BOOKS Prophet of Blitzkrieg

By S. L. A. MARSHALL

rIANDOUR compels the statement that there are ,,.,,but two giants among the many military writers and theorists of our era. The lustre of B. H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller is global and their fame is probably more secure abroad than in England, since distance does lend en- chantment. All too little appreciated by their contemporaries is the fact that no two writers in our day have more generously helped younger hands who wished to follow after. It has always been characteristic of Liddell Hart and Fuller that they have time for people, time for voluminous correspondence, despite the hard press of other affairs. That may help explain why their discourse on the rude mechanics of war is ever illuminated by understanding of the human equation. Both men are naturalists in the most profound sense.

Liddell Hart uniquely has devoted a whole lifetime to thinking and writing about military affairs, the theory of war and the history of conflict. In America, we have no one like this. Were anyone to try it, he would go bankrupt, so feeble is the market. We are faddists. In the US during the past six years, there have been pub- lished about one hundred titles on nuclear war and more than fifty on guerrilla war, with nothing new on conventional operations, though it seems plain enough that either we shall con- tinue to solve the main problems with conven- tional forces or we shall ultimately fail altogether. So it is that American junior officers seeking a fresh view on their professional tasks must turn primarily to the writings of Englishmen.

Now that Liddell Hart's Memoirs are at hand* there is no reason not to go after them as lustily as they were written. The chief exponent of the indirect approach in strategy eschews that idea altogether. To those who opposed him, to VIPs in the Establishment, and to smaller bureau- crats who from self-seeking, fear or other im- puted mean motives jettisoned or impaired programmes which he deemed essential to the preservation of peace or Britain's survival in strength, he gives the back of his hand, clenched around a broad axe. With equal fervour he lauds his friends, or men of like mind on defence issues, such as Boney Fuller, 'Q' Martel, 'Patrick' Hobart and other exponents of armour. A whole chapter is devoted to two idols, the 'most in- teresting' men he has ever known, T. E. Lawrence and David Lloyd George, the latter being compared as a war leader with the late Sir Winston Churchill, who gets not an orchid. Let Englishmen rush; an American fears to tread.

Liddell Hart is an exceptionally sensitive man, proud of his achievements and the attendant acclaim, deadly in earnest about his work and concerned about his place in history. These are not quirks of character; they are facets of per- sonality shaped almost inevitably by his kind of career. Always there was strong contention for ideas too frequently ending in frustration. High hope for place and position as often ended in disappointment. Of worldly success, he has

* THE MEMOIRS 01: CAPTAIN B. H. LIDDELL HAta.

VOLUME I: 1914-37. (Cassell, 42s.) had his share, but the taste is not sweet. All of this comes out in the Memoirs with much gloomy reflection, pondering on what might have been, and lengthy quoting of guidelines from his early books, to document personal fore- sight. While such matter is tf the essence in memoir writing, it does raise a question about the role of the military writer and theorist in relation to the Establishment. This I have often discussed with Liddell Hart. Is he truly an innovator, or is he not rather a catalyst who may achieve reforms because he expresses con- cretely the ideas which hundreds of prbfessionals have thought upon and are fully prepared to support? I think the latter.

Another difference in view, possibly stemming from a difference in setting, Liddell Hart feels that the military writer is ever suspect by higher authority and most pillars of the Establishment. This is somewhat of a marginal handicap where any writer walks. But whereas many British com- manders have been distinguished writers, and a good book from an American general is a rarity, American service chiefs give utmost support to writers who are concerned with their problems. With some exceptions, in the US it is the civilian superior who views with suspicion.

Volume I opens with Liddell Hart's child- hood, after a flashback to his antecedents, and concludes around 1937, with the Hitler threat ascendant, Britain hardly stirring about re- armament, and Liddell Hart just moving through the door to become adviser to the late- Leslie Hore-Belisha. Yet over twenty years before Lieut- enant Liddell Hart had got to know the Western Front, so keen to see the show through that it is a wonder we have these Memoirs. After several wounds, a whiff of phosgene and some accidents, he got a blighty, all in one piece or fairly so. His writing about the trenches, his per- sonal reaction to combat, the trials of officership and lessons learned under fire, while graphic, is not the better part of this work. The tone is as if he had told the story too many times and is becoming bored with it. He went, he saw, and his life was not the same thereafter.

His desire was to stay in regular service, despite his disabilities, and he made it for quite a few years, due to higher-up appreciation of his technical writing and critical eye. Then, finally, the wheels of the system ground him out. What to do, since a man must live? He had already tinkered with sports writing—tennis, rugby mainly, though polo is the best switch for a tactician. To that field he turned in search of an honest pound. The whole press is open to the sports analyst. One paper in a thousand makes room for a military critic. But for the convenient removal through death of a few experts who sat in such chairs, Liddell Hart might never have got the niche he coveted whence his influence spread.

This book primarily is about how he matured as a writer, what circumstances furthered his creative urge, and how his early books came to be published. It is secondarily about his running quarrel with the Establishment in between the wars, its resistance to modernisation, its rejec-

lion of armoured theory and large-scale mechani- sation in particular, and its susceptibility to con- trol by types who had large ambitions and small minds. Now most military writers would agree that the Establishment is a great and formless beast, almost snowed under by innocuous paper. Its diverse currents, where the true pressure points lie, and what impulse finally makes the monster move, are sometimes hardly known to those who supposedly have it in hand. Checks and safeguards do become road blocks and institutional paralysis may be the consequence of over-elaborated pro- cess and the subdividing of decision-making. Further, any chief of staff, trapped between budget rigidity and a mounting threat to security, will think first of keeping manpower levels up and second of weapons reform. The distance between firm intentions and the completed con- tract is always rocky and often infinite.

Then there is another thing. In the 'thirties, tank enthusiasts, like air-power devotees, saw mainly their own engines. Not that their ideas were fixed; the trouble was that in contending for them they met so much resistance that they indulged in extravagant claiming. For instance, the late General Billy Mitchell wrote that armies, and navies would never again influence major war decisively. Today I would bracket with that fallacy the concept put forward twenty years ago by Liddell Hart, Fuller et al., that tank armies operating on their own, with little more than mop-up support from other arms, were the stuff of victory. Dirges were being readied for the infantry.

Even then, some of us questioned the prac- ticality of the theory. Massive armour was certain to superinduce massive mobilisation. Perfect tank country with unlimited horizon threatened to become a trap, leaving armour beached beyond reach by supporting services. The nature of the weapon seemed certain to endow cities with a fortress-like defensive value. It seemed, therefore, that the final effect of the ascendancy of armour could be that infantry would rebound in a stronger form than ever, with ultimate success deriving from an optimum balancing of the com- bat arms. Strategic managers dare not put too many eggs in one basket.

Liddell Hart, ardent as ever, contends that German success in flattening Poland, over- running France and racing to the Caucasus validates the concept. One may reply that the war went well beyond these campaigns; by the end, great sweeps by unaccompanied armour were out of fashion and success was once more the product of team play. The advance from Normandy to the Elbe provides no exception to this statement. There were spectacular armoured slashes; but the break-throughs were wrought by combined arms, including an indispensable infantry.

This quibble aside, Liddell Hart's case is that if Britain had tried in the 'thirties to build up armoured forces in keeping with her pioneering role while strengthening the Royal Air Force, the Hitler threat would have been checked.

The conversations between Hitler and his General Staff in the 1939 summer warrant no other conclusion than this. Sir Winston Churchill wrote somewhere that the great lesson of history is the incomplete control of governments over their most important affairs. To that one might add a corollary that the disdain of free peoples for national security until they become scared as hell is beyond estimate. It's the best part of what Liddell Hart is saying. Though of such warnings there are many, lasting change comes slowly, man remaining ever hopeful.