Books: Ghosts in Field-Grey

THE NEMESIS OF POWER: THE GERMAN ARMY IN POLITICS, 1918-1945 (829 pp.) —John W. Wheeler-Bennett—St. Martin's ($12).

Unter den Linden was alive with demonstrators. Snatches of the Internationale seeped into the Wilhelmstrasse chancellery, where Socialist Friedrich Ebert, shaky head of a shaky government, sat wondering if he was another Kerensky doomed to fall before his country's Communists. It was Nov. 9, 1918. Shipwrecked in the field, rudderless at home, Germany was drifting into anarchy.

One of Ebert's telephones rang—the private line from the headquarters of the beaten German army at Spa, 360 miles away. With vast relief, Chancellor Ebert heard the voice of...