Liddell Hart and the Mearsheimer Critique: A "Pupil's" Retrospective

The thesis of this book is that Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the well-known military historian, critic, and theorist, manipulated both the record of his own errant views on the basic military questions of the 1930s and the testimonials of noted German generals of World War II. He did this, according to Mearsheimer, in order to resurrect a reputation lost when the defensive strategy he had advocated failed, and blitzkrieg--the quintessential embodiment of the offense--overwhelmed the strength of the defensive in modern war. In some 200 provocative pages, Professor Mearsheimer argues that Liddell Hart failed to appreciate the importance of deep strategic penetration and in fact developed his strategy of indirect approach to provide an alternative to blitzkrieg. Only after World War II did he resurrect the indirect approach by identifying it with blitzkrieg. Mearsheimer contends that in the years before World War II, Liddell Hart shrank from supporting a foreign policy that relied on military force to confront the Third Reich, and that later he distorted the historical record to make it appear he opposed, rather than supported, the political decisions not to prepare for the coming war. Mearsheimer portrays how Liddell Hart resurrected his lost reputation by maneuvering publishers and German generals Rommel and Guderian in order to claim them as successful students of his prewar theories. The first issue-the origin of blitzkrieg-is easily dismissed.