In fact, Halder’s resistance to the Nazis went far deeper, and both he and Beck were actively involved in a plan to overthrow Hitler. Although Halder had openly criticized the Gestapo, the SS, and other elements of the Nazi Party, he was appointed to succeed Beck in September 1938. As Hitler pressed the case for an invasion of Czechoslovakia-citing the national interests of the Sudetenland-Ludwig Beck, chief of the general staff, resigned in protest. In 1936 Halder was promoted to lieutenant general and transferred to the army general staff headquarters in Berlin. In reality, that title represented command of a full-strength infantry division concealed within the German army’s order of battle in an effort to skirt the disarmament terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Halder received numerous general staff assignments, leading to his first command post in October 1934, when he was promoted to major general and made Artillery Leader VII.
Halder attended the Bavarian War Academy (1911–14), and, although he did not receive a frontline command during World War I, the static slaughter of the Western Front made him a proponent of maneuver-warfare doctrines such as those expounded by British strategists Basil Liddell Hart and J.F.C. He was commissioned a lieutenant two years later, and he soon built a reputation as an able staff officer. He began his military career in 1902 as a member of the 3rd Field Artillery Regiment of the Royal Bavarian Army. Halder was born to a military family with ties to the Bavarian army dating from the 17th century. Franz Halder, (born June 30, 1884, Würzburg, Germany-died April 2, 1972, Aschau im Chiemgau, West Germany), German general who, in spite of his personal opposition to the policies of Adolf Hitler, served as chief of the army general staff (1938–42) during the period of Germany’s greatest military victories in the early years of World War II.
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