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J. F. C. Fuller
John Frederick Charles “Boney” Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO (1878-1966) was a senior British Army officer, military historian, and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, inclu...view moreJohn Frederick Charles “Boney” Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO (1878-1966) was a senior British Army officer, military historian, and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorizing principles of warfare.
He was a highly prolific author whose ideas reached army officers and the interested public. He explored the business of fighting, in terms of the relationship between warfare and social, political, and economic factors in the civilian sector, and emphasized the potential of new weapons, especially tanks and aircraft, to stun a surprised enemy psychologically.
A highly controversial figure in British politics due to his support for the organized fascist movement, Fuller was also an occultist and Thelemite who wrote a number of works on esotericism and mysticism.
Born on September 1, 1878 at Chichester in West Sussex, the son of an Anglican clergyman, he trained at the Royal Military College in Sandhurst from 1897-1898. He was commissioned into the 1st Battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry (the old 43rd Foot) and served in South Africa from 1899-1902. He served as an adjutant to the 2nd South Middlesex Volunteers and helped form the 10th Middlesex.
During WWI, he was a staff officer with the Home Forces and with 7 Corps in France, and from 1916 in the Headquarters of the Machine-Gun Corps’ Heavy Branch (later Tank Corps). He helped plan the tank attack at the 1917 Battle of Cambrai and the tank operations for the Autumn offensives of 1918.
After the war, he became military assistant to the chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1926, was promoted to major-general in 1930, and retired in 1933 to devote himself entirely to writing. He served as a reporter during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). His ideas on mechanized warfare continued to be influential in the lead-up to WWII.
Fuller died in Falmouth, Cornwall on February 10, 1966.view less