November 28, 2007
An Excursion into Military History
John Frederick
Minutes of the Tenth Meeting of the 66th Year
President Joe Giordmaine opened the 10th meeting of the 66th year at 10:15 AM.
George Hansen led the invocation. Ken Gould introduced his guest Michael Kaplan, John Frederick introduced his wife Jean and Bill Haynes introduced his visitor Mark Leap. There were 125 people in attendance.
President Joe Giordmaine informed members of the Memorial Service dates for Old Guard members Tom Hartmann (Dec. 1) and Ray Stratmeyer (Dec. 11).
Minutes of the last meeting were presented by Gerald Berkelhammer.
Last week’s speaker was introduced by Jim Harford. He was Old Guard member John Frederick, Episcopal priest, author, with a book on the Liturgical Movement, but also two books on military history. It was the latter topic on which John spoke to us last week in a talk entitled “An Excursion into Military History.”
It was an “excursion, an elegant excursion, covering military history concurrent with the career of a talented, involved, creative, also unconventional, British Major General name John Frederick Charles Fuller. Not widely known and ignored by do-nothing politicians and others of his day, those who did know recognized him as the leading advocate of armoured warfare in the 20th century. And he was not ignored by Heinz Guderian, architect of the German panzer blitzkrieg, nor by Irwin Rommel. Fuller was the only Englishman invited to observe the German Manoeuvres of April 1939. He had earlier been responsible for the world’s 1st ever large scale use of tanks in the route of the German defenses at the 1917 battle of Cambrai. Fuller had seen tanks less as infantry than as a revolutionary application of naval tactics to land warfare. And woe to the French! While they had taken Fuller seriously in distributing his views throughout their command, they had continued to tie tanks to an infantry role. It was the Germans, who in 1940 first applied Fuller’s naval tactics strategy, as Guderian’s panzer divisions gained total victory as they blitzed thru French defenses even though the French actually had more and heavier tanks.
Fuller felt that both 20th century wars had violated the Clausewitz principle that war must be an extension of politics least it degenerate into mere slaughter. The policy of “unconditional surrender” was a fatal mistake, The implications of this slipshod slogan were even more fatal to the future of the western world than was Woodrow Wilson’s “self-determination” which Fuller construed as meaning that war was no longer to be accepted as an instrument of creative policy for the establishment of peace, but instead as an instrument of pure destruction.
Fuller saw Roosevelt as ignorant in matters of strategy and Churchill as tragic. He considered FDR’s characterization of “Uncle Joe” as sentimental, naïve, dangerous. While the damage may already have been done, it left Harry Truman to naively underestimate Stalin when he succeeded FDR at Potsdam. Truman bragged that he could “handle Uncle Joe” but it ended with Uncle Joe being handed half of Europe. As for Churchill, he had forecast post war politics with his advocacy of an Eastern Europe – Adriatic Sea invasion route alternative to Normandy. But Roosevelt’s determination to crush Germany led him to subordinate the political considerations, taking absolutely no account of how the future of Europe would unfold.
Fuller’s final published work was a three volume set titled “A Military History of the Western World.” It takes you from the earliest times to the 1944 battle of Layte Gulf. It has been described as a seminal work. I believe that John F. can tell you how to find it.
On the model of the earlier Pax Britannica, Fuller thought that the war issue for modern man would be decided by Pax Americana. But alas! The tactics employed by modern enemies were not mechanized industrial ones that Fuller knew from the classic battlefields of Europe. Industrial superiority had found its limitations!
Thank you, John
Respectfully submitted,
J. H. Johnson
George Hansen led the invocation. Ken Gould introduced his guest Michael Kaplan, John Frederick introduced his wife Jean and Bill Haynes introduced his visitor Mark Leap. There were 125 people in attendance.
President Joe Giordmaine informed members of the Memorial Service dates for Old Guard members Tom Hartmann (Dec. 1) and Ray Stratmeyer (Dec. 11).
Minutes of the last meeting were presented by Gerald Berkelhammer.
Last week’s speaker was introduced by Jim Harford. He was Old Guard member John Frederick, Episcopal priest, author, with a book on the Liturgical Movement, but also two books on military history. It was the latter topic on which John spoke to us last week in a talk entitled “An Excursion into Military History.”
It was an “excursion, an elegant excursion, covering military history concurrent with the career of a talented, involved, creative, also unconventional, British Major General name John Frederick Charles Fuller. Not widely known and ignored by do-nothing politicians and others of his day, those who did know recognized him as the leading advocate of armoured warfare in the 20th century. And he was not ignored by Heinz Guderian, architect of the German panzer blitzkrieg, nor by Irwin Rommel. Fuller was the only Englishman invited to observe the German Manoeuvres of April 1939. He had earlier been responsible for the world’s 1st ever large scale use of tanks in the route of the German defenses at the 1917 battle of Cambrai. Fuller had seen tanks less as infantry than as a revolutionary application of naval tactics to land warfare. And woe to the French! While they had taken Fuller seriously in distributing his views throughout their command, they had continued to tie tanks to an infantry role. It was the Germans, who in 1940 first applied Fuller’s naval tactics strategy, as Guderian’s panzer divisions gained total victory as they blitzed thru French defenses even though the French actually had more and heavier tanks.
Fuller felt that both 20th century wars had violated the Clausewitz principle that war must be an extension of politics least it degenerate into mere slaughter. The policy of “unconditional surrender” was a fatal mistake, The implications of this slipshod slogan were even more fatal to the future of the western world than was Woodrow Wilson’s “self-determination” which Fuller construed as meaning that war was no longer to be accepted as an instrument of creative policy for the establishment of peace, but instead as an instrument of pure destruction.
Fuller saw Roosevelt as ignorant in matters of strategy and Churchill as tragic. He considered FDR’s characterization of “Uncle Joe” as sentimental, naïve, dangerous. While the damage may already have been done, it left Harry Truman to naively underestimate Stalin when he succeeded FDR at Potsdam. Truman bragged that he could “handle Uncle Joe” but it ended with Uncle Joe being handed half of Europe. As for Churchill, he had forecast post war politics with his advocacy of an Eastern Europe – Adriatic Sea invasion route alternative to Normandy. But Roosevelt’s determination to crush Germany led him to subordinate the political considerations, taking absolutely no account of how the future of Europe would unfold.
Fuller’s final published work was a three volume set titled “A Military History of the Western World.” It takes you from the earliest times to the 1944 battle of Layte Gulf. It has been described as a seminal work. I believe that John F. can tell you how to find it.
On the model of the earlier Pax Britannica, Fuller thought that the war issue for modern man would be decided by Pax Americana. But alas! The tactics employed by modern enemies were not mechanized industrial ones that Fuller knew from the classic battlefields of Europe. Industrial superiority had found its limitations!
Thank you, John
Respectfully submitted,
J. H. Johnson