I just read “Liddell Hart and the Weight of History,” a book from 1988 by the political scientist John Mearsheimer. I’d seen this book referred to in a review of another book by the same author, and I was intrigued. I read a bunch of B. H. Liddell Hart’s books many years ago—I suspect I’m unduly influenced by books that sold a lot of copies way back when and ended up cluttering used bookstores and college libraries—so I got Mearsheimer’s book on Liddell Hart out of the library. The book was readable—I’d say much more than I’d’ve expected given the narrowness of the topic—but, then again, it’s a topic that interests me, so maybe that’s why I found it so easy to read.

Mearsheimer’s book has three themes:

– The theory and practice of tank warfare in the western front in the two world wars.

– The ups and downs of academic/literary/policy reputation.

– The specific steps that Liddell Hart took after World War II to distort the record and make himself look good.

It was all interesting:

– In reading Mearsheimer’s discussion of tanks on the western front, and the theory of their use, I realized that I hadn’t really understood this stuff at all when I’d read it in history books.

– I’ve been interested in reputation management ever since reading John Rodden’s classic Orwell study, The Politics of Literary Reputation, and the Liddell Hart story added a new twist because the reputation here was happening at the two levels of academia and policy. I guess this happens a lot with defense studies.

– Liddell Hart put a lot of effort into rewriting his own history! He got a paragraph inserted into the English translation of one of the German generals’ memoirs in order to create the impression that the 1940 blitzkrieg had been motivated by Liddell Hart’s writings. (That would seem like an occasion for embarrassment or worse, not pride, but it fit into the argument that Liddell Hart was a prophet who was unrecognized in his own land.) And lots more along the same lines. It seems that Liddell Hart and the German generals propped up each others’ reputation. It’s a story worth reading. Mearsheimer writes:

The Liddell Hart case is disturbing . . . He was able in the 1930s to make deeply flawed arguments to a vast audience without being seriously challenged. . . . Liddell Hart sufferd for the absence of criticism, which permitted him to make questionable arguments and then repeat them over and over. Formidable critics might have forced him to qualify and sharpen his ideas, perhaps even change them.

I also agree with Mearsheimer when he recommends that we “hold people accountable for arguments they put forward in key policy debates.” That’s why I keep screaming at the Nudgelords and the overconfident law professors who go around trying to tell us all how to live our lives. OK, let me clarify this. These dudes are public intellectuals; it’s fine for them to give us their take on how we should live our lives. But when they get things wrong, we should hold them accountable. Liddell Hart’s mistakes were much more consequential than those of these silly nudgelords, but I think the same principles apply.

That said, I have no real interest in reading anything else about Liddell Hart. His story was interesting for what it is, but I feel like now I have the whole story.

Logic

The other thing I liked about Mearsheimer’s book is just how logical it is. There are many examples; here’s one, from chapter 8, where he talks about the techniques Liddell Hart used to rescue his reputation. Mearsheimer writes:

First, he maintained he was unable for sound security reasons to reveal in his public writings the full truth about Allied weaknesses and German strengths in the late 1930s. He claims in his Memoirs, for example , that he wrote in a “guarded way . . . because I knew that what I wrote would receive close attention in Germany, so that exposure of any weaknesses that were not obvious might tend to precipitate the dangers that I foresaw.” There is no evidence to support that claim. Had he known of these weaknesses, he could have communicated his insights privately to government officials, but there is no evidence he did. Furthermore, this claim contradicts his often-repeated assertion that he clearly pointed out Allied deficiencies before the debacle but no responsible policy makers listened.

I just loooove this passage, and others like it throughout the book. It’s a clear, logical argument anchored in archival research.

In a world of big ideas, hot takes, flat-out lies, and people “just asking questions,” it’s so refreshing to see this sort of clear thinking.

Of course, I haven’t done the archival research myself, so I’m pretty much relying on Mearsheimer’s persuasiveness, along with a general impression that if he’d screwed this one up, someone would’ve pointed it out by now.

P.S. Here’s a review I found online that puts Mearsheimer’s book in perspective.

P.P.S. Years later, Daniel Drezner characterized a different book by Mearsheimer as “piss-poor, monocausal social science.” That’s not relevant to the present discussion; I just think Drezner’s phrase is great (however well or poorly it applies to that particular case), and I’ll take any opportunity to repeat it.