Basil H. Liddell Hart

Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (born October 31, 1895 in Paris , † January 29, 1970 in Marlow ) was a British military historian, correspondent and strategist .

Life

Basil Liddell Hart was the son of a Methodist clergyman and trained at St Paul's School in London and Corpus Christi College in Cambridge . During the First World War he served as an officer in the British Army . In 1920 he was responsible for British infantry regulations . In 1927 he resigned as captain of the army. He became an internationally respected military writer. Since the late 1920s, Liddell Hart was a proponent of the doctrine of the indirect approach , which emphasizes the importance of destabilizing enemy forces by skillfully maneuvering before a direct encounter with the enemy. He recognized the importance of a mobile tank force early on .

He later worked as a consultant for the Daily Telegraph and from 1935 for the Times . He was considered a luminary in military matters. From 1937 he advised Leslie Hore-Belisha , the British Minister of War at the time . However, his nimbus in Great Britain soon waned, as he had called for a compromise peace between the UK and Hitler's Germany before the start of World War II . That had "completely discredited" him in the eyes of his English readership.

After the Second World War he interviewed the defeated German generals, from which the book The other side of the hill , in the German edition Now they are allowed to speak - Hitler's generals report , was written, which became a great success in the British and then German book market. Later, through contact with the Erwin Rommel family, he succeeded in publishing his neglected records, which also achieved high editions ( The Rommel Papers , with a comment by Fritz Bayerlein ). In the 1950s, Liddell Hart published some articles in the right-wing German Soldatenzeitung .

His approach to military history was biographically oriented towards great personalities and, in his historical accounts, always aimed to draw lessons from history. He was fascinated by TE Lawrence 's life and wrote his biography.

In 1964, today's Liddell Hart Center for Military Archives was founded at King's College London .

In 1966 he was ennobled .

Quote

“As a result of his (ie, Clausewitz ' ) teaching, applied by thoughtless disciples, generals were encouraged to seek combat at the first opportunity rather than creating an advantageous opportunity. Thus from 1914 to 1918 the art of war was reduced to a two-sided slaughter. "

- Basil H. Liddell Hart : The Strategy of Indirect Approach , Chapter XVII, p. 293.

Works (selection)

• Scipio Africanus : Greater Than Napoleon ; London, 1926. In German translation
  • The General - The Deeds of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus . Beck, Munich, 1938
• Great Captains Unveiled - from Genghis Khan to General Wolfe ; London 1927. In German translation: Great Heerführer - Genghis Khan, Subutai, Maréchal de Saxe (Moritz von Sachsen (1696–1750), Gustav Adolf of Sweden, Wallenstein, James Wolfe. Econ, Düsseldorf 1968
• The Decisive Wars of History (London, 1929)
• The Real War 1914-1918 (London, 1930)
• Foch, the man of Orleans . Harmondsworth, England 1931. In German translation
  • Foch - The general of the Entente . Vorhut Verlag, Berlin, 1938
• TE Lawrence. In Arabia and After . Jonathan Cape Publisher, London 1934 ( online ). In German translation:
  • Colonel Lawrence - The Crusader of the 20th Century . Vorhut Verlag Schlegel, Berlin, 1935
• Tomorrow's infantry . Voggenreiter, Potsdam, 1934
• When England takes to the field: considerations on British strategy . Translation by Arthur Erhardt, Voggenreiter, Potsdam 1937.
• The Defense of Britain ; London 1939. (Published in autumn 1939 after Poland was defeated by Germany in World War II ) also in German translation:
  • The defense of Great Britain . Scientia AG., Zurich 1939
  • The revolution in warfare . Faber and Faber, London 1946
• Why don't we learn from history? ; London, 1946. In German translation
  • Why don't we learn from history? Scientia AG, Zurich 1946)
• The other side of the hill ; London, 1948. In German in several editions:

The strategy of a dictatorship - the rise and fall of German generals. Zurich 1949. In Germany as:

Now they can talk: Hitler's generals report. Stuttgart publishing event, Stuttgart et al. 1950.

• Thoughts on the defense of Europe . Nation Europa Verlag , Coburg 1951.
• Defense of the West. In German: The Defense of the West: Riddles of War. Riddle of peace . Translation by Kurt Friebel. Europa Verlag, u. a. Constance 1951.
• Strategy - the indirect approach ; London, 1954 ( Strategy . German by Horst Jordan, Rheinischer Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1954)
• Deterrent or Defense ( deterrent or defense - thoughts on the defense of the West ; Wiesbaden, 1958)
• The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart , London, 1965 ( life memories ; Düsseldorf, Vienna, 1966)
• History of the Second World War (London, 1970) in German translation
  • History of the Second World War . In two volumes, Econ, Düsseldorf, 1972

literature

• Werner Hahlweg : Clausewitz at Liddell Hart. An unidentified Clausewitz letter in Wolverton Park . In: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 41 (1959), pp. 100-106.
• Brian Bond : Liddell Hart. A study of his military thought , London, Cassell 1977.
• Brian Bond, Martin Alexander: Liddell Hart and de Gaulle: the doctrine of limited liability and mobile defense , in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
• John Mearsheimer : Liddell Hart and the Weight of History. Cornell University Press, 1988.
• Brian Holden Reid Studies in British military thought: debates with Fuller and Liddell Hart , University of Nebraska Press 1998.
• Alex Danchev: Alchemist of war. The life of Basil Liddell Hart. Phoenix Giant, London 1998.

Web links

• Literature by and about Basil H. Liddell Hart in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Basil H. Liddell Hart in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christoph Cornelißen: The "Weser Exercise" in the mirror of popular and scientific historiography . In Robert Bohn ; Christoph Cornelißen ; Karl Christian Lammers (Ed.): Politics of the past and cultures of remembrance in the shadow of the Second World War. Germany and Scandinavia since 1945. Klartext, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89861-988-2 . P. 151 f.
2. ↑ One pound of infantry , article from January 14, 1953 on Spiegel Online
3. ^ Characterized by Brian Holden Reid in Introduction: Brian Bond. Military Historian , in David French, Brian Holden Reid, Brian Bond The British General Staff: reform and innovation c.1890-1939 , London: Frank Cass, 2002. p. 2