Talk:Franz Halder
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I've reverted the edit by 4.242.99.53 since it looks like the text was pasted in from somewhere, though a Google search doesn't show the text online anywhere. If there is evidence this was not a copyright violation, it could be replaced (in a more wikified format). Angela. 19:19, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)
[edit] East Prussia
The statement that the Germans feared interwar Poland would attack East Prussia "to regain this former Polish territory" is egregiously misleading. East Prussia never was a "Polish territory" in the modern understanding of the terminology. Although part of it - a district known to the Germans as Ermeland and the Poles as Warmia - was controlled politically by Poland for two centuries, Ermeland/Warmia was inhabited predominantly by Germans for six centuries, until the Germans were expelled after World War II and East Prussia was split between Poland and the Soviet Union.
The province of East Prussia corresponded roughly to the area inhabited prior to the 13th century by the old Prussians, a "pagan" Baltic people whose language was related to Lithuanian, and who periodically conducted warlike raids into Christian Poland. In 1226, Duke Conrad of Mazovia, the part of Poland immediately south of East Prussia, asked the Papacy to sanction a mission by the Knights of the Teutonic Order to remove the Prussian tribes as a threat.
The Order conquered the Prussians over a period of about 80 years, slaughtering many and forcibly converting the remainder, who eventually became assimilated with German settlers imported by the Order. The northern two-thirds of East Prussia eventually became wholly Germanized, while the southern part, known as Masuria, became inhabited by a mixture of Germans and Poles. This ethnography remained in place until 1945.
With the decline of the Teutonic Order in the 15th Century, followed by its secularization in 1526, East Prussia became politically divided between Poland, which annexed the still-Catholic Ermeland (Warmia), and the now-Protestant duchy of East Prussia, which was enfeoffed to the Polish Crown. After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, however, all of East Prussia became part of Brandenburg-Prussia and thus after 1871 part of Germany. By the time period of the present article on Halder, East Prussia had been a Prusso-German province for 150 years, and had never been wholly a Polish province or inhabited predominantly by Poles.
As a footnote, it may be mentioned that the inhabitants of southern East Prussia, i.e. Masuria, voted 97.8 percent in favor of remaining part of Germany in a League of Nations plebescite in 1920.
PS: What's up with the "NOT Franz Halder" cutline?
Sca 16:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Army vs. Armed Forces
It seems there is a confusion here. Was Halder Chief of the General Staff of the Army or of the Armed Forces (comprising Army, Navy and Air Foce)? This distinction is important as it concerns three successive men: Ludwig Beck (1935-1938), Franz Ritter von Halder (1938-1942), and Kurt Zeitzler (1942-1945).
[edit] picture
I removed the picture, since both the caption and the picture page itself say it is Jacob, and not Halder. Perhaps someone can add one? bikeable (talk) 22:22, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Admittedly, the last time I looked at the Halder photo was about six months before it was removed. As that photo sure looked like a very similar one that F. Halder sent to me in 1968, I recommend that the photo be re-installed. I don't have any idea as to why it would have been captioned "Jacob". -- Bill Garrison
- I added a new picture, the previous picture was indeed of General Alfred Jacob.Ingsoc 19:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
