The urge to gain release from tension by action is a precipitating cause of war.
B. H. LIDDELL HARTAir forces offered the possibility of striking a the enemy’s economic and moral centres without having first to achieve ‘the destruction of the enemy’s main forces on the battlefield’. Air-power might attain a direct end by indirect means – hopping over opposition instead of overthrowing it.
More B. H. Liddell Hart Quotes
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In the case of a state that is seeking not conquest but the maintenance of its security, the aim is fulfilled if the threat is removed – if the enemy is led to abandon his purpose.
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A modern state is such a complex and interdependent fabric that it offers a target highly sensitive to a sudden and overwhelming blow from the air.
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Ensure that both plan and dispositions are flexible, adaptable to circumstances. Your plan should foresee and provide for a next step in case of success or failure.
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While the nominal strength of a country is represented by its numbers and resources, this muscular development is dependent on the state of its internal organs and nerve-system – upon its stability of control, morale, and supply.
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Guerrilla war is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many.
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Direct pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent.
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The effect to be sought is the dislocation of the opponent’s mind and dispositions – such an effect is the true gauge of an indirect approach.
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The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.
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While hitting one must guard … In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.
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It is thus more potent, as well as more economical, to disarm the enemy than to attempt his destruction by hard fighting … A strategist should think in terms of paralysing, not of killing.
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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.
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The more closely [the German army] converged on [Stalingrad], the narrower became their scope for tactical manoeuvre as a lever in loosening resistance. By contrast, the narrowing of the frontage made it easier for the defender to switch his local reserves to any threatened point on the defensive arc.
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The theory of the indirect approach operates on the line of least expectation.
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In should be the duty of every soldier to reflect on the experiences of the past, in the endeavor to discover improvements, in his particular sphere of action, which are practicable in the immediate future.
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Loss of hope rather than loss of life is what decides the issues of war. But helplessness induces hopelessness.
B. H. LIDDELL HART