B. H. Liddell Hart

“ The fists and the sinews of war are mutually dependent, and, if we can demoralize one section of the nation, the collapse of its will to resist compels the surrender of the whole—as the last months of 1918 demonstrated.
It is the function of grand strategy to discover and exploit the Achilles’ heel of the enemy nation; to strike not against its strongest bulwark but against its most vulnerable spot. ”

“ If the citizens of a nation were asked what should be the general aim of the national policy, they would reply, in tenor if not in exact words, that it should be such as to guarantee them “an honourable, prosperous, and secure existence.”
No normal citizen of a democracy would willingly imperil this by a resort to war. Only when he considers, or it is suggested to him convincingly, that his honour, prosperity, or security are endangered by the policy of another nation, will he consent to the grave step of making war. ”

“ How long even tanks will persist is a moot point. To hit so small and rapidly moving a target is not easy for the aeroplane, and if it come low, the tank can hit back. In the next lap of the immemorial race between the means of offence and protection, mobility is on the side of the aeroplane, but gravity on that of the tank—in increasing the degree of armour.
Again, though gas is the weapon which will sign the death-warrant of the traditional arms, and by which the new arms will attack the enemy nation, its very triumph will cause one more revolution of the eternal cycle. ”

“ The way to “peace on earth” is by the progressive and general growth of “good-will towards men,” by a transformation of the spirit of man instead of a futile attempt to bind his fists—cords from which he can easily break free, if so disposed. This changed spirit must be world-wide, for peace-loving nations, especially if prosperous and possessed of rich territory who abandon their defences, invite and indeed provoke aggression as much as a flock of well-nourished sheep with a lean and hungry wolf in the fold. ”

“ No war between civilized people has been carried, nor anywhere near carried, to the point of extermination. The living alone retain the power to admit defeat, and since wars, therefore, are ended by surrender and not by extermination, it becomes apparent that defeat is the result not of loss of life, save, at the most, indirectly and partially, but by loss of moral.
The enemy nation’s will to resist is subdued by the fact or threat of making life so unpleasant and difficult for the people that they will comply with your terms rather than endure this misery. ”

“ The determination of the hostile nation to enforce its contrary policy in defiance of our own aims and desires. To gain our aim or objective we have to change this adverse will into a compliance with our own policy, and the sooner and more cheaply in lives and money we can do this, the better chance is there of a continuance of national prosperity in the widest sense.
The aim of a nation in war is, therefore, to subdue the enemy’s will to resist, with the least possible human and economic loss to itself. ”

“ Future wars will be waged by weapons that are the product of peace-time industry; these weapons will be directed against the nerve centres and arteries of civil life, and if wisdom prevail, the ultimate peace will be the guiding star of the military policy and plans. Weapons, target, and aim will alike be civil. The future of war lies in the future of peace. ”

“ The idea of preserving a broad and balanced point of view is anathema to the mass, who crave for a slogan and detest the complexities of independent thought. It is not surprising that military thought in recent generations, in its blind worship of the idol of “absolute war,” has poured scorn on the objectives of Napoleon’s predecessors—curiously forgetting that they at least gained the purpose of their policy, whereas his ended in ruin. ”

“ Once appreciate that tanks are not an extra arm or a mere aid to infantry but the modern form of heavy cavalry and their true military use is obvious—to be concentrated and used in as large masses as possible for a decisive blow against the Achilles’ heel of the enemy army, the communications and command centres which form its nerve system. Then not only may we see the rescue of mobility from the toils of trench-warfare, but with it the revival of generalship and the art [74] of war, in contrast to its mere mechanics. ”

“ Now, however, in these post-war years of disillusionment, is the time to take stock of the exorbitant cost of the war in lives and money, of the moral and economic exhaustion that is its fruit. Though professional experience in any department of life is the way to executive skill, concentration on technical problems has a notorious tendency to narrow the vision. Hence, while paying tribute to the professional ability shown in the later phases of the 1918 campaign, we are justified, standing amid the débris, in questioning the strategic aim and direction of the war. ”

“ A moment’s unprejudiced reflection on the analogy of a boxing match would be sufficient to reveal the objective dictated by common sense. Only the most stupid boxer would attempt to beat his opponent by battering and bruising the latter’s flesh until at last he weakens and yields. ”

“ Glance for a moment at a map of Europe—it will be seen that Great Britain lies like a huge breakwater across the sea approaches to Northern Europe, with Ireland as a smaller breakwater across the approaches to Great Britain. We realize that in the Great War, Germany was in the most unfavourable position possible for blockading England’s sea communications, her submarines having first to get outside this breakwater through a narrow outlet sown with mines and closely watched, and on completion of this mission make the same hazardous return to their bases. ”

“ ARE ARMIES AND NAVIES OBSOLETE?
In view of the transcendent value of aircraft as a means of subduing the enemy will to resist, by striking at the moral objective, the question may well be asked: Is the air the sole medium of future warfare? ”

“ The phrase is too narrow, and warring nations reck little of legitimacy—but common sense, reinforced by bitter experience, should lead the grand strategists of the future to the wider truth that a more [86] perfect peace is the only rational object of war, and that any military plan or act which infringes this prospect causes a bad debt on the balance sheet of victory. May the nations and their political and military chiefs remember the words of Solomon: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” ”

“ Above all, as the military forces of a modern nation are but the wheels of the car of war, dependent for their driving power on the engine—the nation’s industrial resources—it follows that a breakdown in the engine or in the transmission—the means of transport and communication—will inevitably render the military forces immobile and powerless. ”

“ Deprive individuals of food and there is an outcry, cut off the food supply of a nation and the moral sense of the world is undisturbed. Thus the naval weapon is pre-eminently the means of applying “stomach” pressure, because its blockade is indirect instead of direct, general instead of particular. As nothing more surely undermines moral than starvation, a blockade would seem obviously the best means to gain the moral objective were it not for two grave disadvantages. ”

“ When to the proved menace of submarine power is added the potential effect of aircraft attack against shipping in the narrow seas, it is time the British people awoke to the fact that, in case of such a war, the Mediterranean would be impassable, and that this important artery would have to be abandoned. Thus, as a strategical asset, the Suez Canal has lost a large part of its value in face of modern naval and air development—for in such a war we should be driven to close the Mediterranean route, and divert our imperial communications round the Cape of Good Hope. ”

“ If a man cannot move freely, he cannot fight. If a horse cannot move, what use is his rider? If the artillery-man cannot serve [80] the gun freely and the gun is immovable, field artillery is useless. Therefore, if gas becomes a standard weapon, we are left with the tank and the aeroplane as the sole effective arms for offensive action. Only as the static defenders of the fortified bases—the land-ports—of tanks and aircraft will there be a future for infantry and artillery, the former armed with super-heavy armour-piercing machine-guns, and the latter with anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. ”

“ For, when war bursts [18] upon the nation, it is the ordinary citizens who pay the toll either with their lives or from their pockets. Only by taking an active interest in the broad aspects of national defence, and so regaining control of their military conscience, can they avoid being driven like sheep to the shearer and slaughterhouse, as in the last war. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the decisiveness of the moral objective be admitted, is it not the height of absurdity to base the military forces of a nation on infantry, which would—even if unopposed—take weeks to reach Essen or Berlin, for example, when aircraft could reach and destroy both in a matter of hours? ”

“ Victory in air war will lie with whichever side first gains the moral objective. If one side is so foolish as to waste time—more the supreme factor than ever before—in searching for the armed forces of the enemy, which are mobile and capable of concealment, then clearly the static civil centres of its own land will be paralysed first—and the issue will be decided long before the side which trusted in the “armed forces” objective has crossed the enemy’s frontiers. ”

“ In the latter sentence we see the recurring delusion of the traditional military mind that the opposition to the Napoleonic theory must necessarily be dictated by mere sentimentalism. It disregards the possibility that it may be due to a far-sighted political economy, which does not lose sight of the post-war years. A prosperous and secure peace is a better monument of victory than a pyramid of skulls. ”

“ When, however, the fateful decision for war has been taken, what does common sense tell us should be the national objective? To ensure a resumption and progressive continuance of what may be termed the peace-time policy, with the shortest and least costly interruption of the normal life of the country. ”

“ But though the indignity and restrictions that arise from a military occupation [35] are always galling, the conscience of the world forbids, or at least limits, the terrorism of earlier times and so makes the mere presence of an invading army less irksome. Conversely, with the growth of civilization the dislocation or control of an enemy’s industrial centres and communications becomes both more effective and more easy as the means by which to subdue his will to resist. ”

“ To inflict widespread death and destruction is to damage one’s own future prosperity, and, by sowing the seeds of revenge, to jeopardize one’s future security. Chemical science has provided [45] mankind with a weapon which reduces the necessity for killing and achieves decisive effects with far less permanent injury than in the case of explosives. Gas may well prove the salvation of civilization from the otherwise inevitable collapse in case of another world war. ”

“ Instead of machines threatening to become the master of men, as they actually did in 1914–18, they will give man back opportunities for the use of his art and brain, and on the battlefields of the future may be expected the triumphs of an Arbela, of quality over quantity. “It is the Man, not men, who count in war.” The tank assault of to-morrow is but the long-awaited re-birth of the cavalry charge, with the merely material changes that moving fire is added to shock, and that the armoured cavalry-tank replaces the vulnerable cavalry-horse. ”

“ If, however, the sea and land weapons are likely to continue until the air weapon reaches maturity, a study of the future of war would be incomplete without a discussion of their tendencies and development—and of the ways by which they may help to gain the moral objective.
THE NAVAL WEAPON
A fleet suffers one fundamental limitation on its freedom of action—it is tied to the sea. Hence it cannot strike directly at the hostile nation. Its action is either directed against the enemy’s stomach, and through that to his moral, or in conveying and serving as a floating base for troops or aircraft. ”

“ There is a certain weight in this argument, for if one lesson stands out clearly from the last war it is that the commerce and prosperity of civilized nations are so closely interwoven and interdependent that the destruction of the enemy country’s economic wealth recoils on the head of the victor. The obvious reply, however, is that even the widespread damage of a decisive air attack would inflict less total damage and constitute less of a drain on the defeated country’s recuperative powers than a prolonged war of the existing type. ”

“ Thus he gains his objective without himself suffering seriously. Surely those responsible for the direction of war might be expected to use their intelligence as much as a professional pugilist?
The first gleam of light on the military horizon appeared in the closing stages of the Great War. Recent publications have revealed that in 1918 the Tank Corps General Staff put forward a scheme, originating, it is understood, with its chief, Colonel Fuller, to strike at the nerve centres of the German army instead of at its flesh and blood—the fighting troops. ”