MUCH the most interesting part of this book is that
in which General Blumentrift, Rundstedt's former Chief of Staff, writes from first-hand knowledge. His account of the German preparations to meet an Allied landing in the West and of the operations that followed June 6th, 1944 (more than half the book), sheds a good deal of light on the conduct of the war on the German side. The rest of the book is disappointing. The picture of Rundstedt the man remains in the flat and is entirely conventional. The stock formulae of German memoirs on the unpolitical attitude of the German Army, war guilt, &c., are duly repeated, while the course of Rundstedt's career and of the war up to 1942, when he was appointed Commander-in-Chief in the West, are cur- sorily recounted. Fortunately it is that part of the book in which the author writes with authority that will interest English readers most, and, taken with -the account by Rommel's Chief of Staff, General Speidel, it presents a useful and readable story of the fighting in the West as it appeared on the other side of the hill. A. B.
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