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Colonel General Halder belongs to a canny group of officers who cottoned to the Nazis when Hitler first came to power. While the Army's Prussian and Junker aristocrats stood aloof, the middle-class opportunists made friends at Brown House, successfully ignored the atrocities there and enjoyed Nazi favor long before the Prussian-ruled Reichswehr capitulated. Now they rate highly with Hitler: Jodl, of the Führer's personal staff; Dietl, who commands the extreme northern front in Russia; List, who probably now commands the central front.
Many Germans think that Colonel General Halder had a lot to do with the distribution last year of some curious documents called "Elucidations of Communiqués." Their discreetly veiled gist: "My God, let's be careful; Hitler is trying to be Napoleon." But, when Hitler displaced the Army's commander, Field Marshal von Brauchitsh, the change merely brought Halder closer to his Führer.
Up to now in World War II, the product of Franz Halder's planning has always been a thunderbolt—the lightning that withered Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France, the shaft that staggered Russia last year. Thunderbolts should strike on time. Hitler's time in Russia—his only time—is now. The world has a right to expect something terrific. If it should not strike, if it should not be terrific, then history will also be made. For then the Nazi war machine is in trouble and its days of glory are numbered.
* Information from inside Germany is nothing to brag about, but it is better than U.S.-British information from inside the U.S.S.R. The figures given here are as of early June.