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The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics 1918-1945

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I was privileged to know and study under Sir John Wheeler-Bennett in the last six years of his life, when he taught at New York University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He was a charming, courtly, witty and brilliant man, a thoroughly-trained historian and diplomat, who lived through the period he studied and knew most of the great figures of his time. That is a very rare combination.

Wheeler-Bennett was an insider, a member of the Duff Cooper-Winston Churchill group, who lived in Germany for a considerable part of the inter-war period, until a fortuitous combination of a trip and a warning enabled him to escape being killed during the "Night of the Long Knives." He maintained clandestine ties with some dissident members of the German General Staff through the war, and directed the Allies' organization and publication of the German Archives thereafter.

"Nemesis of Power" is not a quick read, but it is absolutely fascinating, and it still has a great deal of invaluable information more than forty-five years after its writing.

Sir John Wheeler-Bennett served the British government in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s and knew many of the key figures in this narrative personally. He barely escaped Hitler's wrath during the 1934 "Night of the Long Knives" when he was targeted for murder by an SS death squad.

Yet despite his personal involvement in these events, (or perhaps because of them), Wheeler-Bennett offers an amazing and exhaustively detailed account of the political-military nexus in Germany from the end of World War I until the end of World War II. Originally intended to be only a history of the anti-Nazi resistance within the military, Wheeler-Bennett wisely extended his scope to deal with all facets of the political-military relationship.

This is a dense book, and not one for the casual reader or student just beginning his studies on Nazi Germany or the Second World War in Europe. But for those seeking a truly detailed and informative narrative of this topic, Wheeler-Bennett's "The Nemesis of Power, The German Army in Politics, 1918-1945" is sure to prove informative.