J. F. C. Fuller

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 retiring from the Army, Fuller became an admirer of Nazism, and a member of several fascist and pro-Nazi organisations including the British Union of Fascists and the Right Club. In 1940 he was involved in two coup plots against the British government. Despite this, unlike many other British fascists, he avoided internment, possibly due to his military connections.

Early life

Fuller was born in Chichester, West Sussex, the son of Alfred Fuller (1832–1927), an Anglican clergyman, and Selma Marie Philippine (1847-

–1940), née de la Chevallerie, of French descent but raised in Germany. Alfred Fuller retired as rector of Itchenor and moved to Chichester, where his son was born. After moving to Lausanne with his parents as a boy, he returned to England at the age of 11 without them; three years later, at "the somewhat advanced age of 14", he began attending Malvern College and, later trained for an army career at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from 1897 to 1898. or from an imperious manner combined with military brilliance which resembled Napoleon's. In the spring of 1904 Fuller was sent with his unit to India, where he contracted typhoid fever in autumn of 1905; he returned to England the next year on sick-leave, where he met the woman he married in December 1906 Instead of returning to India, he was reassigned to Volunteer units in England, serving as adjutant to the 2nd South Middlesex Volunteers (amalgamated into the Kensingtons during the Haldane Reforms) and helping to form the new 10th Middlesex. Fuller later claimed that his position with the 10th Middlesex inspired him to study soldiering seriously. In 1913, he was accepted into the Staff College, Camberley, starting work there in January 1914.

World War I

During the First World War, Fuller was a staff officer with the Home Forces and with VII Corps in France, and from 1916 in the Headquarters of the Machine-Gun Corps' Heavy Branch which was later to become the Tank Corps. he held various leading positions, notably as a commander of an experimental brigade at Aldershot. 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. 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.

Political activism

Pre-World War II

Involvement with British fascism

Impatient with what he considered the inability of democracy to adopt military reforms and taking a "very conventional soldier's view of politics", Fuller became involved with Sir Oswald Mosley and the British fascist movement. He had already lectured to the fascist-leaning New Britain Group in 1932. He also became a member of the clandestine far-right group the Nordic League by July 1939, By March 1936 he was reported to claim that Mosley was an obstacle to fascism in Britain. His wife also became involved in BUF activities, attending Mosley's Earls Court Exhibition Centre in July 1939 and dinner meetings with Fuller's fellow far-right conspirators during the Phoney War.

Involvement with foreign fascism

After preparing a report on the party organisation of BUF in October 1934, Fuller travelled to Nazi Germany in January 1935 alongside Oswald Mosley's confidant William Edward David Allen on a mission to study the Nazi Party structure and was the only foreigner present at the first Nazi German armed manoeuvres.

A rare Italophile within the BUF ranks after 1935 and a member of the British Union of Friends of Italy, he acted as the military correspondent for the Daily Mail from the Italian camp during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935), comparing Mussolini's invading force to the crusaders and the Hussites. 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). While Germany and to some degree the Western Allies adopted Blitzkrieg ideas, they were not much used by the Red Army, which developed its armored warfare doctrine based on deep operations, which were developed by Soviet military theorists Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky et al. in the 1920s based on their experiences in the First World War and the Russian Civil War. He delivered a talk on "The Hebrew Mysteries" to the Nordic League in March 1939, and in mid-1939 was a speaker for The Link at its "most violently pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic branch" in Central London. Prior to the war, he was a regular guest at George Pitt-Rivers's estate in Hinton St Mary, worked closely with George Drummond, the "madly pro-German and anti-Jew" chairman of Drummonds Bank and president of the Northampton branch of The Link, and was known to the MI5 as an associate of Philip Tonstall Farrer (an ex-intelligence officer with Nazi links), the German prince , and Archibald Maule Ramsay (the founder of the Right Club).

He continued to speak out in favour of a peaceful settlement with Germany. 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.

The Nine Principles of War

The Nine Principles involve the uses of force (combat power). They have been expressed in various ways, but Fuller's 1925 arrangement is as follows:

Direction: What is the overall aim? Which objectives must be met to achieve the aim?
Concentration: Where will the commander focus the most effort?
Distribution: Where and how will the commander position their force?
Determination: The will to fight, the will to persevere, and the will to win must be maintained.
Surprise (Demoralisation of Force): The commander's ability to veil their intentions while discovering those of their enemy. Properly executed Surprise unbalances the enemy – causing Demoralisation of Force.
Endurance: The force's resistance to pressure. This is measured by the force's ability to anticipate complications and threats. This is enhanced by planning on how best to avoid, overcome, or negate them and then properly educating and training the force in these methods.
Mobility: The commander's ability to manoeuvre their force while outmanoeuvring the enemy's forces.
Offensive Action (Disorganisation of Force): The ability to gain and maintain the initiative in combat. Properly executed Offensive Action disrupts the enemy - causing Disorganisation of Force.
Security: The ability to protect the force from threats.

Triads and Trichotomies

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, but that they complemented and overlapped each other as part of a whole, forming the Law of Economy of Force.

Organisation of Force

These Principles were further grouped into the categories of Control (command / co-operation), Pressure (attack / activity) and Resistance (protection / stability). The Principles of Control guides the dual Principles of Pressure and of Resistance, which in turn create the Principles of Control.

Cosmic Sphere: Goal (Object) & Desire (Objective) = Method (Economy of Force)
Goal is the overall purpose or aim of the mission (what Goals must the mission complete or achieve?).
Desire concerns the priority of the achievement or acquisition of the Goal (how important and essential is the Goal to the overall mission effort?).
Method is how the forces available will carry out the mission (How much of the mission's force will be assigned - or are available – to accomplish the Goal?).
Mental Sphere (1, 2, & 3): Reason (Direction) & Imagination (Concentration) = Will (Distribution)
Moral Sphere (4, 5, & 6): Fear (Determination) & Morale (Surprise) = Courage (Endurance)
Physical Sphere (7, 8, & 9): Attack (Offensive Action) & Protection (Security) = Movement (Mobility)

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. Recently they have also been applied to business tactics and hobby wargaming.

Lectures on Field Service Regulations III (1932)

Fuller also had a knack for aphorisms, witness: "To attack the nerves of an army, and through its nerves the will of its commander, is more profitable than battering to pieces the bodies of its men." His Lectures have attracted much attention over the course of decades, with one staff writer even going so far as to extend his vision of the tank as "master-weapon" to say that the helicopter not the tank would be the chief determinant of success on the battlefield from the late 20th century.

The book was carefully read by General Heinz Guderian of later Blitzkrieg fame and at the time Germany's foremost tank expert. The Soviet Army initially issued 30,000 copies of it and designated it as a table book for all Red Army officers. Later, the Soviets increased publication to 100,000 volumes. In Czechoslovakia, it became the standard reference for the teaching of mechanized warfare at their staff college. Ironically, in Britain only 500 copies were sold by 1935 while in the United States, the Infantry Journal received a copy at the time of publishing but failed to review it.

After the April 1911 Jones vs. The Looking Glass case, in which a great deal was made of Aleister Crowley's bisexuality (although Crowley himself was not a party to the case), Fuller became worried that his association with Crowley might be a hindrance to his career. Crowley writes in chapter 67 of his book, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley:

After this, contact between the two men faded rapidly. The front pages of the 1913 issues of the Equinox (Volume 1, nos. 9 and 10), which gave general directions to A∴A∴ members, included a notice on the subject of Fuller, who was described as a "former Probationer"; the notice disparaged Fuller's magical accomplishments and warned A∴A∴ members to accept no magical training from him. However, Fuller continued to be fascinated with occult subjects and in later years he would write about topics such as the Qabalah and yoga. During the mid-1940s, Charles Richard Cammell (author of Aleister Crowley: The Man, The Mage, The Poet) met with Fuller and reported his views about Crowley: "I have heard an eminent personage, General J.F.C. Fuller, a man famous in arms and letters, one who has known the greatest statesmen, warriors, dictators, of our age, declare solemnly that the most extraordinary genius he ever knew was Crowley." After the Second World War and Crowley's death, Fuller wrote a letter to Edward Noel FitzGerald stating: "Crowley was a genuine avatar, but I don't think he knew it, but I do think he senses it in an emotional way." (17 September 1949)

Works

Fuller was a prolific writer and published more than 45 books.

Books on Warfare

Tanks in the Great War, 1914-1918 (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1920) read online
The Reformation of War (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1923) read online
The Foundations of the Science of War. (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1926) read online
On Future Warfare (London: Sifton, Praed & Company, 1928)
India in Revolt (London: Eyre & Spottiswood, 1931) read online
The Dragon's Teeth: A Study of War and Peace (London: Constable and Company, 1932) read online
Lectures on Field Service Regulations III (1932) analysis
The First of the League Wars: A Study of the Abyssinian War, Its Lessons and Omens (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1936) read online (the book makes the claim that Bolshevism was Jewish
Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure: A Study of the Personal Factor in Command (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Military Service Publishing Company, 1936) read online
Decisive Battles: Their Influence upon History and Civilisation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940, 1060 p.)
Machine Warfare: An Enquiry into the Influence of Mechanics on the Art of War (London: Hutchinson, 1942)
Warfare Today; How Modern Battles are Planned and Fought on Land, at Sea, and in the Air - joint editors: J.F.C. Fuller, Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, and Air Marshal Sir Patrick Playfair (London: Odham's Press Ltd., 1944) read online
Armament and History: The Influence of Armament on History from the Dawn of Classical Warfare to the End of the Second World War (London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945)
The Second World War, 1939-1945: A Strategical and Tactical History (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1948)
The Decisive Battles of the Western World and Their Influence upon History (3 vols.) (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954–1956); it is - as described in its preface - a substantial revision of the 1940 edition. The U.S. ed. is A Military History of the Western World (3 vols.) (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1954–1957; republished by New York: Da Capo Press, 1987–8). A 2-volume edition, abridged by John Terraine to omit battles outside the European continent, was published in 1970 by Picador.
Volume 1: From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto
Volume 2: From the Defeat of the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Waterloo
Volume 3: From the American Civil War to the End of the Second World War
The Conduct of War, 1789-1961: A Study of the Impact of the French, Industrial, and Russian Revolutions on War and Its Conduct (Rutgers University Press, 1961)
v. 1; .
v. 2; .
v. 3; .

Biography

The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant (London: John Murray, 1929)
Grant & Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1933) read online
Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1936) read online
The Generalship of Alexander the Great (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1958).
Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier and Tyrant (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1965)

Books on Occultism

The Star in The West: A Critical Essay Upon the Works of Aleister Crowley (London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., 1907) read online
Yoga: A Study of the Mystical Philosophy of the Brahmins and Buddhists (London: W. Rider, 1925)
Atlantis, America and the Future. (London: Kegan Paul, 1925)
Pegasus (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1926)
The Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah: A Study in Jewish Mystical Thought (London: W. Rider & Co., 1937) read online

References

Notes