J.F.C. Fuller

J.F.C. Fuller (September 1, 1878 – February 10, 1966), full name John Frederick Charles Fuller, was a British Major General, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising principles of warfare. He was also the inventor of "artificial moonlight".

Biography

Fuller was born in 1878, in Chichester, West Sussex, England and educated at Malvern College and Royal Military Academy Sandhurst from 1897 to 1898. He was commissioned into the Oxfordshire Light Infantry and served in South Africa from 1899 to 1902. He then attended Staff College at Camberley and served as an adjutant to a territorial battalion. During World War I, he was a staff officer with the Home Forces and with 7 Corps in France, and from 1916 in the HQ of the Machine Gun Corps' Heavy Branch which was later to become the Tank Corps. He planned the tank attack at Cambrai and the tank operations for the autumn offensives of 1918. His Plan 1919 for a fully mechanised army was never implemented, and after 1918 he held various leading positions, notably as a commander of an experimental brigade at Aldershot.

Related Topics:
Chichester - Malvern College - Royal Military Academy Sandhurst - 1897 - 1898 - Oxfordshire Light Infantry - South Africa - 1899 - 1902 - Camberley - Adjutant - World War I - Machine Gun Corps - Tank Corps - Cambrai - 1918 - Plan 1919 - Aldershot

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In the 1920s, he collaborated with his junior B.H. Liddell Hart in developing new ideas for the mechanisation of armies.

Related Topics:
1920s - B.H. Liddell Hart - Mechanisation

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On his retirement in 1933, and impatient with what he considered the inability of democracy to adopt military reforms, he became involved with Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Fascist movement. As a member of the British Union of Fascists he sat on the party's Policy Directorate and was considered one of Mosley's closest allies. His ideas on mechanised warfare continued to be influential in the lead up to World War II, ironically more with the Germans, notably Heinz Guderian, than with his countrymen.

Related Topics:
1933 - Democracy - Oswald Mosley - Fascist - British Union of Fascists - World War II - German - Heinz Guderian

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Fuller was a vigorous, expressive and opinionated writer of military history and of controversial predictions of the future of war.

Related Topics:
Military history - War

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Fuller was also a long-term acquaintance of Aleister Crowley and was familiar with his, and other forms of, magick and mysticism.

Related Topics:
Aleister Crowley - Magick - Mysticism

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