The British Sun Tzu: Liddell Hart

The dislocation of the enemy should be the prelude to defeat, not to utter destruction.

Captain B. H. Liddell Hart

“The Captain who teaches Generals.” — John F. Kennedy

B. H. Liddell Hart, known as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart for most of his career, was a prominent figure in the realm of military strategy and history.

Born on October 31, 1895, in Paris, France, and passing away on January 29, 1970, in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, Liddell Hart’s life and work left a lasting impact on military thought and practice.

World War I marked the beginning of Liddell Hart’s military career. He volunteered for the British Army upon the outbreak of the war in 1914 and became an officer in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Despite his brief front-line experiences, he suffered injuries and gas exposure that would impact him profoundly, shaping his perspective on warfare and strategy.

Indirect Approach

Victory often emerges as the result of an enemy defeating itself.

Following World War I, Liddell Hart continued his military career and wrote extensively on military history. He challenged the prevailing belief in frontal assaults, arguing that such tactics were costly and ineffective, as evidenced by the heavy casualties in World War I. He advocated for an “indirect approach” and the use of fast-moving armored formations.

Liddell Hart’s writings significantly influenced military thought, even reaching German strategists in the lead-up to World War II. However, he faced accusations of exaggerating his role in developing blitzkrieg tactics and promoting the “clean Wehrmacht” myth during the Cold War era.

In 1924, Liddell Hart retired from the Army due to health issues, including two mild heart attacks related to his wartime gas exposure. He then embarked on a career as a theorist and writer for prominent publications like The Daily Telegraph and The Times.

One of Liddell Hart’s critical contributions to military thought was the concept of the “indirect approach.” He believed that attacking where the enemy least expects it, instead of a frontal assault, offered a better chance of success. Historical examples, such as the Normandy landings, supported his theory.

In 1954, Liddell Hart published his most influential work, “Strategy,” which delved into the historical study of the indirect approach. His ideas had a lasting impact on the development of British maneuver warfare doctrine.

Key Themes of Liddell Hart:

1. The dislocation of the enemy should be the prelude to defeat, not to utter destruction.
2. Negotiate an end to unprofitable wars.
3. The methods of the indirect approach are better suited to democracy.
4. Military power relies on economic endurance. Defeating an enemy by beating him economically incurs no risk.
5. Implicitly, war is an activity between states. Adaptability is the law that governs survival.
6. The notion of “rational pacifism;” A strategist should think in terms of paralyzing, not of killing.
7. Victory often emerges as the result of an enemy defeating itself.
8. Victory breeds complacency and fosters orthodoxy, leading to defeat in the next war.
9. To be practical, any plan must consider the enemy’s power to frustrate; the best chance of overcoming such obstruction is to have a plan that can be easily varied.
10. The downfall of civilized states tends to come not from the direct assaults of foes but from internal decay combined with the consequences of exhaustion in war.

List of key works:

• Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon (originally: A Greater than Napoleon: Scipio Africanus; W Blackwood and Sons, London, 1926; Biblio and Tannen, New York, 1976)
• Lawn Tennis Masters Unveiled (Arrowsmith, London, 1926)
• Great Captains Unveiled (W. Blackwood and Sons, London, 1927; Greenhill, London, 1989)
• Reputations 10 Years After (Little, Brown, Boston, 1928)[73]
• Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (Dodd, Mead and Co, New York, 1929; Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1960)
• 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.
• The Ghost of Napoleon (Yale University, New Haven, 1934)
• T.E. Lawrence in Arabia and After (Jonathan Cape, London, 1934 — online)
• World War I in Outline (1936)
• The Defence of Britain (Faber and Faber, London, Fall 1939 (after the German war against Poland); Greenwood, Westport, 1980). German edition: Die Verteidigung Gross-Britanniens. Zürich 1939.
• The Current of War, London: Hutchinson, 1941
• The Strategy of Indirect Approach (1941, reprinted in 1942 under the title: The Way to Win Wars)
• The Way to Win Wars (1942)
• Why Don’t We Learn From History? London: George Allen and Unwin, 1944
• The Revolution in Warfare, London: Faber and Faber, 1946
• The Other Side of the Hill: Germany’s Generals. Their Rise and Fall, London: Cassel, 1948; enlarged and revised edition, Delhi: Army Publishers, 1965
• The Letters of Private Wheeler 1809–1828, (editor), London: Michael Joseph, 1951
• “Foreword” to Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Leader (New York: Da Capo., 1952)
• Strategy, second revised edition, London: Faber and Faber, 1954, 1967.
• 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)
• “Foreword” to Samuel B. Griffith’s Sun Tzu: the Art of War (Oxford University Press, London, 1963)
• The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart: Volumes I and II (Cassell, London, 1965)
• History of the Second World War (London, Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1970)
• The German Generals Talk: Startling Revelations from Hitler’s High Command (1971 ed.). William Morrow. 1948. ISBN 9780688060121.