Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists

232 Pages·3.441 MB·English

by  Azar Ga.t, Azar Gat, Chair of the Department of Political Science Azar Gat

Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists
Azar Gat
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207153.001.0001
Published: 1998 Online ISBN: 9780191677519 Print ISBN: 9780198207153
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Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists
Azar Gat
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207153.001.0001
Published: 1998 Online ISBN: 9780191677519 Print ISBN: 9780198207153
FRONT MATTER
Dedication 
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Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists
Azar Gat
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207153.001.0001
Published: 1998 Online ISBN: 9780191677519 Print ISBN: 9780198207153
FRONT MATTER
Preface 
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This book is the third in a cultural history trilogy of modern strategic thought. Following on my earlier .o
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works, The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz (1989) and The Development of p.c
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Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century (1992), it seeks to bring out some of the broader cultural m
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assumptions and intellectual in�uences which have shaped strategic theory from the outset of the twentieth o
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century. In view of the century’s great complexity, however, the book can claim even less /83
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comprehensiveness than its predecessors. It focuses on two themes of seminal signi�cance, to which /c
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separate studies are dedicated. Addressing fascism and liberalism, respectively, these studies revolve p
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around the challenge of modernity. Underlying them is the question how did the ascent of modern, r/1
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industrial, and technological mass society e�ect military theory. 39
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The �rst study deals with the visions of machine warfare which appeared from the beginning of the century 8
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throughout the developed world. While these visions were of course primarily linked to the spread of T
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industrialization, and especially to the advent of the internal-combustion engine, the study seeks to point e U
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out, and try to explain how it came about, that the earliest, most famous, and most far-reaching proponents iv
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of mechanized warfare were associated with proto-fascism and fascism. Both J. F. C. Fuller and Giulio rsity
Douhet, for example, the pioneering theorists of mechanized land and air warfare respectively, held proto- of N
fascist ideas even before the First World War, and both joined fascist movements as soon as they were orth
created. Indeed the same trend is discernible throughout the West. It will be suggested that the link here was C
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not accidental. In the �rst decades of the twentieth century the modernist strands of proto-fascism and rolin
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fascism celebrated technology and its achievements and futuristically envisioned the coming of a a
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technocratic, e�cient, and hierarchic Machine Age society. They thus attracted and inspired those who h
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championed sweeping futuristic visions of mechanized war. e
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The second study combines a drastic re-evaluation of B. H. Liddell Hart’s contribution to strategic theory ill L
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p. viii with an analysis of the rise in the post-First World War liberal West of a new conception of war. The rarie
study suggests that the profound shock with which liberal Western societies reacted to the staggering s u
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human and material costs of the Great War spurred a radical reformulation of the classical strategic theory er o
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which had been crystallized in the climate of nineteenth-century nationalism. The new strategic conception 0
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revolved around the notions of containment and cold war, �rst formulated in the language of theory by N
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Liddell Hart in his more mature and less-known writings of the second half of the 1930s. These notions e
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were tried out by the Western powers against Germany, Italy, and Japan as a complement and alternative to e
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appeasement, until the sudden collapse of their defences in Western Europe in May 1940 and in the Paci�c 0
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in December 1941 virtually forced Britain and the United States into total war. Nuclear weapons
immeasurably enhanced the logic of the new strategic concept, but, contrary to accepted assumptions, they
neither created nor have been solely responsible for it. Indeed, arising as it did from the wider
circumstances of the West’s ‘modern condition’, this concept remains the preferred strategic option of
Western powers even against non-nuclear adversaries. As the contours of the Cold War era are beginning to
reveal themselves, it seems to have become the advanced world’s strategic norm.
In writing this book I have had to deal with many historiographical questions which are related to its
subjects and which have recently become the centre of controversy. These mainly concern the development
of the doctrine of armoured warfare, Liddell Hart’s role in that development, the in�uence of the British on
the Germans, and the evolution of the Panzer arm. In all these I have found recent historiographical trends
partly or wholly misleading. Since these questions signi�cantly bear on, but do not directly belong to, my
chosen subjects, I devoted to them special studies which I intended to append to the book. When this proved
too cumbersome an arrangement, it was decided to keep them out of the book and have them published
separately. Interested readers are thus referred to my ‘Liddell Hart’s Theory of Armoured Warfare: Revising
the Revisionists’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 19 (1996), 1–30, and ‘British In�uence and the Evolution of the
Panzer Arm—Myth or Reality?’, War in History, 4 (1997), 150–73, 316–38, for full-scale studies of the
development of British and German interwar armoured doctrine.
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Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists
Azar Gat
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207153.001.0001
Published: 1998 Online ISBN: 9780191677519 Print ISBN: 9780198207153
FRONT MATTER
Acknowledgements 
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Subject: Military History, Modern History (1700 to 1945), Intellectual History from
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In the course of my work on this book and its satellite studies, I have incurred many pleasant debts to people em
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and institutions that have lent me their help and support. In Germany I was hosted by Militar- .o
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geschichtliches Forschungsamt, then in Freiburg i. Breisgau. I am particularly grateful to the institute’s p.c
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former Chief Historian, Professor Wilhelm Deist, who patiently and tactfully guided my steps into inter-war m
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German military history. In addition the warm friendship and hospitality which Professor and Frau Deist o
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extended to my family and myself made our stays in Freiburg even more rewarding. During my periods of /83
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research at Yale I was hosted by the International Security Program under the directorship of Professor Paul /c
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Kennedy. In Britain my mentor, Professor Sir Michael Howard, as well as Professors Brian Bond and Robert p
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O’Neill, shared with me their views and some personal recollections of Liddell Hart. Needless to say, the r/1
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views expressed and the errors and faults that still remain in this book are my responsibility alone. 39
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Of the many libraries and archives consulted in the course of my research, I am particularly thankful to the 1
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sta�s of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, London, and of the Bundes Archiv- T
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Militär Archiv, Freiburg, for their dedicated and patient service. The Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for e U
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Military Archives kindly gave me permission to cite from documents to which they hold copyright. I am also iv
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thankful to War in History and War and Society for allowing me to use material �rst published in these rsity
journals. Finally, my research in various countries over several years was made possible by the generous of N
support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the United States–Israel Educational Foundation orth
(Fulbright), and the British Council. I am most grateful to them all. C
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Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, Liddell Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists
Azar Gat
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207153.001.0001
Published: 1998 Online ISBN: 9780191677519 Print ISBN: 9780198207153
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1 Introduction: ‘The Janus Face’ of Fascism  m
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Abstract o
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The mechanization of warfare emerged along with the developments of the age and along with the 1
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emergence of modernist notions and visions spurred by the celebration of machine and the proto- h
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fascist and fascist outlook. This chapter suggest a close a�nity that had existed between the radical te
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warfare and the cultural and intellectual currents of proto-fascism and fascism ideology or outlook. 5
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Fascism emerged along with industrialization, urbanization, and the growth of the mass society. Its 3
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emergence was a result of a rebellion against the dominating bourgeois culture which is dominated by 7
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materialism, commercialism, alienating individualism, and the liberal-humanitarian values. Fascism y
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aimed to overcome parliamentarism, capitalism, and socialism through the application of communal e
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solutions which create a unifying e�ect among the populace. For the proponents of fascism, fascism n
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was the order of the future, superseding the obsolete parliamentary democracy in the new age of rs
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modern and industrial mass society. They believed that they would create a fully organized and o
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e�cient society, rule by a meritocratic, managerial government of experts. These modernist outlook o
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and the aspects of proto-fascism and fascism are examined in this chapter. C
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Keywords: mechanization of warfare, machine, proto-fascist, fascist, warfare, fascism, mass society at C
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Subject: Military History, Modern History (1700 to 1945), Intellectual History a
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This study suggests that a close a�nity existed between the radical visions of machine warfare—inspiring ries
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and debated by soldiers and civilians during the �rst decades of the twentieth century—and the cultural and se
intellectual currents partaking of the proto-fascist and fascist outlook, or ‘mood’. The mechanization of r on
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warfare was of course rooted in the general developments of the age, and was dependent upon tangible and 6 N
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material factors such as industrial capacity, technological advance, and geostrategic position. All the same, v
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visions of machine warfare largely belonged to the domain of ideas and the imagination, �owering most b
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vividly where their cultural and intellectual subsoil proved particularly fertile. Almost as a rule, they drew r 2
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heavily from the modernist notions and visions, celebration of the machine, and ideals of action, vigour, 2
and speed prominent within proto-fascism.
This proposition will probably not be foreign to historians of fascist ideas and imagery or to students of
fascist-modernist artistic culture, as it might be to military historians. The role of the machine and the
concept of a futurist machine-dominated society in the proto-fascist climate of ideas has become a well-
recognized theme. Increasingly since the 1960s, indeed, fascism as a political and cultural phenomenon has
been receiving far more serious scholarly attention than it had before. Two major revisions of earlier views
have emerged. First, scholars have argued that although fascism became a potent political force in the wake
of the political, social, and cultural dislocation brought about by the First World War—and in reaction
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against the spectre of Bolshevism—its growth dates from well before the inter war period, from as far back o
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as the late nineteenth century. Second, rather than being a ‘revolution of nihilism’, led and carried out by nlo
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gangs of thugs who were driven solely by a lust for power, fascism has been recognized as a comprehensive d
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p. 4 cultural ‘mood’, outlook, creed, or even ideology. It enjoyed strong appeal among intellectuals as a third fro
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way to modernity, an alternative to both liberalism and socialism. h
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To be sure, as a generic term fascism is notoriously ambiguous. Italian Fascism and German National- ://a
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Socialism di�ered from each other in some of their principal features; and these two central models were ad
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again di�erent from the French, British, and other fascist variants which rose in industrialized Europe, to
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say nothing of the authoritarian-conservative regimes and right-wing radical movements in the u
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predominantly agrarian countries of Eastern Europe, the Iberian peninsula, and Latin America, which from .co
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the 1930s adopted many features of fascist political culture. Concerned that ideological, chronological, and /b
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local diversity might render the concept itself dubious and unusable, some scholars have suggested a k
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‘fascist minimum’, of which the following is my own rough synthesis. Inevitably in view of our particular 1
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subject, it is tilted towards the intellectuals’ outlook rather than towards the fascist rank and �le or the h
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practices of fascist regimes. te
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Fascism emerged on the heels of industrialization, urbanization, and the growth of mass society. Those who 9
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shared in the proto-fascist and fascist ‘mood’ rebelled against bourgeois culture, with its ‘decadent’ 0
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materialism, commercialism, atomistic and alienating individualism, and liberal-humanitarian values. b
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They dreaded the further advance of plebeianism, mediocrity, and triviality expected with growing h
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democratization. Espousing idealism and exalting youth, elementary dynamism, and vitalism, they called U
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for comprehensive spiritual and cultural rejuvenation and the creation of a new man within a radically e
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reconstructed society. They sought to overcome divisive parliamentarism, capitalism, and socialism ity
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through the application of communal solutions which would mobilize the energies and loyalty of the masses f N
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around unifying national traditions, myths, and ideals. At the same time, they held that government should rth
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�rmly remain in the hands of a worthy elite, the creator and leader of the New Order.2 a
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p. 5 Fascist attitude towards the modern is a particularly ambivalent issue. The question of whether fascism was a
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reactionary or radical and forward-looking is much debated. Here, most signi�cantly, the considerable h
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di�erences existing between the various movements and intellectual currents which partook of the fascist e
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‘mood’ are discernible. German National-Socialism remarkably demonstrated the ‘Janus face’ of fascism: ill L
hostile to Western rationalist tradition, deeply nostalgic, and steeped in völkisch and agrarian mythology, ib
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while also projecting a futuristic Utopia, in which a vigorous German race would rule the vast territories of rie
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the new Reich and compete for global mastery, riding the most technologically advanced machines. On the s
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other hand, the Italian Fascists, although also recalling the glories of ancient Rome, saw themselves as the r o
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modern movement par excellence—the true heirs of the 1789 revolutionary tradition, nineteenth-century 6
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Garibaldian republicanism, and the positivist vision of progress. From the turn of the century the poet o
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Gabriele d’Annunzio, a precursor of the movement and its future artistic �gurehead, celebrated the machine m
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and modern technology, clothed in classical and mythological imagery, as a liberating and sublime r 2
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aesthetic, moral, and spiritual vehicle of the new age. In a similar vein, one of the main sources of Italian 22
Fascism was the Futurist movement in the arts, led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The Futurists �ercely
rejected any nostalgic yearnings for the past, aestheticized and worshipped the products of modern
technology, and marvelled at the qualities of a modernist, machine-dominated society. For the Italian
Fascists fascism was the order of the future, superseding obsolete parliamentary democracy in the new age
of modern, industrial mass society. These notions were even more central to the Franco-Belgian fascist
variety of Plannism, numbering among its theorists and adherents people like Henry de Man, Marcel Deat,
Jacques Doriot, and the leading �gure of Modernism in architecture, Le Corbusier. Equally, the followers of
Sir Oswald Mosley in the British Union of Fascists claimed modernity as their own. For these movements
p. 6 fascism was predominantly the modern response to the needs of the modern era, transcending both
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capitalism and socialism. It would create a fully organized and e�cient society, ruled by a meritocratic, o
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managerial government of experts, both made necessary by the complexities of the new technological age.3 nlo
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It is these modernist currents and aspects of proto-fascism and fascism that will concern us here. The d fro
futuristic aesthetization of the machine and of technological society (which has been amply highlighted by m
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scholars) and the fascist-modernist view of the shape of the modern world (which has not) were both ttp
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powerful cultural forces. Machine warfare visionaries may simply be thought to have identi�ed with the ://a
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fascist cult of violence, militarism, and quest for armament and for strong armed forces—and some of them ad
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certainly did. Yet these fascist attributes primarily hold true for the defeated and humiliated Germany of the
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1920s and 1930s, and to a lesser degree for Fascist Italy. French fascism was mostly paci�st, and Mosley and u
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his movement shared the general British reaction against the experience of the First World War. They .co
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genuinely regarded themselves as the ‘party of peace’, even before the prospect of war with Nazi Germany /b
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and Fascist Italy arose in the 1930s. Machine warfare visionaries were attracted to fascism for much broader k
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reasons. Invariably, and almost by de�nition, they were people of strong intellectual bent. They were driven 1
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by, or were searching for, a comprehensive outlook, interpretation of history and the direction it was taking, h
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and view of the current state of humanity, in which to anchor and from within which to develop their own te
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specialized vision. More often than not, it was towards the modernist strands of proto-fascism and fascism 5
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that they gravitated. 3
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Prelude: Positivism, Technology, and Future Society; Jules Verne and Th
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H. G. Wells n
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It is generally recognized that the late nineteenth century was characterized by a widespread so-called f N
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p. 7 ‘neo-Romantic revolt’ against positivism. This is taken to signify growing doubts regarding the mid- rth
nineteenth-century optimistic belief in a comprehensive, continuous, and accelerating progress, fuelled by C
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the rapid advance of science, technology, and education, and leading to steady moral improvement and lin
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growing economic and social well-being. The revolt involved a rejection of the materialistic-mechanistic a
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conception of reason, focusing instead on the elementary forces of life, the irrational springs of individual h
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and communal psyche, and a cult of action and creativity. For all that, in some important respects the label e
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‘revolt against positivism’ is not altogether satisfactory and needs to be used with discrimination. ill L
Positivism may be loosely employed to denote the prevailing outlook of the progressive educated public in ibra
the West during the mid-nineteenth century, but more technically it consisted of the various and often rie
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widely varying doctrines of such thinkers as Saint-Simon, Fourier, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and s
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their disciples. With them the element of the irrational, cyclical conceptions of history, and r o
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authoritarianism were as prevalent as secular materialism, linear optimism, and individualistic liberalism. 6
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The most diverse persuasions could draw from the positivist tradition, and did. The ideas of Jules Verne and ov
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H. G. Wells, the two most famous popular visionaries of the machine in the pre-fascist era, demonstrate this
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point. r 2
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The high tide of optimistic democratic-liberalism is exempli�ed by the inventor of the scienti�c novel and
‘child of Second Empire positivism’, Jules Verne (1828–1905). His internationally successful books shared
and built upon the general enthusiasm for the remarkable feats of science, technology, and engineering,
whose rapid advance was conspicuously changing daily life and �ring the public’s imagination during the
second half of the nineteenth century. In an age of explorations the Voyages extraordinaires took his readers
to the stretches of an unfolding globe and beyond, and dazzled them with the products and transforming
e�ects of future technology, which Verne suggested lay not very far over the horizon. What he o�ered was
not just spacecraft and aircraft, automobiles and submarines, gigantic cannons, huge projectiles, and gas
shells, but also social visions. Verne was an 1848 liberal for his entire life, who would actively support the
republic in 1870 and later run for the municipal council of Amiens on the republican-left ticket (while also
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being an anti-Dreyfusite). In his novels he stood for anti-authoritarian, humanitarian individualism, o
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freedom for oppressed peoples, and international brotherhood, quali�ed only by strong, sometimes nlo
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p. 8 chauvinist, French patriotism. In his characteristically Saint-Simonian and Fourierist Utopian garden d
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communities rational planning, enlightened social organization, electricity, and advanced sanitation fro
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brought about general welfare and happiness. For all that, even this progressive optimist succumbed to �ts h
of anxiety and pessimism. We now know they had already marked one of his earliest, most prophetic but ttps
unpublished novels, Paris au xx Siècle (completed in 1863), and they increased as he grew older and mid- ://ac
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century enthusiasm gave way to �n-de-siècle gloom. As the social, cultural, and environmental costs of e
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industrialization and commercialism became more apparent, Verne’s social and humanitarian Utopias were ic
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repeatedly overshadowed by evil or alienating technology, whose sombre potential ran amok, threatening p
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doom to both nature and humanity. m
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Expressing the turn-of-the-century mood of both boundless belief in progress and deep anxiety was the k
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most famous prophet of technology of his time and the practitioner of social futurology, H. G. Wells (1866– 1
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1946). Far more than Verne, whose British counterpart he was often regarded to be, Wells was a highly h
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committed popular social philosopher as well as a novelist. A scientist by education, he was a student of the te
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celebrated Thomas Huxley, Charles Darwin’s champion in the great public debates that followed the 5
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publication of The Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). An evolutionist like the rest of his 3
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generation, Wells none the less shared Huxley’s objections to the social Darwinists’ application of the 77
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categories of biology to the understanding of man’s social life. Like Huxley, he held that the spectacular y
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growth of human civilization once man’s biological potential had evolved was primarily a cultural and e
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historical process. This process was now entering a new stage. From his remarkable Anticipation of the niv
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Reaction of Mechanical and Scienti�c Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1902) onward, Wells sought to rs
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predict the shape of, and prepare humanity for, the industrial-commercial, urban, global, and scienti�c- o
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technological civilization which was in the making. He believed that it would require radically new forms of o
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human organization. C
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p. 9 A friend of G. B. Shaw and the Webbs, and for a time a member of the Fabian Society (which he failed to lin
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convert into a radical political order), Wells shared the Edwardian progressive-liberal-socialist quest for t C
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planned social reform. This was integrated, however, within his wider view of the course human history was a
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taking, which he crystallized early on in his career and which became his lifelong panacea. He believed that l H
the developments of the modern age, particularly the emergence of a global economy and the revolution in ill L
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communications (he predicted the proliferation of the automobile and the coming of air �ight), were ra
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leading towards a world state. In this new global community a culture of science and technology, education, s
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freedom, and enlightened humanitarianism would prevail. Yet, like the French positivists of the previous e
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century—Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Comte, who had advanced a remarkably similar views of the direction n
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and ultimate destination of human development—and unlike Spencer, whom he criticized on that account, N
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Wells thought modern society and the new world state would be neither democratic nor characterized by ve
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individualistic, unregulated laissez-faire. He shared the educated class’s growing suspicions of the b
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rationality of the masses, expressed for example by Wells’s close friend, the famous social psychologist r 20
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Graham Wallace, and by Gustave le Bon, whose highly in�uential works Wells often cited. Wells’s elitism,
while of a heroic and individualistic character, was of a di�erent sort from that of a Carlyle, a Nietzsche, or a
Shaw. For him, democracy was only a historical phase, mainly because the evolving highly advanced
scienti�c, technological, and industrial society would require sophisticated coordination and planning,