Hitler's Chief of Staff between World War Planning and Resistance is the definitive account. Colonel General Franz Halder, the successor to Ludwig Beck as Chief of Staff of the Army, played a significant role in the prehistory and the initial phase of World War II. He was responsible for the planning, preparation, and execution of all Army operations, from the invasion of Poland to the Western Campaign and "Barbarossa," the attack on the Soviet Union, as well as the Eastern Army's offensive in 1942 towards Stalingrad and the Caucasus. A key organizer of the German aggressive wars, that was one, the visible role of Halder. A dissenter, yes, at times a leading conspirator against Hitler, that was the other, hidden, never fully realized role. How did it come to pass that he ultimately ended up as a military accomplice of a dictator who led the German Army and, with it, the nation into catastrophe?.