Strategy

Captain B. H. Liddell Hart

• Publisher: Tannenberg Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786259738
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This is the classic book on war as we know it. During his long life, Basil H. Liddell Hart was considered one of the world's foremost military thinkers—a man generally regarded as the "Clausewitz of the 20th century." Strategy is a seminal work of military history and theory, a perfect companion to Sun-tzu's The Art of War and Carl von Clausewitz's On War.Liddell Hart stressed movement, flexibility, and surprise. He saw that in most military campaigns dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance is prelude to victory. This dislocation results from a strategic indirect approach. Reflect for a moment on the results of direct confrontation (trench war in WWI) versus indirect dislocation (Blitzkrieg in WWII). Liddell Hart is also tonic for business and political planning: just change the vocabulary and his concepts fit.-Print ed."The most important book by one of the outstanding military authorities of our time."—Library Journal

PART I—STRATEGY FROM FIFTH CENTURY B.C. TO TWENTIETH CENTURY A.D.

CHAPTER I—HISTORY AS PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE

Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.’ This saying, quoted of Bismarck, but by no means original to him, has a special bearing on military questions. Unlike those who follow other professions, the ‘regular’ soldier cannot regularly practise his profession. Indeed, it might even be argued that in a literal sense the profession of arms is not a profession at all, but merely ‘casual employment’ and, paradoxically, that it ceased to be a profession when mercenary troops who were employed and paid for the purpose of a war were replaced by standing armies which continued to be paid when there was no war.

If the argument that strictly there is no ‘profession of arms’ will not hold good in most armies today on the score of work, it is inevitably strengthened on the score of practice because wars have become fewer, though bigger, compared with earlier times. For even the best of peace training is more ‘theoretical’ than ‘practical’ experience.

But Bismarck’s aphorism throws a different and more encouraging light on the problem. It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect and that, of the two, indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider. Even in the most active career, especially a soldier’s career, the scope and possibilities of direct experience are extremely limited. In contrast to the military, the medical profession has incessant practice. Yet the great advances in medicine and surgery have been due more to the scientific thinker and research worker than to the practitioner.

Direct experience is inherently too limited to form an adequate foundation either for theory or for application. At the best it produces an atmosphere that is of value in drying and hardening the structure of thought. The greater value of indirect experience lies in its greater variety and extent. ‘History is universal experience’ the experience not of another, but of many others under manifold conditions.

Here is the rational justification for military history as the basis of military education its preponderant practical value in the training and mental development of a soldier. But the benefit depends, as with all experience, on its breadth: on how closely it approaches the definition quoted above; and on the method of studying it.

Soldiers universally concede the general truth of Napoleon’s much-quoted dictum that in war ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one’. The actual arithmetical proportion may be worthless, for morale is apt to decline if weapons are inadequate, and the strongest will is of little use if it is inside a dead body. But although the moral and physical factors are inseparable and indivisible, the saying gains its enduring value because it expresses the idea of the predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation.

This realization affects the whole question of the study of military history for practical use. The method in recent generations has been to select one or two campaigns, and to study them exhaustively as a means of professional training and as the foundation of military theory. But with such a limited basis the continual changes in military means from war to war carry the danger that our outlook will be narrow and the lessons fallacious. In the physical sphere, the one constant factor is that means and conditions are invariably inconstant.

In contrast, human nature varies but slightly in its reaction to danger. Some men by heredity, by environment, or by training may be less sensitive than others, but the difference is one of degree, not fundamental. The more localized the situation, and our study, the more disconcerting and less calculable is such a difference of degree. It may prevent any exact calculation of the resistance which men will offer in any situation, but it does not impair the judgement that they will offer less if taken by surprise than if they are on the alert; less if they are weary and hungry than if they are fresh and well fed. The broader the psychological survey the better foundation it affords for deductions.

The predominance of the psychological over the physical, and its greater constancy, point to the conclusion that the foundation of any theory of war should be as broad as possible. An intensive study of one campaign unless based on an extensive knowledge of the whole history of war is likely to lead us into pitfalls. But if a specific effect is seen to follow a specific cause in a score or more cases, in different epochs and diverse conditions, there is ground for regarding this cause as an integral part of any theory of war.

The thesis set forth in this book was the product of such an ‘extensive’ examination. It might, indeed, be termed the compound effect of certain causes these being connected with my task as military editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For while I had previously delved into various periods of military history according to my inclination, this task compelled a general survey of all periods. A surveyor even a tourist, if you will has at least a wide perspective and can take in the general lie of the land, where the miner knows only his own seam.

During this survey one impression became increasingly strong that, throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless the approach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponent’s unreadiness to meet it. The indirectness has usually been physical, and always psychological. In strategy, the longest way round is often the shortest way home.

More and more clearly has the lesson emerged that a direct approach to one’s mental object, or physical objective, along the ‘line of natural expectation’ for the opponent, tends to produce negative results. The reason has been expressed vividly in Napoleon’s dictum that ‘the moral is to the physical as three to one’. It may be expressed scientifically by saying that, while the strength of an opposing force or country lies outwardly in its numbers and resources, these are fundamentally dependent upon stability of control, morale, and supply.

To move along the line of natural expectation consolidates the opponent’s balance and thus increases his resisting power. In war, as in wrestling, the attempt to throw the opponent without loosening his foothold and upsetting his balance results in self exhaustion, increasing in disproportionate ratio to the effective strain put upon him. Success by such a method only becomes possible through an immense margin of superior strength in some form and, even so, tends to lose decisiveness. In most campaigns the dislocation of the enemy’s psychological and physical balance has been the vital prelude to a successful attempt at his overthrow.

This dislocation has been produced by a strategic indirect approach, intentional or fortuitous. It may take varied forms, as analysis reveals. For the strategy of indirect approach is inclusive of, but wider than, the manoeuvre sur les derrieres which General Camon’s researches showed as being the constant aim and key method of Napoleon in his conduct of operations. Camon was concerned primarily with the logistical moves the factors of time, space, and communications. But analysis of the psychological factors has made it clear that there is an underlying relationship between many strategical operations which have no outward resemblance to a manoeuvre against the enemy’s rear yet are, none the less definitely, vital examples of the ‘strategy of indirect approach’.

To trace this relationship and to determine the character of the operations, it is unnecessary to tabulate the numerical strengths and the details of supply and transport. Our concern is simply with the historical effects in a comprehensive series of cases, and with the logistical or psychological moves which led up to them.

If similar effects follow fundamentally similar moves, in conditions which vary widely in nature, scale, and date, there is clearly an underlying connection from which we can logically deduce a common cause. And the more widely the conditions vary, the firmer is this deduction.

The objective value of a broad survey of war is not limited to the research for new and true doctrine. If a broad survey is an essential foundation for any theory of war, it is equally necessary for the ordinary military student who seeks to develop his own outlook and judgement. Otherwise his knowledge of war will be like an inverted pyramid balanced precariously on a slender apex.

CHAPTER II—GREEK WARS—EPAMINONDAS, PHILIP, AND ALEXANDER

The most natural starting point for a survey is the first ‘Great War’ in European history the Great Persian War. We cannot expect much guidance from a period when strategy was in its infancy; but the name of Marathon is too deeply stamped on the mind and imagination of all readers of history to be disregarded. It was still more impressed on the imagination of the Greeks; hence its importance came to be exaggerated by them and, through them, by Europeans in all subsequent ages. Yet by the reduction of its importance to juster proportions, its strategical significance is increased.

The Persian invasion of 490 B.C. was a comparatively small expedition intended to teach Eretria and Athens petty states in the eyes of Darius to mind their own business and abstain from encouraging revolt among Persia’s Greek subjects in Asia Minor. Eretria was destroyed and its inhabitants deported for resettlement on the Persian Gulf. Next came the turn of Athens, where the ultra-democratic party was known to be waiting to aid the Persian intervention against their own conservative party. The Persians, instead of making a direct advance on Athens, landed at Marathon, twenty-four miles north east of it. Thereby they could calculate on drawing the Athenian army towards them, thus facilitating the seizure of power in Athens by their adherents, whereas a direct attack on the city would have hampered such a rising, perhaps even have rallied its force against them; and in any case have given them the extra difficulty of a siege.

If this was the Persians’ calculation, the bait succeeded. The Athenian army marched out to Marathon to meet them, while they proceeded to execute the next step in their strategical plan. Under the protection of a covering force, they re-embarked the rest of the army in order to move it round to Phalerum, land there, and make a spring at unguarded Athens. The subtlety of the strategic design is notable, even though it miscarried owing to a variety of factors.

Thanks to the energy of Miltiades, the Athenians took their one chance by striking without delay at the covering force. In the Marathon battle, the superior armour and longer spears of the Greeks, always their supreme assets against the Persians, helped to give them the victory although the fight was harder than patriotic legend suggested, and most of the covering force got safely away on the ships. With still more creditable energy the Athenians counter-marched rapidly back to their city, and this rapidity, combined with the dilatoriness of the disaffected party, saved them. For when the Athenian army was back in Athens, and the Persians saw that a siege was unavoidable, they sailed back to Asia as their merely punitive object did not seem worth purchasing at a heavy price.

Ten years passed before the Persians made another and greater effort. The Greeks had been slow to profit by the warning, and it was not until 487 B.C. that Athens began the expansion of her fleet which was to be the decisive factor in countering the Persian’s superiority in land forces. Thus it can with truth be said that Greece and Europe were saved by a revolt in Egypt which kept Persia’s attention occupied from 486 to 484 as well as by the death of Darius, ablest of the Persian rulers of that epoch.

When the menace developed, in 481, this time on a grand scale, its very magnitude not only consolidated the Greek factions and states against it, but compelled Xerxes to make a direct approach to his goal. For the army was too big to be transported by sea, and so was compelled to take an overland route. And it was too big to supply itself, so that the fleet had to be used for this purpose. The army was tied to the coast, and the navy tied to the army each tied by the leg. Thus the Greeks could be sure as to the line along which to expect the enemy’s approach, and the Persians were unable to depart from it.

The nature of the country afforded the Greeks a series of points at which they could firmly block the line of natural expectation and, as Grundy has remarked, but for the Greeks’ own dissensions of interest and counsel ‘it is probable that the invaders would never have got south of Thermopylae’. As it was, history gained an immortal story and it was left to the Greek fleet to dislocate the invasion irredeemably by defeating the Persian fleet at Salamis while Xerxes and the Persian army watched helplessly the destruction of what was not merely their fleet, but, more vitally, their source of supply.

It is worth noting that the opportunity for this decisive naval battle was obtained by a ruse which might be classified as a form of indirect approach Themistocles’ message to Xerxes that the Greek fleet was ripe for treacherous surrender. The deception, which drew the Persian fleet into the narrow straits where their superiority of numbers was discounted, proved all the more effective because past experience endowed the message with plausibility. Indeed, Themistocles’ message was inspired by his fear that the allied Peloponnesian commanders would withdraw from Salamis, as they had advocated in the council of war thus leaving the Athenian fleet to fight alone, or giving the Persians a chance to use their superior numbers in the open sea.

On the other side there was only one voice raised against Xerxes’ eager desire for battle. It was that of the sailor-queen, Artemisia, from Halicarnassus, who is recorded as urging the contrary plan of abstaining from a direct assault and, instead, cooperating with the Persian land forces in a move against the Peloponnesus. She argued that the Peloponnesian naval contingents would react to such a threat by sailing for home, and thereby cause the disintegration of the Greek fleet. It would seem that her anticipation was as well justified as Themistocles’ anxiety, and that such a withdrawal would have been carried out the very next morning but for the fact that the Persian galleys blocked the outlets, preparatory to attack.

But the attack started to take a turn fatally disadvantageous to the attackers through a withdrawal on the part of the defenders which acted like a bait in drawing the heavier side into an unbalanced lunge. For when the attackers advanced through the narrow straits, the Greek galleys backed away. The Persian galleys thereupon quickened their rate of rowing, and as a result became a congested mass, helplessly exposed to the counterstroke which the Greek galleys delivered from either flank.

In the seventy years that followed, one of the chief factors which restrained the Persians from further intervention in Greece would seem to have been the power of indirect approach, to the Persians’ own communications, that Athens could wield this deduction is supported by the prompt revival of such interference after the destruction of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse. Historically, it is worth note that the use of strategic mobility for an indirect approach was realized and exploited much earlier in sea than in land warfare. The natural reason is that only in a late stage of development did armies come to depend upon ‘lines of communication’ for their supply. Fleets, however, were used to operate against the seaborne communications, or means of supply, of opposing countries.

With the passing of the Persian menace, the sequel to Salamis was the rise of Athens to the ascendency in Greek affairs. This ascendency was ended by the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). The extravagant duration of these twenty-seven years of warfare, and their terrible drain not only on the chief adversaries but on the luckless would-be neutrals may be traced to the fluctuating and often purposeless strategy into which both sides repeatedly drifted.

In the first phase Sparta and her allies attempted a direct invasion of Attica. They were foiled by Pericles’s war policy, of refusing battle on land while using the superior Athenian navy to wear down the enemy’s will by devastating raids.

Although the phrase ‘Periclean strategy’ is almost as familiar as that of ‘Fabian strategy’ in a later age, such a phrase narrows and confuses the significance of the course that war pursued. Clear-cut nomenclature is essential to clear thought, and the term ‘strategy’ is best confined to its literal meaning of ‘generalship’ the actual direction of military force, as distinct from the policy governing its employment and combining it with other weapons: economic, political, psychological. Such policy is in application a higher-level strategy, for which the term ‘grand strategy’ has been coined.

In contrast to a strategy of indirect approach which seeks to dislocate the enemy’s balance in order to produce a decision, the Periclean plan was a grand strategy with the aim of gradually draining the enemy’s endurance in order to convince him that he could not gain a decision. Unluckily for Athens, an importation of plague tipped the scales against her in this moral and economic attrition campaign. Hence in 426 B.C. the Periclean strategy was made to give place to the direct offensive strategy of Cleon and Demosthenes. This cost more, and succeeded no better, despite some brilliant tactical successes. Then, in the early winter of 424 B.C., Brasidas, Sparta’s ablest soldier, wiped out all the advantage that Athens had painfully won. He did this by a strategic move directed against the roots, instead of the trunk, of the enemy power. By-passing Athens itself, he marched swiftly north through the length of Greece and struck at the Athenian dominion in Chalcidice aptly termed the ‘Achilles heel of the Athenian empire’. Through a combination of military force with the promise of freedom and protection to all cities which revolted against her, he so shook the hold of Athens in Chalcidice that he drew her main forces thither. At Amphipolis they suffered a disastrous defeat. Although Brasidas himself fell in the moment of victory, Athens was glad to conclude a negative peace with Sparta.

In the succeeding years of pseudo-p...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• INTRODUCTION
• PREFACE
• PART I-STRATEGY FROM FIFTH CENTURY B.C. TO TWENTIETH CENTURY A.D.
• PART II-STRATEGY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
• PART III-STRATEGY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
• PART IV-FUNDAMENTALS OF STRATEGY AND GRAND STRATEGY
• APPENDIX I-THE STRATEGY OF INDIRECT APPROACH IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN, 1940-42
• APPENDIX II-Condensed translation of Article by General Yigael Yadin, published in Bamachaneh (The Israel Forces’ Journal), September 1949.
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER