J. F. C. Fuller

Wikipedia:

Major-General John Frederick Charles “Boney” Fuller (1 September 1878 – 10 February 1966) was a senior British Army officer, a military historian and strategist, a fascist, and an occultist.

During World War I, Fuller became a staff officer in the Tank Corps and helped plan the tank attack during the Battle of Cambrai. His Plan 1919 for a fully mechanised offensive against the German army was not implemented, due to the end of the war.

As a military theorist, Fuller was highly prolific and his ideas influenced army officers in Britain, Germany and the USA. He emphasised the potential of new weapons, especially tanks and aircraft, and was regarded as one of the progenitors of blitzkrieg.

. . .After the war Fuller, who in January 1919 was promoted to brevet colonel in recognition of “valuable services rendered in connection with the War”, collaborated with his colleague B. H. Liddell Hart in developing new ideas for the mechanisation of armies, launching a crusade for the mechanisation and modernisation of the British Army. Chief instructor at the Staff College, Camberley from 1923, he served at the War Office as a GSO1 became military assistant to the chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1926. In what came to be known as the “Tidworth Incident”, Fuller turned down the command of the Experimental Mechanized Force, which was formed on 27 August 1927. The appointment also carried responsibility for a regular infantry brigade and the garrison of Tidworth Camp on Salisbury Plain. Fuller believed he would be unable to devote himself to the Experimental Mechanized Force and the development of mechanized warfare techniques without extra staff to assist him with the additional extraneous duties, which the War Office refused to allocate. He was consulted on the development of warfare by Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the summer of 1928. Fuller was promoted to major-general in 1930 and after refusing the command of the Second Class District of Bombay retired in December 1933 to devote himself entirely to writing.

. . .Fuller visited Nazi Germany regularly and came to know a number of the Nazi Party leaders. He frequently praised Adolf Hitler in his speeches and articles, once describing him as “that realistic idealist who has awakened the common sense of the British people by setting out to create a new Germany”. He came to believe that the Nazis had created a “scientific” state. On 20 April 1939, Fuller was an honoured guest at Hitler’s 50th birthday parade (attending “with official disapproval” along with Baron Brocket), watching as “for three hours a completely mechanised and motorised army roared past the Führer.” Afterwards Hitler asked, “I hope you were pleased with your children?” Fuller replied, “Your Excellency, they have grown up so quickly that I no longer recognise them.”

Fuller’s ideas on mechanised warfare continued to be influential in the lead-up to the Second World War, ironically less with his countrymen than with the Nazis, notably Heinz Guderian who spent his own money to have Fuller’s Provisional Instructions for Tank and Armoured Car Training translated. In the 1930s, the German Army implemented tactics similar in many ways to Fuller’s analysis, which became known as Blitzkrieg. Like Fuller, theorists of Blitzkrieg partly based their approach on the theory that areas of large enemy activity should be bypassed to be eventually surrounded and destroyed. Blitzkrieg-style tactics were used by several nations throughout the Second World War, predominantly by the Germans in the invasion of Poland (1939), Western Europe (1940), and the Soviet Union (1941). 

. . .He continued to speak out in favour of a peaceful settlement with Germany. In July 1939, he was reported by the Evening Standard as the prospective BUF candidate at the 1940 general election. In October 1939, he conferred in private with Barry Domvile and Lancelot Lawton; a source described him on the occasion as “very interesting but very bloodthirsty”. Between October 1939 and February 1940, he took part in a series of secret meetings held by the Marquess of Tavistock, a Hitler enthusiast, to discuss plans for collaboration with the Third Reich.

. . .By 1951, Fuller became a propagandist and supporter of the Munich-based Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, and he contributed to the crypto-fascist West German journal Nation Europa from 1951 to 1958. He later joined the League of Empire Loyalists, formed in 1954.

He spent his last years believing that the wrong side had won the Second World War. He most fully announced that thesis in the 1961 edition of The Reformation of War. There, he announced his belief that Hitler was the saviour of the West against the Soviet Union and denounced Churchill and Roosevelt for being too stupid to see so. Fuller died in Falmouth, Cornwall, in 1966.

. . .Fuller is perhaps best known today for his “Nine Principles of War” which have formed the foundation of much of modern military theory since the 1930s, and which were originally derived from a convergence of Fuller’s mystical and military interests. The Nine Principles went through several iterations; Fuller stated that “the system evolved from six principles in 1912, rose to eight in 1915, to, virtually, nineteen in 1923, and then descended to nine in 1925″. For example, notice how his analysis of General Ulysses S. Grant was presented in 1929.

The United States Army modified Fuller’s list and issued its first list of the principles of war in 1921, making it the basis of advanced training for officers into the 1990s, when it finally reconceptualised its training.

. . .Cabalistic influences on his theories can be shown by his use of the “Law of Threes” throughout his work. Fuller did not believe the Principles stood alone as is thought today,[80] but that they complemented and overlapped each other as part of a whole, forming the Law of Economy of Force.

. . .These Principles of War have been adopted and further refined by the military forces of several nations, most notably within NATO, and continue to be applied widely to modern strategic thinking.

An excerpt from, “The foundations of the science of war” by John Frederick Charles Fuller, 1926, London: Hutchinson & Co, Pg. 13-14:

The origins of this book may be of some interest, as the system outlined in it has been one of gradual growth, and, whatever value it may possess, it is the result of fifteen years’ study and meditation.

In the autumn of 1911 I spent my leave in northern Germany, and returned to England convinced that a European war might break out at any moment. This realization stimulated my interest in military history, and to prepare myself for the inevitable and rapidly approaching struggle I turned to the Field Service Regulations (1909 edition) for assistance. On the first and second pages of Part 1. I found the following :

The fundamental principles of war are neither very numerous nor in themselves very abstruse, but the application of them is difficult, and cannot be made subject to rules. The correct application of principles to circumstances is the outcome of sound military know- ledge, built up by study and practice until it has become an instinct.

This was excellent, but what were these fundamental principles? If they are neither numerous nor abstruse they must be few and simple, but not one was mentioned in the book, consequently it appeared to that, unless I knew what they were, the Field Service Regulations was of little use. I determined, therefore, to discover these hidden truths.

I turned to the Correspondence of Napoleon and studied it closely, and during 1912 I had come to the conclusion that the principles which had guided Napoleon were as follows:

. . .The principle of the Objective–the true objective being that point at which the enemy may be most decisively defeated ; generally this point is to be found along the line of least resistance. The principle of Mass — that is, concentration of strength and effort at the decisive point. The principle of the Offensive ; the principles of Security, Surprise, and Movement (i.e. rapidly).

I had now got six working principles, and, being satisfied with them, I was able to devote more time to Hall and Knight’s elementary mathematics, the bugbear of the old Staff College examination, which I passed in the summer of 1913.

Whilst at the Staff College I applied my principles and found them a great help. Then came the war, and, in December 1915, I wrote an anonymous article for the R.U.S.I. Journal entitled ” The Principles of War with Reference to the Campaigns of 1914-15.” This article was published in February 1916, and to the former six principles I added two new ones — the principle of economy of force and the principle of co-operation. In the summer of 1917 General Kentish, who was then in command of the Commanding Officers’ School in Aldershot, asked me to lecture on these principles, and I did so, and also on several other occasions. In March 1918 my lecture was published by him as a pamphlet. 

So far these principles could only be looked upon as a pure hypothesis deduced from the campaigns of Napoleon and checked by the events of the Great War. In 1919 I was able to give them more thought, and I began to collect evidence in order to test them. This year a committee was assembled by the Army Council to rewrite the Field Service Regulations, and the chairman of this committee one day said to me : “I believe you have written something on the principles of war. May I have it ? ‘ I gave him a copy of the above-mentioned pamphlet. In 1920 the principles I had laid down were, in a slightly modified form, included in the new edition of the Field Service Regulations.

In July 1920 I wrote an article for the first number of The Army Quarterly entitled ” The Foundations of the Science of War,” iri which my system was explained, and in 1922 I developed ‘”this system in chapter iii. of my book, The Reformation of War, which was published in February 1923. Between August 1922 and January 1923, being on half pay pending taking over an appointment at the Staff College, Camberley, I outlined and eventually wrote a series of some fifty lectures on ” The Science of War ” and ” The Analysis of the Art of War.” These lectures were given to the 1923 batch of Staff College Students, and were based on the following theory: