Sir John W. Wheeler-Bennett tells the story of how the German Army, having survived the disaster of 1918, proceeded to dominate the political life of the German Republic, exercising a virtually paramount degree of power and influence by its very withdrawal from the active arena of politics: and of how, when later it was mistaken enough to play politics instead of controlling them, it began a descent which only ended in abject defeat - militarily, politically and spiritually. The author reveals the extent of the responsibility of the Army for bringing the Nazi regime to power, for tolerating the infamies of that regime once it had attained power, and for not taking the measures - at a time when only the Army could have taken them - to remove it from power. In this second edition a new foreword by Professor Richard Overy sets Wheeler-Bennett's classic text in a modern context.