Strategy

Rating:
Summary: It is still a classic
Review: Hart and all of his works have a place of their own in history of human warfare. The book covers most of the important battles and wars of all period up to the modern era. The look into the strategic position of each events mark the superior mind of Hart, a Captain who Generals listened to.

It's definitely for those who look beyond the tactical geniuses of field-commanders and more on the strategic plane of the conflict. It's a beginner's awe and a bluff's dream, but also a source of original inspiration for old-timers.

Buy it before it becomes extinct, not in a long time I hope.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Piece of Work
Review: Hart does an amazing job analyzing past wars to come up with a new doctrine for military thought. His emphasis on the militaristic indirect approach to military engagements, and how it coincides with what he calls the "grand" strategy is definetely worth the attention of any tactician, as well as any history buff. Hart's book has very smooth transition between his topics of discussion, and even readers who are fairly new to the subject of war can pick this book up and understand it. Strategy can also be applied to everyday situations, and would be a great read for business adventurists. Hart really has put some thought into his creation, and it is a definite must read!

Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece -- still
Review: Here Liddell Hart sums up his principles of strategy, illustrating his ideas with examples throughout history. Critics have claimed, with some justice, that he got too wrapped up in his major idea, the "indirect approach," and oversimplified the campaigns he reviewed here to bolster his point. What a reader must realize, however, is that by the time this book was written, much of Liddell Hart's approach had been battle-tested, with spectacular results: among those who credited him were Guderian, Rommel, and Montgomery. If his "indirect approach" is not universally effective, especially against opponents who have also read the book, it is still brilliant and valuable.
Liddell Hart seems to have fallen into disfavor in U.S. military circles, to a degree that cannot be explained simply by his disagreement with Clausewitz about the necessity of destroying the main force of the enemy. While not crediting him, the U.S. applied an indirect approach, emphasizing rapid maneuver, with great success in the Gulf War. Perhaps the explanation lies in a careful reading of the last chapter, added in the 1967 edition, in which he suggests that counter-guerilla warfare must aim to disrupt the guerillas' sources of supply and liaison with allied regular forces nearby -- in short, to win, the U.S. needed to isolate the battlefield. Maybe the U.S. thinkers didn't want to hear this -- and it hasn't helped that, once again, he was absolutely right.
So, by all means, read this book carefully. But then also read
his critics. Nobody, even Liddell Hart (or Clausewitz, or Sun Tzu) had all the answers, and the art of applying past principles to future conflicts keeps changing.

Rating:
Summary: uninspiring as a history, provoking as a book on theory
Review: I apologize in advance for my lack of brevity, but to be fair to the author I feel that I must analyze this book at length.
While somewhat unimpressed by Hart's biography of Scipio Africanus, Hart's enviable reputation and the praise he garnered from some of our century's greatest generals encouraged me to give Strategy a chance. At first it looked like another disappointment, but I have come to appreciate this as a truly worthwhile book.
The bad first: The opening section of this book is an attempt by Hart to trace the entire history of Western warfare and demonstrate that in each era of history the indirect approach has worked better than direct assaults. For 143 pages he makes this point over and over again without adding any more detail. I quickly began to feel that he was oversimplifying events, and several times he seems to make very tenuous stretches between events and his theories. At other times it feels like he is attempting to stretch events to fit his theories when there is an insufficiently strong connection. He also seems to have an inadequate grasp of some of the historical periods. His knowledge of the American Civil War seemed a bit piecemeal to me, and his assertion that McClellan's indirect approach during the Peninsular campaign failed due to Lincoln's refusal to increase McClellan's forces does not match well with what I have heard from other sources, which blame McClellan's failure on his own hesitations.
After this section Hart enters into the period of the World Wars. Here he truly starts to shine. The campaigns are described in much greater detail and readers are treated to much better examples and explanations than previously. At last his theories can be envisioned and we hear something more detailed than the monotonous (if correct) repitition of the phrase "indirect approach."
After this excellent analysis of the World Wars, Hart moves on to discuss his theories. Here at last is the brilliance that had been promised. As irritated as I was with his history, his abstract writings were beautiful, concise, and thought-provoking. He is even-handed, imaginative, and rather than the over-simplification that I criticize him for in his earlier chapters he gives excellent and informative explanation. Of particular merit is his discussion of the limitations of Clausewitz (as commonly interpreted).
His final chapter discusses guerilla warfare and raises some fascinating questions about the downside of encouraging guerilla warfare against your enemies. While I think Hart might have erred on the side of caution here, the points he raises all have great merit and the fact that US-funded guerillas in Afghanistan later became a threat to the US bears out his warnings. My one criticism of this chapter is that it feels unfinished; he does not develop both sides of the argument and he does not suggest measures to help with the problems that he foresees.
On the whole, I find Hart to be an uninspiring historian but a brillian strategist and highly recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in grasping the true art of military matters.

Rating:
Summary: Pbbbbbt.
Review: I bought this book with high expectations, based largely on the legend that the German officer corps based much of their strategy on Hart's writings from before the war. If so, it's hard to image how they stayed awake long enough to overrun most of Europe.

Hart has a positive fixation with "the indirect approach" to war. Just what this is, is never made entirely clear, except that it seems to be whatever wins a battle. The phrase seemed meaningful enough when Hart first used it, but the page after tedious page that followed left me more uncertain just what it meant than when I started.

One gets the sense that Hart is determined to prove that "the indirect approach" is the only way a battle can be won, even if this requires massive massaging of the facts. For example, the Normandy campaign, beginning with D-Day, was about as direct and frontal an assault as one can imagine. The breakout was successful mainly because weeks of brutal frontal assaults, at Caen and in the hedgerows, had created room for maneuver, and because the breakout was preceeded by the most massive tactical carpet bombing history had seen to that time. But -- lo and behold! -- this was really an indirect approach, because Operation Fortitude had so badly mislead the Germans. Fortitude certainly played an important role, but only because it was coupled with a very direct and massive application of air power to the Frenchg transportation system. Hart is suspending some mighty heavy weights from some awfully slender threads here.

But the biggest problem is that the book is simply _boring_. If Hart's point is that Clausewitz' principle of attacking the main body of the enemy is outdated, he could have said so in a few pages and spared us the other 300 pages of repetition. Of course, he would have to prove this highly questionable assertion. Maybe those 300 pages are inadvertent proof that the assertion is wrong and therefore unprovable.

Rating:
Summary: Belisarius said it Best!
Review: I have an original edition of this book and found it useful to read at odd moments. As a naval oficer and one-time World History teacher, I found the early parts of the book fascinating and useful. And by the time Hart reaches his discussion of the age of Justinian and the re-conquest of the Roman Empire by Belisarius, one really has learned quite a bit about Western Civilization and its war history.

The chapter on Belisarius should be committed to memory by all of the current administration's strategic advisors should, because it was Belisarius who developed the Byzintine Empires strategy of winning wars by not "fighting" them.

Belisarius realized that a defeated Roman Empire could re-emerge as a great threat to Constantinople, as could the re-energized Persian Empire and the numerous babarian states surrounding Byzantium. And even with its great position as a world culture and trading capital, neither Justinian nor his empire could afford to engage every threat directly. Therefore, surrogates, feints and his age's version of "gunboat diplomacy" was much more cost effective. In fact Belisarius was one of the most effective generals of all time, even though his actual field leadership experience in battle was relatively limited.

(As an aside -- I would not be surprised if Belisarius was studied vigorously by every Soviet general who ever served. It seems that even though their government carried out a flawed political ideal, their strategies definitely articulated many of Belisarius's military ideas.)


Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: I see you read my book. Nice one Si Hin

Rating:
Summary: Very good book on the history of war
Review: I want to start by saying that I recommend this book to people that like to read about military history and strategy; however, I am not that high on this book as other reviewers.

"Strategy" was written with the purpose to prove one thing: battles and wars are normally won by unbalancing the enemy at all the levels, a strategy the author coins as the "Indirect Approach", not by attacking him directly. The book has two sections, one which narrates the history of warfare from the Persian Wars all the way to the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. The second section postulates the principles of Indirect Approach and "revisions" on Von Clausewitz's postulates.

That said, unlike other reviewers, I believe that there are two landmark books on War better than this one, Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and Von Clausewitz's "On War". While Liddell Hart had the benefit of living on the time when Von Clausewitz's war "premises" were revised after the massacres of WWI, and Liddell Hart is one of the grandfathers of modern tank warfare, I think his concept of "Indirect Approach" is a modernization of Sun Tzu's principles on deception in warfare. That is why I think this book does not have the theoretical value other reviewers want to give.

As for his historical evidence about the application of the "Indirect Approach", I think many accounts are based on biased reports that don't truly tell us the complete picture (for more on this, I recommend Hans Delbruck's History of Warfare series, which is the best I've read). If this is correct it would undermine the supposedly "overwhelming" evidence of his theory. I would add, however, that his description of WWII is extraordinary and I consider it the best analysis on the overall conflict I've ever read.

Overall, I think two thing makes the book worthy. First, the Indirect Approach has the spirit of Sun Tzu in it. The way this concept clarify's some of the old precepts on the chinese manual about war is extraordinary. Besides, it completely modernizes the spirit of the "Art of War" and proves there are many ways to outclass an enemy and force him to make a mistake in modern times. It also presents a great principle on winning the Grand Strategy, in the realm of politics, before even considering victory at the Strategic and Tactical levels. I would recommend the book because of this and because of the great description on WWII.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointingly Shallow High School Essay
Review: I would like to direct other Amazonians to the comment written by Khan7 from St. Louis who detailed many of the weaknesses of this book. I agree wholeheartedly with Khan7 and was overwhelmingly disappointed with the book, especially after reading Liddell Hart's insightful introduction to 'The Rommel Papers,' which he edited. I was expecting something better.

To summarize, 'Strategy' lays out a simply thesis, and repeats this thesis at nauseum throughout the book. Although the thesis, that an indirect strategy is better than a direct one, is a valid one, it is far from groundbreaking and Liddell Hart spends the entire book finding historical examples to back this up.

There are a number of irritating aspects with the book, the biggest one being that Liddell Hart uses the word 'indirect' or 'indirectness' every five sentences. This gets extremely monotonous and isn't terrific reading. Another problem with the book is the lack of maps. Some of the maps that are in the book are illegible, although that may be a function of the printing quality of my particular copy.

In conclusion, although you might be tempted to get 'Strategy' in order to get a brief overview of Western military history, don't, this book is not particularly well written and covers the important wars either too superficially or not at all. I don't think there is an easy way (i.e., reading a short book) to cover all of history's major wars so your best bet is to just dig into the classics of each war (Churchill's WWII volumes, Caesar's Commentaries, etc.).

Rating:
Summary: Read your history first ...
Review: I'll take a different tack, and say that I was particularly struck by Liddell Hart's insights into ancient and medieval warfare. Yes, the author was a man of the 20th century, but he certainly improved my understanding of warfare before the machine gun. If there is one criticism of his book, I would have to say that it is in Liddell Hart's assumption that his reader already has a good grasp of military history. The "you know this already, so I'll skip over to the conclusion" attitude is very peculiar to the British, and I would recommend that one read some basic military history first before tackling what is definately a must read.

The previous reader from Redlands, CA, is quite correct in viewing Liddell Hart with a critical eye. I'm no military history buff, but I do understand that LH was a bit of a controversial figure who spent much of his life maneuvering to gain his "proper" place in the history of strategic thought. Still, I would definately recommend this book: for better or worse, it is a milestone, and fun to read as well.