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I think we need to add a bias disclaimer to this page. It seems biased, and cited attacks on Hart and his attempt to brand blitzk. as his own without citation. Funny, as when I google search John Keegan, I find a website with a few opening paragraphs trashing Hart, in a writing style similar to this article.
Did Sun Tzu *have* any victories? -- Andersonblog 00:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
didnt he say the famous line the 2 hardest things in the world are get a new idea into a military mind and an old idea out Bouse23 14:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
"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."
In the english translation of the book "Achtung, Panzer!" [Gen. Guderian] is a part, where Guderian said he was inspirated from theories of Hart. But in the german original you can't find this part. The translator was by the way Liddell Hart!
This was found out by the Irish military historian Dr. Dermot Bradley.
Thus legends are made. Pantau, germany
I do not think John Mearsheimer opinion is really needed simply due to the fact that it is nothing more then an opinion. If other wikipedia articles were fulled with all the opinions people had of the such persons it would be chaos and get in the way of the facts.
What does this sentence about Mearsheimer above refer to? There is no thread to connect it to. I find it strange that this article does not give any credit to Mearsheimer for being the first to expose Liddel-Hart as a fraud. Mearsheimer's book, which appeared in 1988, is referenced but not quoted; instead, other's works are quoted although written ten years later, and add nothing new to Mearsheimer's research. It was Mearsheimer's book that first put together the puzzle of Liddel Hart's deceit with the German generals, and places it firmly in the context of LH's faltering career following his disastrously influential predictions about the nature of WWII in Europe, and his subsequent attempt to bury these facts and rebuild his shattered reputation by manipulating the historical record. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.9.202.53 ( talk) 14:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
There is controversy surrounding Basil Liddell Hart and this is not addressed in this article making appear as a non-NPOV article. He is accused of plagerism, Paris, or the Future of War by Hart, is almost word for word, idea for idea, Fuller's The Reformation of War. see Gat A History of Military Thought p665 see also K. Macksey, Guderian: Panzer General, 40-1; The Tank Pioneers, 118,216 as well as Mearsheimer, LH, 160-7,184-201 subotai 10-26-2006
Just how much Liddell Hart influenced armored warfare is debatable to say the least. 72.24.129.24 21:41, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I concur that the section "myths and controversy" (even the title) is non-NPOV. Unnamed "Historians" are repeatedly referred to but only one, Shimon Naveh, is actually cited. It uses very strong language ("distorted", "falsified", "deceit", "fabricated", etc) and the discussion about "planting" of passages in Guderian's memoirs is susceptible to quite different interpretations; for example, Hart may have felt that Guderian had not given him proper credit and was requesting that the record be corrected. The fact that Guderian agreed to the revision suggests that he didn't object to giving credit to Hart. It's also hardly suprising that a version for a British audience might give greater credit to british thinkers than a version for a german audience. James Haughton ( talk) 03:16, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
The anecdote about Hart, Eden, the inkstand and the wastepaper basket makes a lovely story, but it should really be deleted. According to Lord Owen’s article on “The effect of Prime Minister Anthony Eden's illness on his decision-making during the Suez crisis” (QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, Volume 98 (2005), No. 6, pp. 387-402 – available at http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/98/6/387#BIB30), the “story is pure fiction, as Liddell Hart’s wife and son confirm, since the men never actually met during the Suez Crisis.” ( Tyler's Boy ( talk) 11:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC))
This is, I believe, the name Liddell Hart is most commonly known by, and the one he used on all his books. Redirects can be left in place from the current title, and any double redirects corrected. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 04:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't know if Liddel Hart was blinded by conventional British thinking about Grant, or if it's from a lack of scholarship, or what, but his faulty analysis in that particular circumstance, about which I know a small amount, makes me start to suspect his analysis of other situations that I know much less about. That's unfortunate, because I thought he was making sense, as far as i could tell. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 02:33, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
OK, since no one has jumped in to object, I'm going to start to make the move to "B. H. Liddell Hart", since it can always be moved back if necessary. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 18:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Professor Bond was encouraged to study military history by Liddell Hart himself, so had to avoid writing a hagiography.
A lot more could be added to the article from this book. Liddell Hart did not win any bravery awards in WW1, according to BB. 86.42.196.3 ( talk) 07:26, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Havent read all Captain Hart's work, but the quote added seemned to me entirely representative of his attitude towards the Germans. Is there a counter quote we're missing that shows Hart was really ambivelent to them? He even speaks admiringly about their WWI performane in his introduction of his book on the Roman general Scipio. Quite common for British officers and enlisted men to feel like that. Especially in WWI, but even in WW2 (my Grandfather was the same). The stories one hears about footy matches at Christmas are not made up. British soldiers knew that Germans were our ancient allies, and didnt blame the German army for the insanity of their national leaders. FeydHuxtable ( talk) 20:19, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
From the intro of the referenced work:
There are a number of problems here, one of which being referring to the Wehrmacht as the bed of controversy whereas it was the Heer, and secondly the notion that the Eastern Front and Panzer Armee Afrika were the locations of development and practice of Blitzkrieg, when in reality they were practiced there but were first practiced in Poland and then France. Rommel was no operational theorist, but a practitioner of mobile warfare. All that to say the argument seems tenuous and not adequate as a single source to justify the harsh charges brought against Liddell Hart. Gunbirddriver ( talk) 02:13, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
I see my edits have been reverted three times, and neither editor has troubled themselves to respond here on the article talk page, nor on my own editor talk page. It would appear that at least one of them, Beyond My Ken, wishes to start an edit war, but I am not inclined to do so.
Regarding the material recently added, it is highly inflammatory and is derogatory to the subject of this wikipedia article. The author of the source is Shimon Naveh, an Israeli general and military theorist.
On his writing:
on his philosophy:
on the IDF General Staff:
and
(from Dr. Naveh, or, how I learned to stop worrying and walk through walls by Yotam Feldman Haaretz Oct.25, 2007 http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/dr-naveh-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-walk-through-walls-1.231912 )
on Chief of Staff Halutz:
Shimon Naveh may be a brilliant military conceptualist, and a fine fighter, but this is clearly not the cool, well-considered, disaffected presenter that Wikipedia is looking for in its encyclopedic voice. Mr. Shimon Naveh may be well versed in military history, but he is clearly prone to ad hominem attacks and as such his comments accusing others of lying and distorting the facts should not go into wikipedia without some effort to verify what he asserts.
I recommend that the author Shimon Naveh be removed as a source until his assertions can be verified. Please respond. Gunbirddriver ( talk) 05:55, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
This article has multiple issues. Here is what I have time to write about right now.
The section on Liddell-Hart's theories of warfare is poorly structured. Only one theory is described, and its development, tenets, and principles are neither referenced (through a Main Article link) nor described. How does research into high casualty rates become a radical reimagining of mechanised units? Most wikipedia biographical sketches on theorists have, under the heading of Theory, subheadings such as each theory by name, influenced by, influnced, practical importance of theory, and criticism of theory. eg Theories, Indirect Approach, Development, Principles, Application to Mechanised Warfare, Influence on WWII, Blitzkreig, Criticisms. As the article currently stands, his personal history and politics are muddled into the section on theory, and there is much ambiguity in sequence of events. The contexts keep shifting, and so I cannot extract any meaningful information on his theories of warfare, their development, their importance, or their roles in his life.
The section regarding Naveh is deeply problematic. First, it is muddled: the development and claim of application have nothing to do with a Naveh Controversy, whatever that is. Second, usually criticisms on a theory are presented under a subheading of something like "Criticism" with each opponent's arguments in separate paragraphs. Third, from what was presented in this article, there was no criticism of the theory of indirect approach; he was questioning Liddell-Hart's claim that Blitzkreig was a direct application of his thoeries. Perhaps most importantly, the motivation and character of the crtiic are not relevant to the criticism. There is almost no information presented on Naveh's criticism. There are a plethora of policy violations, to wit:
"(Despite ample access and evidence to the facts, (bias, NPOV violation) Shimon Naveh, an Israeli military theorist, (sought to undermine Liddell Hart in Israeli military circles (bias, assumption of motivation)) by claiming that after the war Liddell Hart "created" the idea that Blitzkrieg was a military doctrine. Said Naveh, "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."[31] (Naveh advanced this argument as a means to attack the credibility of Liddell Hart, who had become highly influential among the Israeli military.[32] (bias, assumption of motivation AND unreliable source for refutation) (Naveh claimed that by "manipulation and contrivance, Liddell Hart distorted the actual circumstances of the Blitzkrieg formation and 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".[33] Naveh claimed that in his letters to German generals Erich von Manstein and Guderian, as well as relatives and associates of Rommel, Liddell Hart "imposed his own fabricated version of Blitzkrieg on the latter and compelled him to proclaim it as original formula".[34] (construction manipulations: quote started in middle of sentence to distort meaning and combination of unrelated subjects))
(Naveh has a long history of attacking the intelligence and character of people he is in intellectual conflict with, including the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Of these men he claimed in an interview: "They are on the brink of illiteracy. The army's tragedy is that it is managed by battalion commanders who were good and generals who did not receive the tools to cope with their challenges. Halutz is not stupid, even Dudu Ben Bashat is not stupid, even though he is an idiot, and his successor, Major General Uri Marom (sic), is a total bastard."[35] (ad hominem as well as non sequitur. equivalent to claiming that my peer-reviewed journal article is invalid because a political editorial poorly translated and quoted a rant about my boss from my facebook page.))
(To buttress his attack upon Liddell Hart (bias semantics)), Naveh sought to highlight the fact that the edition of Guderian's memoirs published in Germany differed from the one published in the United Kingdom in that Guderian neglected to mention the influence of the English theorists such as Fuller and Liddell Hart in the German-language versions. (One example of the influence of these men on Guderian was the report on the Battle of Cambrai published by Fuller in 1920, who at the time was a staff officer at the Royal Tank Corps. His findings and theories on armoured warfare were alleged by Liddell Hart to have been read and later taken up by Guderian, who helped to formulate the basis of operations that was to become known as Blitzkrieg warfare. These tactics involved deep penetration of the armoured formations supported behind enemy lines by bomb-carrying aircraft. Dive bombers were the principle agents of delivery of high explosives in support of the forward units.[36] (incorrect placement of entire section. this is not relevant to Naveh. this is Liddell-Hart's claim.)
Though the German version of Guderian's memoirs mentions Liddell Hart, it did not ascribe to him his role in developing the theories behind armoured warfare. (An explanation for the difference between the two translations can be found in the correspondence between the two men. (confirmation bias)) In one letter to Guderian, Liddell Hart reminded the German general that he should provide him the credit he was due, offering "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."[37] In his early writings on mechanized warfare Liddell Hart proposed that infantry be carried along with the fast moving armoured formations. He described them as "tank marines" like the soldiers the Royal Navy carried with their ships. He proposed they be carried along in their own tracked vehicles and dismount to help take better defended positions that otherwise would hold up the armoured units. This contrasted with Fuller's ideas of a tank army, which put heavy emphasis on massed armoured formations. Liddell Hart foresaw the need for a combined arms force with mobile infantry and artillery, which was similar but not identical to the make up of the panzer divisions that Guderian created in Germany.[38] (again, wrong place: this should go in influence, or application. this is the basis for the Liddell-Hart's claim. Naveh's claim has nothing to do with the makeup or creation of the units. He claims that Blitzkreig was not a tactical doctrinal application of maneuver warfare.)
Guderian corrected the oversight, and did as Liddell Hart requested.[39] When Liddell Hart was questioned in 1968 about the oversight and difference between the English and German editions of Guderian's memoirs, he graciously replied merely: "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."[40] (biased wording. the evidence given here partially substantiates Naveh's claim that Liddell-Hart was writing to the generals to impose his views.)"
I have not made all of the edits because the article as a whole needs to be reworked with proper conceptual divisions. I have added a cleanup-rewrite tag. Elfwiki ( talk) 12:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
I think this area has been neglected. It is a very important event in Liddell Hart's own drive to rebuild his reputation, and is key to his claims that he was influential on the likes of Guderian. I have tried to mention it a few times but my additions were removed.
If the author wishes to push Liddell Hart as an important and influential theorist, then I suggest that the interviews be given a more prominent role in the article. They act as a keystone for the revisionist argument but are simultaneously indicative of L H's standing in the eyes of the British at the time. Liddell Hart's book, "The German Generals Talk" (New York, 1948) came out of these interviews and is very telling, especially when combined with later correspondence between Liddell Hart and the Generals concerned.
At the moment, I'm afraid, the article reads very much as a hagiography and does not give enough exposure to the arguments of revisionist historians. The language used in the section on Naveh, for example, is unnecessarily dismissive. My comment that recent studies and publications have thrown doubt upon L H's claims was redacted, to be replaced by a much diluted comment. If we are to ignore the wealth of recent publications that question L H's claims then this is not a history but a simple hagiography.
Sadurian ( talk) 11:53, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
The interviews currently have a single line, yet they are far more important to Liddell Hart's reputation and the discussion around it than a single line would warrant. By all-but ignoring the interviews the article is essentially ignoring a topic that has been much discussed by historians. Whether or not you agree or disagree with Mearsheimer is irrelevant - what is important is that he put forward a theory with supporting evidence and it has become a major point of discussion for historians. Without Mearsheimer we have no Gat [1], and so you have missed a large and important chunk of modern LH historiography.
I agree that Wikipedia is not the place for a protracted discussion of every theory put forward, but the controversy around the interviews ties with many other doubts about LH's self-claimed influence and to sweep the entire thing under the carpet is bad academic practice at best. If Wikipedia is to break its popular current image as an untrustworthy source written by amateurs, its articles need to present both sides of any discussion rather than just presenting one as 'the Truth'. I'd suggest that Mearsheimer's argument is presented, possibly with Azar Gat's subsequent addressing of the argument. Relying on Bond is rather like asking Liddell Hart to write his own page. Sadurian ( talk) 13:14, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
That Liddell Hart was a self-publicist who had a habit of altering facts to suit his own interpretation of history is supported in his own correspondence and papers. Sadurian ( talk) 12:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
He bombarded Hore-Belisha with letters begging for an honour, and there is evidence that he had done the same to H-B's predecessor, Duff Cooper. [2] Sadurian ( talk) 12:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
He also claimed to have influenced Fuller in the latter's formulation of armoured warfare theory, yet the correspondence between the two men clearly shows that the influence worked the other way around. [3] Sadurian ( talk) 12:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
With that in mind, to use Liddell Hart's own work as evidence of his reliability is poor scholarship and unlikely to be convincing. Sadurian ( talk) 12:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Even Danchev, a supporter of Liddell Hart, suggests that Liddell Hart's motives in conducting the interviews at Grizedale Hall and then offering to edit, translate and publish the memoirs and works or the German generals, was self-serving. [4] Sadurian ( talk) 12:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
In any case, it is not at all necessary to assume that 'The German officer corps had never heard of Fuller or Liddell Hart' or that 'The German tank men were ignorant of the developments and theories of armoured warfare that were going on outside of their own nation.' All that is required is to not take Liddell Hart's own claims at face value. Sadurian ( talk) 12:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
To ignore the wealth of historiographical discussion surrounding Liddell Hart is doing the subject a great disservice. Mentioning that there is a controversy is not the same as agreeing with its findings. Sadurian ( talk) 12:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
Notes
The text introduced “General Sir Tim Pile”. If this is supposed to refer to General Sir Frederick Alfred Pile, why is there a wrong name and no link? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.155.130.134 ( talk) 18:38, 4 October 2014 (UTC)
Why is so much space given to the views of Shimon Naveh? He is of little importance, and clearly a controversial if not totally unreliable source. Royalcourtier ( talk) 04:09, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
Claim is made in the article that purpose of imperial army was "to come to aid of Norway". That is simply false. The purpose of landing in Norway was to interrupt iron ore supply to Germany(and thereby violate neutrality of Norway), which lead to the preemptive strike by the German armed forces in Denmark and Norway. War Cabinet records demonstrate this conclusive. -- 41.151.210.114 ( talk) 21:22, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
In Hart`s history of WWII which is generally politically neutral he clearly argues against the need to have dropped the bomb..according to his sources which were extensive..some people believe he was the foremost historian regarding this war..the Japanese civilian population were not the fanatics the allies had been led to believe..the factory workers were fleeing to the countryside to avoid US bombing attacks..the ultra right wing military faction in the government had been dismissed..that Japan was within days of surrendering and were only holding out to try to negotiate procession of some of the outer islands after the end of the war which they knew was coming. I am pointing this out because today`s feature story Air_raids_on_Japan is related...someone could expand on this. 24.177.239.72 ( talk) 18:22, 2 July 2015 (UTC)
Hi, I plan to add the below content under the section name shown above. Since it will be a big addition, I'm posting here first to see if there are any questions of comments. Content follows:
Liddel Hart was instrumental in the creation of the " Rommel myth", the post-war assessment of Rommel as a "noble" man and a "military genius who, but for bad fortune and the faults of others, might have changed the course of World War II". [1] The myth came about as "the necessary image manufactured to serve the German rearmament" [2], as, after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, it became clear to the Americans and the British that a German army would have to be revived to help face off against the Soviet Union. Many former German officers were convinced, however, that no future German army would be possible without the rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht. To this end, in October 1950, a group of former senior officers produced a document, the Himmerod memorandum, for West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Intended as both a planning and a negotiating document, the memorandum included a key demand for "measures to transform domestic and foreign public opinion" with regards to the German military. [3]
Thus, in the atmosphere of the Cold War, Rommel's former enemies, especially the British, played a key role in the manufacture and propagation of the myth. [4] The German rearmament was highly dependent on the image boosting that the Wehrmacht needed. Liddell Hart, an early proponent of these two interconnected initiatives, provided the first widely available source on Rommel in his 1948 book on Hitler's generals. He devoted a chapter to Rommel, portraying him as an outsider to the Nazi regime. Additions to the chapter published in 1951 concluded with laudatory comments about Rommel's "gifts and performance" that "qualified him for a place in the role of the 'Great Captains' of history". [5]
Liddell Hart then edited Rommel's writings of the war period, which were published in 1953 as The Rommel Papers. Romme's widow and son, and the former Wehrmacht officer Fritz Bayerlein first published them in German in 1950 under a "revealing title" War Without Hate. With a glowing introduction by Liddel Hart, The Rommel Papers was one of the two "crucial texts" that lead to the "Anglophone rehabilitation" and a "Rommel renaissance", the other being the 1950 "influential, laudatory" biography Rommel: The Desert Fox by Brigadier Desmond Young. [6] [7]
Liddel Hart had a personal interest in the work: he had coaxed Rommel's widow into admitting that his theories on mechanised warfare had influenced Rommel. Thus, Rommel emerged as his "pupil", giving Liddel Hart credit for Rommel's dramatic successes in 1940. [8] (The controversy around Liddell Hart's actions is covered by the political scientist John Mearsheimer in Liddell Hart and the Weight of History. A review of Mearsheimer's work, published by Strategic Studies Institute, points out that Mearsheimer "correctly takes 'The Captain' [Liddel Hart] to task for [...] manipulating history".) [9]
Young and Liddell Hart "set the stage for all post-war interpretations of Rommel", which consisted of three themes: Rommel's ambivalence towards Nazism; his military genius; and the chivalrous nature of the fighting in North Africa. [6] Their works lent support to the image of the "clean" Wehrmacht and were generally not questioned, since they came from British authors, rather than German revisionists. [10]
Recent historiography called for a reevaluation of the Rommel myth. In a 2012 interview with Reuters, the German historian Sönke Neitzel summed it up Rommel as: "On the one hand he didn't commit war crimes that we know of and ordered a retreat at El Alamein despite Hitler's order. But he took huge German casualties elsewhere and he was a servant of the regime. He was not exactly a shining liberal or Social Democrat. Mostly, he was interested in his career". [11]
References
K.e.coffman ( talk) 22:20, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
This passage has given me pause:
References
This is cited LH's own book, for which he interviewed the former Wehrmacht general. Thoma was a POW (?) at that time; of course he would have said pretty much anything.
These two passages appear to be be WP:OR:
This appears to be more WP:OR, with extensive quoting from WP:Primary sources:
In order to overcome the first of these disadvantages, the one related to unsupported armour, the protagonists of mechanization - General Fuller, Martel, Liddell Hart and others - advocated reinforcing the all tank units by infantry and artillery mounted on permanently assigned armoured vehicles, together with mechanized engineers, and signals, support and supply elements. [1]
References
I plan to remove the first statement as dubious and biased towards LH, reported by LH. The last four as WP:OR.
I also adjusted the POV language around Naveh: "claimed"; "buttress his attack"; etc. Please let me know if there are any concerns. K.e.coffman ( talk) 23:21, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
This passage is cited to LH:
References
The para covers supposed request from Chamberlain and analysis of LH's paper, cited to himself.
If better sources cannot be found, I plan to remove it. Under the heading of "Influence on Chamberlain" this passage sounds like wp:peacock, cited to a self-serving source. K.e.coffman ( talk) 03:06, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Moving uncited WP:OR content here in case someone may want to use it in the future:
![]() | This section possibly contains
original research. (March 2016) |
Liddell Hart set out following World War I 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. Liddell Hart believed the failure to act upon these principles which was the case for nearly all commanders in World War I led to the high casualty rate.
He reduced this set of principles to a single phrase: the indirect approach. The indirect approach had two fundamental principles:
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.
As a corollary he explained
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.
Liddell Hart argued that success can be gained by keeping one's enemy uncertain about the situation and one's intentions. By delivering what he does not expect and has therefore not prepared for, he will be mentally defeated.
Liddell Hart explained that one should not employ a rigid strategy revolving around powerful direct attacks nor fixed defensive positions. Instead, he preferred a more fluid elastic defence, where a mobile contingent can move as necessary in order to satisfy the conditions for the indirect approach. He later offered Erwin Rommel's Northern Africa campaign as a classic example of this theory. Liddell Hart's theory closely matches what is currently referred to as Manoeuvre warfare, and has been advanced by John Boyd and his OODA loop Theory of combat and maneuver.
He arrived at his conclusions following his own experience of heavy losses suffered by Britain in the static warfare of the First World War. In developing his theory about indirect approach he looked back through history for those commanders whose careers supported his theories: men such as Sun Tzu, Napoleon, and Belisarius. Perhaps the best example was the career of William Tecumseh Sherman. In discussing these commanders Liddell Hart sought to illustrate and promote his idea of the indirect approach. He also advocated the indirect approach as a valid strategy in other fields of endeavour, such as business.
References
K.e.coffman ( talk) 17:51, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
Moving here for storage:
References
Also moving here as coat rack & cited to BLH's protege:
K.e.coffman ( talk) 02:23, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
No attempt to explain Liddell-Hart's contribution to strategic thinking in the 20th century. Doesn't explain why he's important at all. I grew up in a military household, and his book "Strategy" was in the US 2nd AF HQ library for a reason. It wasn't because he sucked up to every German general in creation. I'll note that someone reading "Strategy" could fairly easily reinsert most of the 'indirect approach' language as that was his guiding principle throughout the narrative of that book. I suspect, as others do, that we have an editor who has a LH hate-on and is actively keeping this article as a diatribe against the man. Dwmyers ( talk) 22:08, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Dwmyers ( talk) 01:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
This little phrase caught my eye: "For balance, it should be noted that Brian Bond had a friendship and close personal links with Basil Liddell Hart, and so his work should be read with that information in mind."
This whole article is shot through with the notion that anyone that knew Liddell Hart or was close to Liddell Hart and actually had real first person knowledge of the man are people not to be trusted, as if Liddell Hart were the spawn of Sauron. It's a very crippling notion to take hold in a biography. I can see if this were the Weekly World News or the Nation Enquirer or some offspring of tabloid journalism, but this is not. It is biographical and by the nature of biographies, you need to actually rely on people who knew the man, and at some level TRUST THEM. IT IS NOT BALANCED TO INHERENTLY DISTRUST ANY SOURCE ON B.H. LIDDELL HART'S LIFE WHO ACTUALLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE MAN. THIS PHRASE DOES NOT HELP THIS ARTICLE. Dwmyers ( talk) 04:02, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
I'm not going to pursue this deeply, but as Liddell Hart was known to write and rewrite books, this should be touched on. 'Strategy has two editions, and they are copyright 1954 and 1967. Strategy: The Indirect Approach has four editions and the third was copyright 1954 and the fourth copyright 1967. I don't have the latter. I do own the former, so for quotes I'll be using the former when I write in this article. But if someone with knowledge of both wants to pipe in, feel free. Dwmyers ( talk) 16:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
This is more a personal comment, hard to place in the document itself, so I'm just going to say it here, and maybe a better writer than me can work it into the text later. Liddell Hart in his most important work not only covered great generals, but also more obscure generals to the common public, folks like Epaminondas and Belisarius. And in doing so, he fills in gaps that exist in high school and freshmen level surveys of Western Civilization. It's not hard to read about the Peloponnesian War and get an idea of how Sparta ascended to dominance in Greece. But LH's coverage of Epaminondas then explains how the Spartans lost, which for me was always the question Greek history left me with. Where were the Spartans when the narrative in classical history jumps from Peloponnesian war to Philip of Macedonia? And Strategy answers that question. Belisarius, though Byzantine and thus coming from a culture derived from the Roman, had armies based on heavy cavalry more so than heavy infantry. How did he differ in tactics from his Roman predecessors? Because LH gives you these kinds of insights, folks reading him for the first time, and perhaps no other military historian because in the 1970s, he was so well thought of, all I can say it makes a rather profound and deep impression. And I say this as I read Strategy in high school in the early 1970s, and not having any Internet or Wikipedia to track down information on my own. Dwmyers ( talk) 16:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)