The British Army and the theory of armoured warfare 1918- 1940

Until now, historians have ascribed the British Army's failure oto meet the challenge of the German Blitzkrieg during the opening campaigns of World War II to either the army's social conservatism or the government's short sighted policies of the inter-war years. Most cavalry officers, the first school maintains, retained an archaic faith in the horse and the gentlemanly style of life it represented despite the lessons of World War I. With a stubbornness worthy of Wellington's lines at Waterloo, these officers blocked both the expansion of the Royal Tank Corps and the mechanisation of the cavalry. Other historians, however, have emphasises the dominan influence of the British Government policies which, with their severe budgetary restrictions on military spending and refusal to allow the army to prepare for a Continental war, caused the army's unpreparedness. Following a careful analysis of these earlier interpretations, Robert H Larson argues that, while possessing a limited degree of validity, they must be judged as inadequate. Instead, he asserts that behind tha tank controversy of the inter-war years lay a far more fundamental debate over the nature of modern war and the principle of strategy, and he concludes that it was the outcome of this debate that determined the course along which Britain's armoured forces evolved during the inter-war years and explains the army's failures in the early campaigns of Worl War II. In doing so, the book emphasises that the leading theorists of armoured warfare during this period-J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Lidell Hart- were not simply advocates of the new weapon as they are often portrayed ; rather they were profound theorists of war who sought to use tanks to recast radically the strategic doctrines of the British Army. Breaking through many of the stereotypes of that military establishments, it further emphasises that the army's failure lay not so much in its refusal to accept the tank as a vital weapon in future war as it did in its refusal to accept the theories Fuller and Lidell Hart proposed for their use. Finally it emphasises that within its traditional strategic doctrines, the British Army grew increasingly aware of the importance of tanks and steadily expanded their roleduring the inter-war years. In the end however, such changes proved to be merely cosmetic and left the army unprepared to meet the onslaught of the German Blitzkrieg. The result is an important contribution not only to our understanding of the British army during this period, but also to the general theme of the relationship between changing technology and the evolution of strategi doctrine.