J. F. C. Fuller Quotes

British Army general (1878-1966)

Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO (September 1, 1878 – February 10, 1966), commonly J.F.C. Fuller, was a British major-general, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare. He was also the inventor of "artificial moonlight" and an occultist.

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Alternative Names: John Frederick Charles Fuller • John Fuller

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The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both internal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the first the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind—men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh — who founded the English colonies in America.

Everyone was talking and chatting, when slowly came into sight the first tank I ever saw. Not a monster but a very graceful machine with beautiful lines.…Here was the missing tool of penetration, the answer to the dominance on the battlefield of small-arms fire.

In 1919 I was the sole person who saw war in the form it would be; yet saw it only as an acorn and not as an oak.

An absolute doctrine is impossible, for once a doctrine and its articles become dogma, woe to the army which lies enthralled under its spell.

I believe that, in future warfare, great cities, such as London, will be attacked from the air, and that a fleet of 500 aeroplanes each carrying 500 ten-pound bombs of, let us suppose, mustard gas, might cause 200,000 minor casualties and throw the whole city into panic within half an hour of their arrival. Picture, if you can, what the result will be: London for several days will be one vast raving Bedlam, the hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the homeless will shriek for help, the city will be in pandemonium. What of the government at Westminster? It will be swept away by an avalanche of terror. Then will the enemy dictate his terms, which will be grasped at like a straw by a drowning man. Thus may a war be won in forty-eight hours and the losses of the winning side may be actually nil!

What thrust us into war were not Hitler's political teachings: the cause, this time, was his successful attempt to establish a new economy. The causes of the war were: envy, greed, and fear.