[59] He 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.

"[63] Wolfram Wette wrote, "In the work of the Historical Division the traces of the war of annihilation for which the Wehrmacht leadership was responsible were covered up".

[57] 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.

The work contains the central ideas behind the myth of the clean Wehrmacht that were subsequently reproduced in countless histories and memoirs.

[68] Halder's myth-making was not concentrated solely on absolving himself and the German army from war crimes; he also created two strategic and operational myths.

Rear Admiral Walter Ansel who had worked with Halder while researching Operation Sea Lion, the planned Invasion of England, recommended he become an associate of the United States Naval Institute.