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158 FERNANDO CALVO GONZÁLEZ-REGUERAL la más pura ortodoxia, como suele pasar con las predicciones de los que se adelantan en años a su tiempo… Inseparables y complementarias, contradictorias en algunos puntos, como sus propias vidas y la intermitente amistad que mantuvieron, las obras de Liddell Hart y Fuller van ganando con los años, y si ambos se hicieron célebres en su momento como sumos sacerdotes de la guerra veloz, mecanizada, «relámpago», sin duda es en su faceta de grandes historiadores y tratadistas donde su luz se hace cada vez más y más brillante. PALABRAS CLAVE: Fuller, Liddell Hart, historia militar, guerra de los Bóeres, Primera Guerra Mundial, Segunda Guerra Mundial, estrategia, táctica, dirección de la guerra, carro de combate, guerra mecanizada, Clausewitz, bloque soviético, Batallas decisivas del mundo occidental. ABSTRACT If Sir Basil Lidell Hart entered History as «the Captain who taught generals », John Frederick Charles «Boney» Fuller, the other great 20th Century British military thinker, could well have done so as «the General who taught captains»; however, his indomitable character and irreverence both in the military and in the literary made him clash not only with the British High Command, but also with all the British establishment. His complex personality made him live four complementary lives, which enriched one another till crystallize in the most refined one: first, his soldier’s life; then, his life as a new type of war visionary; after, as a historian; and finally, his life as a philosopher of the homo bellicus. They all joined together in his complete works, a production that even nowadays amaze us because of its amplitude, but especially, because of its prophetic ability, that make his most heterodox ideas result in a part of the purest orthodoxy, as it usually happens with the ones of those advanced to their time… Inseparable and complementary, even contradictory in some cases, as their own lives and intermittent friendship, Lidell Hart’s and Fuller’s productions get better and better, and despite both became celebrities as high priests of the mechanized war, however it is their magnificent historian and military commentator aspect where their lights appear more and more brilliant. Revista de Historia Militar, 114 (2013), pp. 157-236. ISSN: 0482-5748

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