Admiral's War College

"Conquer or be conquered"

-Admiral David Farragut

This book is mandatory reading. Hart spends time blending the art of warfare dictated by Sun Tzu with the ferocity and general strategy of Clausewitz

While Clausewitz stated that "blood is the price of victory," Hart posits through an in depth study of historical battles from Greece to Napoleon to WWII, that it was rather an indirect approach to battle that led to victory. Indirectness being more effective at subduing your enemy than direct confrontation through battle. Whether it be through psychological or physical means, dislocating the joints of your enemy's defense leads overwhelmingly to victory in battle. One could consider this a "Judo" way of thinking about warfare.

This isn't a book on troop movements and logistics but rather a book for generals to begin to think "outside of the box" as it were. Learn to think in other, more intelligent ways. Learn to wage war efficiently and effectively to achieve total victory.

"A dead soldier is a dead solider. One less man on the battlefield.

A demoralized soldier becomes an agent of fear spreading the pandemic of hopelessness amongst the ranks"

-B.H. Liddell Hart, The Classic Book On Military Strategy

"It would seem improbable that a government in full accord with the natural bias of its people would most successfully advance its growth in every respect; and, in the matter of sea power, the most brilliant successes have followed where there has been intelligent direction by a government fully imbued with the spirit of the people and conscious of its true general bent. Such a government is most certainly secured when the will of the people, or of their best natural exponents, has some large share in making it"

-RADM Alfred Thayer Mahan, USN, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History

"We are not interested in generals who win victories without bloodshed. The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms."

-Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Krieg (On War)

"The mark of a great ship handler, is never getting into a situation requiring great ship handling"

-Admiral Ernest King, COMINCH-CNO WWII

The history of Sea Power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its growth and prosperity were detected. To secure to one's own people a disproportionate share of such benefits, every effort was made to exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence. The clash of interests, the angry feelings roused by conflicting attempts thus to appropriate the larger share, if not the whole, of the advantages of commerce, and of distant unsettled commercial regions, led to wars.

On the other hand, wars arising from other causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the control of the sea. Therefore the history of sea power, while embracing in its broad sweep all that tends to make a people great upon the sea or by the sea, is largely a military history; and it is in this aspect that it will be mainly, though not exclusively, regarded in the following pages.
A study of the military history of the past, such as this, is enjoined by great military leaders as essential to correct ideas and to the skilful conduct of war in the future. Napoleon names among the campaigns to be studied by the aspiring soldier, those of Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar, to whom gunpowder was unknown; and there is a substantial agreement among professional writers that, while many of the conditions of war vary from age to age with the progress of weapons, there are certain teachings in the school of history which remain constant, and being, therefore, of universal application, can be elevated to the rank of general principles.

For the same reason the study of the sea history of the past will be found instructive, by its illustration of the general principles of maritime war, notwithstanding the great changes that have been brought about in naval weapons by the scientific advances of the past half century, and by the introduction of steam as the motive power.