Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1895-1970), commonly known throughout most of his career as Capt. B. H. Liddell Hart, was an English soldier, military historian and military theorist. Following World...visualizza altroSir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1895-1970), commonly known throughout most of his career as Capt. B. H. Liddell Hart, was an English soldier, military historian and military theorist. Following World War II, he was a proponent of the West German rearmament and the moral rehabilitation of the German Wehrmacht. As part of these two interconnected initiatives, Liddell Hart significantly contributed to the creation of the Rommel myth.
Born on October 31, 1895 in Paris, France, the son of an English Methodist minister, Liddell Hart was educated at St. Paul’s School in London and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. On the outbreak of WWI in 1914, he volunteered for the British Army, where he became an officer in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and served with the regiment on the Western Front and was promoted to rank of captain in 1915. He fought in the Battle of the Somme and, following injury, was transferred to be Adjutant to Volunteer units in Stroud and Cambridge. After the war he transferred to the Royal Army Educational Corps, where he prepared a new edition of the Infantry Training Manual. He retired from the Army in 1927 and spent the rest of his career as a theorist and writer.
In 1924 he became a lawn tennis correspondent and assistant military correspondent for the Morning Post covering Wimbledon and in 1926 publishing a collection of his tennis writings as The Lawn Tennis Masters Unveiled. He worked as the Military Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1925 to 1935, and of The Times from 1935 to 1939.
In the mid to late twenties Liddell Hart wrote a series of histories of major military figures, including Great Captains Unveiled (1927) and Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (1929), and in 1953 edited The Rommel Papers.
The Queen made Liddell Hart a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours of 1966.
He died on January 29, 1970, aged 74.visualizza meno