Franz Halder’s writings helped popularize the "human wave" myth, a false narrative depicting the Red Army as an unthinking mass of "Asiatic hordes" winning through sheer numbers rather than operational skill. This idea originated as wartime Nazi propaganda and self-serving postwar memoirs by German generals seeking to excuse their defeat and shield the Wehrmacht's reputation.

After World War II, Halder was cheif consultant to the U.S. Army Historical Division, directing German generals to write official histories of the Eastern Front.

These memoirs consistently blamed Adolf Hitler for military failures while framing the German military as professionally superior, attributing their losses to an endless, faceless Soviet multitude