Liddell Hart

Role in Rommel myth

Liddell Hart's work on the book was also self-serving: he had coaxed Rommel's widow into adding material that suggested that Rommel was influenced by Liddell Hart's theories on mechanised warfare, making Rommel his "pupil" and giving Liddell Hart credit for Rommel's dramatic successes in 1940. The controversy was described by the political scientist John Mearsheimer in his work The Weight of History. A review of Mearsheimer's work, published by the Strategic Studies Institute, pointed out that Mearsheimer "correctly takes 'The Captain' [Liddell Hart] to task for ... manipulating history".