The military historian Basil Liddell Hart. (Other portraits at the National Portrait Gallery)

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 military historian who supposedly greatly influenced the development of armoured warfare in the 20th century, and strategic theory. He used "Liddell" (his mother's maiden name) as part of his surname from 1921. Image File history File links LiddelHart. ... Image File history File links LiddelHart. ... October 31 is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 61 days remaining. ... 1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ... January 29 is the 29th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1970 calendar). ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... It has been suggested that Mechanized warfare be merged into this article or section. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...

Life

Liddell Hart was born in Paris, the son of a Methodist minister, and was educated at Cambridge University. He joined the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country France Région ÃŽle-de-France Département Paris (75) Subdivisions 20 arrondissements Mayor Bertrand Delanoë  (PS) (since 2001) City Statistics Land... The Methodist movement is a group of denominations of Protestant Christianity. ... The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, with one of the most selective sets of entry requirements in the United Kingdom. ... The Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry was a regiment of the British Army. ...

Liddell Hart served as an officer in the British Army during World War I, where he witnessed trench warfare. He served at the battle of the Somme and was gassed and decorated for bravery. The British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. ... Combatants Allied Powers: British Empire France Italy Russia United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary Bulgaria Germany Ottoman Empire Commanders Ferdinand Foch Georges Clemenceau Joseph Joffre Victor Emmanuel III Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Nicholas II Aleksei Brusilov Herbert Henry Asquith Douglas Haig John Jellicoe Woodrow Wilson John Pershing Wilhelm II Paul... Trench warfare is a form of war in which both opposing armies have static lines of defence. ... Chemical warfare is warfare (and associated military operations) using the toxic properties of chemical substances to kill, injure or incapacitate an enemy. ...

He retired from the Army Educational Corps as a Captain in 1927 (after being placed on half pay from 1923 because of two mild heart attacks in 1921 and 1922, probably the long-term effects of his gassing), and spent the rest of his career as a writer. His continued use of his rank angered the military establishment, since it was considered bad form for an officer junior to Major to continue to use his rank in civilian life. He was initially a military and tennis analyst for various British newspapers (Daily Telegraph and The Times) which he kept up until the Second World War. Later he began publishing military histories and biographies of great commanders who, he thought, were great because they illustrated the principles of good strategy. Among these were Scipio Africanus Major, William Tecumseh Sherman, and T.E. Lawrence. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... This article concerns the rank and title of Captain. ... A myocardial infarction occurs when an atherosclerotic plaque slowly builds up in the inner lining of a coronary artery and then suddenly ruptures, totally occluding the artery and preventing blood flow downstream. ... Major is a military rank the use of which varies according to country. ... This article deals with The Daily Telegraph in Britain, see The Daily Telegraph (Australia) for the Australian publication The Daily Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper founded in 1855. ... The Times is a national newspaper published daily in the United Kingdom since 1785, and under its current name since 1788. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Scipio Africanus. ... William Tecumseh Sherman (February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. ... Thomas Edward Lawrence (August 16, 1888 – May 19, 1935), also known as Lawrence of Arabia, and (apparently, among his Arab allies) Aurens or El Aurens, became famous for his role as a British liaison officer during the Arab Revolt of 1916–1918. ...

On 4 September 2006, formerly secret MI5 files revealed MI5 suspicions that plans for the D-Day landings had been leaked, 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 how the war had been fought raised further suspicions, even of German sympathies, although most modern biographers accept Hart's defence that he had worked out the plans for himself rather than had them leaked to him. Winston Churchill demanded Liddell Hart's arrest, but MI5 instead placed him under surveillance, intercepting his telephone calls and letters.^[1] September 4 is the 247th day of the year (248th in leap years). ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Current MI5 headquarters in Thames House, London The Security Service, usually called MI5, is the British counter-intelligence and security agency. ... Land on Normandy In military parlance, D-Day is a term often used to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. ... ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ...

Shortly after World War II he interviewed/debriefed many of the highest ranking German generals and published their accounts as The Other Side of the Hill (UK Edition) and German Generals Talk (condensed US Edition). Later Hart was able to convince the Rommel family to allow him to edit the surviving papers of the German Field Marshal into a form which was published in 1953 as the pseudo-memoir, The Rommel Papers.

Liddell Hart was knighted in the New Year's Honours of 1966. The dignity of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. ...

Theories

Liddell Hart began publishing his theories during the 1920s in the popular press. Paradoxically, Liddell Hart saw theories similar to or even developed from his own adopted by Germany and used against the United Kingdom and its allies during World War II with the practice of Blitzkrieg. Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead... One of the defining characteristics of what is commonly known as Blitzkrieg is close co-operation between infantry and tanks. ...

He set out in the years following the First World War to discover why the casualty rate had been so terribly high, and arrived at a set of principles that he considered the basis of all good strategy; principles which, he claimed, were ignored by nearly all commanders in World War I. Military stratagem in the Battle of Waterloo. ... Combatants Allied Powers: British Empire France Italy Russia United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary Bulgaria Germany Ottoman Empire Commanders Ferdinand Foch Georges Clemenceau Joseph Joffre Victor Emmanuel III Luigi Cadorna Armando Diaz Nicholas II Aleksei Brusilov Herbert Henry Asquith Douglas Haig John Jellicoe Woodrow Wilson John Pershing Wilhelm II Paul...

He reduced this set of principles to a single phrase, the indirect approach, and two fundamentals: The Indirect approach was a strategy developed by Basil Liddell Hart after World War I. His strategy called for armies to advance along the line of least expectation against the least resistance. ...

• 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 is 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's Northern Africa campaign as a classical example of his theory. Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel ( ) (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944) was one of the most distinguished German field marshals of World War II. He was the commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps and also became known by the nickname The Desert Fox (Wüstenfuchs,  ) for the skillful military campaigns he...

He arrived at his conclusions after studying the great strategists of history (especially Sun Tzu, Napoleon, and Belisarius) and their victories. He believed the indirect approach was the common element in the men he studied. He also claimed the indirect approach was a valid strategy in other fields of endeavor, such as business, romance, etc. Sun Tzu (孫子 also commonly written in pinyin: Sūn Zǐ) was the author of The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy (for the most part not dealing directly with tactics). ... For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... Belisarius is thought to be the figure to the right of Emperor Justinian I in the mosaic in the Church of San Vitale Ravenna that celebrates the reconquest of Italy, performed by the Byzantine army under the skillful leadership of Belisarius himself. ...

Liddell Hart's personal library is now ensconced within the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College London.^[2] The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (LHCMA) at Kings College London was set up in 1964. ... Kings College London is the largest college of the University of London and one of a number of university institutions founded in England in the early 19th century. ...

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, is startling for its candor. Among its revelations are 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. Although Guderian greatly admired Liddell Hart's work, and avidly read his newspaper columns, the German language edition of Guderian's autobiography gives Liddell Hart's work no greater preference than that of his contemporary, J.F.C. Fuller whom Guderian also admired. Heinz Wilhelm Guderian (ca. ... J.F.C. Fuller (September 1, 1878 – February 10, 1966), full name John Frederick Charles Fuller, was a British Major General, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising principles of warfare. ...

Partial bibliography

• B. H. Liddell Hart, A Greater Than Napoleon: Scipio Africanus (W Blackwood and Sons, London, 1926; Biblio and Tannen, New York, 1976)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, Great Captains Unveiled (W. Blackwood and Sons, London, 1927; Greenhill, London, 1989)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, Reputations 10 Years After (Little, Brown, Boston, 1928)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, The decisive wars of history (1929) (This is the first part of the later: Strategy: the indirect approach)
  • B. H. Liddell Hart, The Real War (1914-1918) (1930), later replublished as A History of the World War (1914-1918).
• B. H. Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (Dodd, Mead and Co, New York, 1929; Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1960)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, The Ghost of Napoleon (Yale University, New Haven, 1934)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, The Defence of Britain (Faber and Faber, London, 1939; Greenwood, Westport, 1980)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, The strategy of indirect approach (1941, reprinted in 1942 under the title: The way to win wars)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, The way to win wars (1942)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: the indirect approach, second revised edition
• B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: the indirect approach, third revised edition and further enlarged London: Faber and Faber, reprint: Dehra Dun, India: Natraj Publishers, 2003
• B. H. Liddell Hart, The Tanks - A History of the Royal Tank Regiment and its Predecessors: Volumes I and II (Praeger, New York, 1959)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart: Volumes I and II (Cassell, London, 1965)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, Why don't we learn from history? (Hawthorn Books, New York, 1971)
• B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (Putnum, New York, 1971)

Further reading

• Brian Bond, Liddell Hart: A Study of his Military Thought (Cassell, London, 1977)
• Alex Danchev, Alchemist of War: The Life of Basil Liddell Hart
• Danchev, Alex. "Liddell Hart and the Indirect Approach", The Journal of Military History, Vol. 63, No. 2. (1999), pp. 313–337.
• John Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History

Professor John J. Mearsheimer John J. Mearsheimer (born December 1947) is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. ...

References

1. ^ "Files reveal leaked D-Day plans" BBC News [1]; "Army writer nearly revealed plans of D-Day", The Times
2. ^ Lidell Hart archive, KCL

Liddell Hart archive, KCL