Liddell Hart, Captain Basil

1895–1970

   Liddell Hart was a brilliant military thinker whose ideas were largely ignored by the British Army. He had served in the Army during World War I and had written an official manual Infantry Training in 1920. In 1924 he retired from the Army in order to promote and develop his ideas. He became a leading exponent of the use of tank and air power, a complete rejection of the World War I policy of static warfare. He developed ideas using a force of tanks as an independent striking force to make deep penetrations into enemy territory, cutting off enemy troops from their supplies and high command. During the interwar period very few people in Britain listened to him; in fact the Germans seem to have benefited from his results since both GUDERIAN and ROMMEL studied his work and called themselves his pupils. For a short time he served as an adviser to HOREBELISHA, the War Minister, in 1937, but during the war he held no official appointments. After the war he interviewed many of the senior German Generals, including RUNDSTEDT, LEIST and WARLIMONT and after years of writing wrote the best onevolume history of World War II available today.