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

Gat's work is based on extensive archival research and a thorough reading of the works of his subjects. (International History Review)

a thouroughly researched, felicitously composed ... work that ... makes a very important point and deserves close attention from students of military thought. (Harold R. Winton, The Journal of Military History, Vol.64, No.3.)

Azar Gat has certainly done much to rescue Liddell Hart from the clutches of his recent critics. His book, like its predecessors, is a formidable achievement./ Brian Holden Reid, TLS, 21/05/99.

In this ground-breaking study, Professor Azar Gat examines how the theories of mechanized war developed throughout the industrial world in the first decades of the twentieth century. He explains why the most famous pioneers of these theories were asssociated with proto-facscism. Professor Gat then drastically re-evaluates B.H. Liddell Hart's contribution to strategic theory, overturning much of the criticism recently levelled against him. He argues that, in the wake of the trauma of the First World War, and in response to the Axis challenge, Liddell Hart developed the doctrine of containment and cold war long before the advent of nuclear weapons. He reveals Liddell Hart as a pioneer of the modern western liberal way in warfare which is still with us today.