Basil Liddell Hart
Encyclopedia
Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (31 October 1895 – 29 January 1970), usually known before his knighthood as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 soldier, military historian and leading inter-war theorist.

Life and career

Born in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 as the son of an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 Methodist minister, Liddell Hart received his formal academic education at St Paul's School in London and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Corpus Christi College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is notable as the only college founded by Cambridge townspeople: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary...

.

On the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 in 1914 he became an officer in the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and saw action on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...

. Liddell Hart's total time in combat measured some 7 weeks over a period of two years before the Army downgraded him to "Light Duties" in 1916 due to the after-effects of gassing Transferred eventually as Inspector General of Training to the British Armies in France via various appointments in the United Kingdom training volunteer battalion (4th-line units), he contributed to the post-war official manual of Infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 Training published in 1920. After the war he transferred to the Army Educational Corps
Royal Army Educational Corps
The Royal Army Educational Corps was a corps of the British Army tasked with educating and instructing personnel in a diverse range of skills...

.

In April 1918 Liddell Hart married Jessie Stone, the daughter of J. J. Stone – who had been his assistant adjutant at Stroud
Stroud
Stroud a town and civil parish in the county of Gloucestershire, England.Stroud may also refer to:*Stroud, New South Wales, Australia*Stroud, Ontario, Canada*Stroud , Gloucestershire, UK*Stroud...

 – and their son Adrian
Adrian Liddell Hart
Adrian Liddell Hart was a British soldier, Royal Navy officer, author and adventurer. He served briefly in the French Foreign Legion and portrayed it in the 1953 book Strange Company.-Early life and career:...

 was born in 1922.

Liddell Hart retired from the Army as a Captain
Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)
Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...

 in 1927 (after being placed on half pay from 1923 because of two mild heart attacks
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

 in 1921 and 1922, probably the long-term effects of his gassing), and spent the rest of his career as a writer. He worked as the Military Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1925–1935, and of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, 1935-1939. Later he began publishing military histories and biographies of great commanders who, he considered, demonstrated greatness because they illustrated the principles of good military strategy
Military strategy
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...

. His subjects included Scipio Africanus Major, William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...

 and T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB, DSO , known professionally as T. E. Lawrence, was a British Army officer renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916–18...

.

On 4 September 2006, formerly secret MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

 files revealed MI5 suspicions of leaks of the plans for the D-Day
D-Day
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar...

 landings, and that Liddell Hart had known all the details three months before the landings took place, discussed them, and had even prepared a critique, entitled Some Reflections on the Problems of Invading the Continent, which he circulated amongst political and military figures. His previous criticism of the direction of the fighting in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 raised further suspicions, even of German sympathies, although most modern biographers accept Liddell Hart's defence that he had worked out the plans for himself rather than had them leaked to him. Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

 demanded Liddell Hart's arrest, but MI5 instead placed him under surveillance, intercepting his telephone calls and letters.

Shortly after World War II Liddell Hart interviewed or debriefed many of the highest-ranking German generals and published their accounts as The Other Side of the Hill (UK Edition, 1948) and The German Generals Talk (condensed US Edition, 1948). Later Liddell Hart was able to convince the family of Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....

 to allow him to edit the surviving papers of the German Field Marshal into a form which he published in 1953 as the pseudo-memoir, The Rommel Papers.

The Queen made Liddell Hart a Knight Bachelor
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...

 in the New Year's Honours of 1966.

Principles

Liddell Hart set out following World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

  to address the causes of the war's high casualty rate. He arrived at a set of principles that he considered the basis of all good strategy, principles which, Liddell Hart claimed, were ignored by nearly all commanders in World War I.

He reduced this set of principles to a single phrase: the indirect approach
Indirect approach
The Indirect approach was a strategy described and chronicled by B. H. Liddell Hart after World War I, was Liddell Hart's attempt to find a solution to the problem of high casualty rates in conflict zones with high force to space ratios, such as the Western Front on which he served. The strategy...

; and to two fundamentals:
  • direct attacks against an enemy firmly in position almost never work and should never be attempted
  • to defeat the enemy one must first upset his equilibrium, which is not accomplished by the main attack, but must be done before the main attack can succeed.


In Liddell Hart's words,

In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there; a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance.


He also claimed that

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.


This argues that one succeeds by keeping one's enemy uncertain about the situation and one's intentions, and by delivering what he does not expect and has therefore not prepared for.

Hart explains that one should not employ a rigid strategy revolving around powerful direct attacks nor fixed defensive positions. Instead, he prefers a more fluid elastic defence, where a mobile contingent can move as necessary in order to satisfy the conditions for the indirect approach. He would later cite Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....

's Northern Africa campaign as a classic example of his theory.

He arrived at his conclusions after studying the great strategists of history (especially Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu
Sun Wu , style name Changqing , better known as Sun Tzu or Sunzi , was an ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher who is traditionally believed, and who is most likely, to have authored The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy...

, Napoleon, and Belisarius
Belisarius
Flavius Belisarius was a general of the Byzantine Empire. He was instrumental to Emperor Justinian's ambitious project of reconquering much of the Mediterranean territory of the former Western Roman Empire, which had been lost less than a century previously....

) and their victories. He believed the indirect approach formed the common element in the careers of the men he studied. He also advocated the indirect approach as a valid strategy in other fields of endeavour, such as business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

, romance, etc.

As of 2009, Liddell Hart's personal papers and library form the central collection in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives
Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives
The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College London was set up in 1964. The Centre holds the private papers of over 700 senior British defence personnel who held office since 1900. Individual collections range in size from a single file to the 1000 boxes of Captain Sir Basil...

 at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...

.

Myths and controversy surrounding Blitzkrieg

According to legend Liddell Hart saw his theories, similar to or even developed from his own, adopted by Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and used against the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and its allies during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 with the practice of Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg
For other uses of the word, see: Blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg is an anglicized word describing all-motorised force concentration of tanks, infantry, artillery, combat engineers and air power, concentrating overwhelming force at high speed to break through enemy lines, and, once the lines are broken,...

. In recent years historians have uncovered evidence that Liddell Hart distorted and falsified facts to make it appear as if his ideas were adopted. After the war Liddell Hart imposed his own perceptions, after the event, claiming that the mobile tank warfare practiced by the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...

was a result of his influence. Blitzkrieg itself is not an official doctrine and historians in recent times have come to the conclusion it did not exist as such:
It was the opposite of a doctrine. Blitzkrieg consisted of an avalanche of actions that were sorted out less by design and more by success. In hindsight - and with some help from Liddell Hart - this torrent of action was squeezed into something it never was: an operational design.


By "manipulation and contrivance, Liddell Hart distorted the actual circumstances of the Blitzkrieg formation and he obscured its origins. Through his indoctrinated idealization of an ostentatious concept he reinforced the myth of Blitzkrieg. By imposing, retrospectively, his own perceptions of mobile warfare upon the shallow concept of Blitzkrieg, he created a theoretical imbroglio that has taken 40 years to unravel". The early 1950s literature transformed Blitzkrieg into a historical military doctrine, which carried the signature of Liddell Hart and Heinz Guderian
Heinz Guderian
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II. He was a pioneer in the development of armored warfare, and was the leading proponent of tanks and mechanization in the Wehrmacht . Germany's panzer forces were raised and organized under his direction as Chief of Mobile Forces...

. The main evidence of Liddell Hart's deceit and "tendentious" report of history can be found in his letters to the German Generals Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein was a field marshal in World War II. He became one of the most prominent commanders of Germany's World War II armed forces...

 and Heinz Guderian
Heinz Guderian
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II. He was a pioneer in the development of armored warfare, and was the leading proponent of tanks and mechanization in the Wehrmacht . Germany's panzer forces were raised and organized under his direction as Chief of Mobile Forces...

, as well as relatives and associates of Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....

. Liddell Hart, in letters to Guderian, "imposed his own fabricated version of Blitzkrieg on the latter and compelled him to proclaim it as original formula".

When Guderian wrote his memoirs, the edition published in Germany differed from the one published in the United Kingdom. In the German version no mention is made of the "English" influence. The German version was published before the British copy. An explanation can be found in the correspondence between the two men. In one letter to Guderian, Liddell Hart asked the German General to give him credit for giving the Wehrmacht its tactical-operational method in 1940:
You might care to insert a remark that I emphasized the use of armoured forces for long-range operations against the opposing Army's communications, and also the proposed type of armoured division combining Panzer and Panzer-infantry units - and that these points particularly impressed you.

Guderian did as Liddell Hart requested, "hence the planted paragraph".
Historian Kenneth Macksey
Kenneth Macksey
Kenneth John Macksey was a British author and historian who specialized in military history and military biography, particularly of World War II. Macksey was commissioned in the Royal Armoured Corps and served in World War II under the command of Percy Hobart, later writing the biography of...

 found a copy of Liddell Hart's request to Guderian in the German General's papers, but not in Liddell Hart's. When Liddell Hart was questioned about this in 1968, and the discrepancy between the English and German editions of Guderian's memoirs, "he gave a conveniently unhelpful though strictly truthful reply. ('There is nothing about the matter in my file of correspondence with Guderian himself except...that I thanked him...for what he said in that additional paragraph'.)".

Biographies

  • The principal posthumous biography of Liddell Hart, Alex Danchev's Alchemist of War: The Life of Basil Liddell Hart, written with the cooperation of Liddell Hart's widow. It reveals, for example, that Liddell Hart connived at the planting of an endorsement of his own work in the English-language version of Panzer Leader, the autobiography of Heinz Guderian
    Heinz Guderian
    Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II. He was a pioneer in the development of armored warfare, and was the leading proponent of tanks and mechanization in the Wehrmacht . Germany's panzer forces were raised and organized under his direction as Chief of Mobile Forces...

    .
  • Brian Bond
    Brian Bond
    Brian James Bond is a British military historian and professor emeritus of military history at King's College London.-Early life and education:...

     wrote Liddell Hart: a study of his military thought (Cassell, 1977; Rutgers University Press, 1977), which found that Liddell Hart had an influence on generals Blomberg
    Werner von Blomberg
    Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg was a German Generalfeldmarschall, Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces until January 1938.-Early life:...

     and Reichenau
    Walther von Reichenau
    Walter von Reichenau was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II.-History:Reichenau was born in Karlsruhe to a Prussian general and joined the German Army in 1903. During World War I he served on the Western Front...

     in the early 1930s. Bond also outlined Liddell Hart's influence on certain generals in the Israel Defense Forces
    Israel Defense Forces
    The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...

    ' campaigns of 1956
    Suez Crisis
    The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...

     and 1967
    Six-Day War
    The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...

    .

In popular culture

  • In his collection, Ficciones
    Ficciones
    Ficciones is the most popular anthology of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, often considered the best introduction to his work. Ficciones should not be confused with Labyrinths, although they have much in common. Labyrinths is a separate translation of Borges' material,...

    , Jorge Luis Borges
    Jorge Luis Borges
    Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

      intertextually weaves "Captain Liddell Hart" into the fictional short story The Garden of Forking Paths
    The Garden of Forking Paths
    "The Garden of Forking Paths" is a 1941 short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It is the title story in the collection El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan , which was republished in its entirety in Ficciones in 1944...

    .

Works: Partial bibliography

  • Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon (W Blackwood and Sons, London, 1926; Biblio and Tannen, New York, 1976)
  • Great Captains Unveiled (W. Blackwood and Sons, London, 1927; Greenhill, London, 1989)
  • Reputations 10 Years After (Little, Brown, Boston, 1928)
  • The decisive wars of history (1929) (This is the first part of the later: Strategy: the indirect approach)
  • The Real War (1914–1918) (1930), later republished as A History of the World War (1914–1918).
  • Foch, the man of Orleans In two Volumes (1931), Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, England.
  • Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (Dodd, Mead and Co, New York, 1929; Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1960)
  • The Ghost of Napoleon (Yale University, New Haven, 1934)
  • The Defence of Britain (Faber and Faber, London, 1939; Greenwood, Westport, 1980)
  • The strategy of indirect approach (1941, reprinted in 1942 under the title: The way to win wars)
  • The way to win wars (1942)
  • Strategy: the indirect approach, third revised edition and further enlarged London: Faber and Faber, 1954
  • The Rommel Papers, (editor), 1953
  • The Tanks - A History of the Royal Tank Regiment and its Predecessors: Volumes I and II (Praeger, New York, 1959)
  • The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart: Volumes I and II (Cassell, London, 1965)
  • Why don't we learn from history? (Hawthorn Books, New York, 1971)
  • History of the Second World War (Putnum, New York, 1971)
  • "Foreword" to Samuel B. Griffith's Sun Tzu: the Art of War (Oxford University Press, London, 1963)
  • The Other Side of the Hill. Germany's Generals. Their Rise and Fall, with their own Account of Military Events 1939-1945, London: Cassel, 1948; enlarged and revised edition, Delhi: Army Publishers, 1965
  • The Revolution in Warfare, London: Faber and Faber, 1946
  • The Current of War, London: Hutchinson, 1941

External links

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