Basil Liddell Hart created the term “indirect approach to strategy.” It was first articulated in 1927, and then appeared in its fully developed form in his 1929 book The Decisive Wars of History, which would eventually be republished as Strategy: The Indirect Approach in 1967. Liddell Hart’s views on warfare made him a controversial figure in the 1920s and 1930s, and his legacy after his death in 1970 remains unclear. For a time in the 1930s he was considered one of the greatest writers on war, if not thegreatest, at least in the Anglo-American world. His reputation collapsed at the beginning of World War II, but had recovered after the war so that by the late 1950s he was once again, at least in Samuel Griffith’s eyes, the most important strategist in the world. Today he is entirely unknown outside a very narrow academic community. His contributions to strategic thinking in the 1920s and 1930s were distorted by two factors: his commitment to preventing Britain from repeating its performance in World War I, and his need to earn a living as a writer. He took intellectual shortcuts, found the answers in history that he wanted to find regardless of the evidence, and argued for negotiating with Hitler during World War II. Liddell Hart had played an important role, along with his friend J. F. C. Fuller, in promoting mobile, mechanized warfare, particularly tanks.

The European winter of 1917–18 was a time of change for the Australian Imperial Force. In Australia, two plebiscites to introduce conscription had failed, and plans to raise a sixth Australian division were scrapped. Recruits originally destined for this new division were distributed among the existing five divisions, which had suffered significant losses in the fighting in September and October 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres. In November 1917, having been withdrawn from the line the month before, the five Australian divisions were reorganised into one Australian Corps and attached to the British Fourth Army. The British and New Zealand divisions that had been part of II ANZAC became the British XXII Corps, part of First Army. General Sir William Birdwood, who had been Commanding Officer of I ANZAC, was originally put in charge of the new corps, but in May 1918 he was made Commanding Officer of Fifth Army. As a result, Major General John Monash was promoted to lieutenant general; the Australian Corps was in his command from May onwards, marking the first time an Australian was in command of a fighting unit at corps level on the Western Front.1