Books: The Defeated

THE GERMAN GENERALS TALK (308 pp.) —B. H. Liddell Hart—Morrow ($4).

At the end of World War II, Captain Basil Henry Liddell Hart came into contact with many of the captured generals of the German High Command. His own reputation as a military authority—he was the foremost British advocate of defensive warfare—had been somewhat flattened out by the success of the German Panzers, but talking with the generals Captain Liddell Hart was in his element. For one thing, most of them had read his books. Once they opened up they talked well—and with the wisdom of hindsight.

There was Field Marshal Gerd von...