J.F.C. Fuller

J.F.C. Fuller (1876-1966), full name John Frederick Charles Fuller, was a British general, military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armored warfare. He was also the inventor of "artificial moonlight".

In addition to his military accomplishments, Fuller was a vigorous, expressive and opinionated writer of military history.

In the 1920s, he collaborated with his junior B.H. Liddell Hart in developing new ideas for the mechanization of armies.

Upon his retirement in 1933, impatient with what he considered the inability of democracy to adopt military reforms, he became involved with Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Fascist movement. His ideas on warfare continued to be influential in World War II, as much with the Germanss, notably Heinz Guderian as with his own country.

Books by Fuller

• The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant (New York, 1929)
• Grant & Lee (London, 1933)
• Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier (London, 1936)
• The Second World War, 1939-1945 (New York, 1949)
• A Military History of the Western World, 3 vols. (New York, 1954)

Further reading

• "Boney" Fuller: The Intellectual General by A.J. Trythall (London, 1977)