Indirect approach

The indirect approach was a military strategy described and chronicled by B. H. Liddell Hart after World War I, was Liddell Hart's attempt to find a solution to the problem of high casualty rates in conflict zones with high force to space ratios, such as the Western Front on which he served. The strategy calls for armies to advance along the line of least resistance. It is best described in this quote from his papers referring to the theory.

"In Strategy the longest way around is often the shortest way there. A direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, where as an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance."

There were two fundamental principles which governed the indirect approach.


 * 1) Direct attacks on firm defensive positions almost never work, and should never be attempted.
 * 2) To defeat the enemy, one must first disrupt his equilibrium. This cannot be an effect of the main attack; it must take place before the main attack is commenced.

While he originally developed the theory for infantry, contact with J. F. C. Fuller helped change his theory more towards tanks. The indirect approach would become a major factor in the development of blitzkrieg. Often misunderstood, the indirect approach is not a treatise against fighting direct battles; it was still based on the Clausewitzian ideal of direct combat and the destruction of an enemy force by arms. It was in reality an attempt to create a doctrine for the remobilisation of warfare after the costly attrition of the strategic stalemate of the First World War.