Thanks,
Dave Innes

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Dear Mr. Innes, 

Thanks very much for your email and for being an Armchair General reader. We really appreciate your support and thank you for taking the time to pass along your comments on Rick Armstrong’s Guderian article.

You are obviously well-read on the critiques regarding Guderian (especially Russell Hart’s recent book) and are familiar with the criticisms about his alleged post-war mythmaking (and Liddell Hart’s collusion in return for Guderian’s likely unwarranted claims regarding the influence exercised by Liddell Hart’s inter-war writings — scratching each other’s backs?). We included the "On the Other Hand … Was Guderian’s Genius Panzers or Publicity?" sidebar to make sure readers are aware that there is "another side of the story", and provided the brief rundown of several books that bring out most of the points you’ve noted in your email so that readers could delve into the criticisms in as much detail as they wish. You probably realize that it’s impossible to go into great detail on the criticisms in an article restricted to 3,500 words, yet the sidebar clearly identifies the main points of the Guderian doubters and provides readers the tools (book references) they need to pursue this as much as they want.

Liddell Hart, a fascinating and complicated man, deserves an article all his own in Armchair General at some point, and I hope to write one (possibly in 2009). My own article on Liddell Hart and his influence on the U. S. Army’s AirLand battle doctrine appeared in Military Review nearly two decades ago, so it desperately needs updating with the latest scholarship, etc., which I hope to do. That article has been used as required reading on Liddell Hart at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, in the past, which was very satisfying, but the scholarship is too far out of date now.

Thanks again for your comments and for reading Armchair General.

Jerry Morelock
Editor in Chief, Armchair General magazine

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