“Do you think there is a British Way of War?”
A good friend with a vested interest asked me some time ago.
The question got me thinking.
A decade ago, I wrote my first book on this topic, The Forgotten History of WWI: From the Dark Ages to 1939 in 2014.
I went into this topic somewhat further in my second book, All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War in 2015.
In those two books, as well as this podcast here with James Lafond (shot immediately after the Fall of Afghanistan in September-October of 2021), I specified that there was indeed a British Way of War.
I also said that America should adopt it a Tactical, Operational, and Strategic Level!
But all that stuff was from a decade ago…and a lot of things have changed since then.
The GWOT has ended (or so we say, on the official level, that is), while everybody in the West is getting excited about a big conventional rumble with the Eurasian Hordes of the East.
Because of that, I have been silent for a long time on the question, going over all the new research and things I have learned in the preceding ten years hiding in the dark recesses of my mind.
Yet the question remained…
Does all that stuff from the old days hold up?
THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
This morning, I was going through Instagram. I have a number of close friends and colleagues who exclusively use Instagram to communicate.
The upside is that I can talk to scholars, experts, and interested parties from all over the world.
The downside is that a lot of the stuff that is posted on Instagram can be squarely classified as what the kids call “Brain Rot.”
The term explains itself.
While I was sorting through angry conspiracy theory posts, AI alien contact posts, and sexy bimbo posts (hey, I like those, and I’m not gonna lie…), I came across a real diamond in the rough…
Osprey Publishing has an Instagram Page!
That’s right…the finest Military Publishing Company from across the pond is on the Gram, and they are rocking it.
And the post I found answered my question for this morning perfectly!
THE FINAL THREAD
The post was an interview with British General Richard Dannatt, General Chief of Staff for the British Army from 2006-2009, and the military historian Robert Lymann.
The interview was for their brand new book:
Victory From Defeat: The British Army 1918-1940.
What they discussed in this book was the final thread I needed to tie all my research and ideas together.
To understand why, you gotta go back in time…
THE HIDDEN HAND GUIDING THE DEED
When it comes to publishing Military History, Osprey Publishing really is top of the game. It’s top-notch research by British Historians who have not been infected by the Woke Mind Virus of Postmodernism.
In their books, you will find firsthand references that will upend your understanding of 20th and 21st Century Military History. And you won’t be able to find these references anywhere else!
I’ve been reading Osprey books since I was 12 years old, and they have been the backbone of my life for over two decades.
Heck, check the bibliography in all my books, and on key articles on this website. You’ll see Osprey is the hidden hand guiding the deed time and time again.
There is no Richard Barret without Osprey Publishing.
Just how does that play into today’s military conflicts, you ask?
“ON TIME AND UNDER BUDGET”
To understand the Military rumbles of today, you’ve got to understand the 19th and 20th Centuries.
By 1914, the British Army was objectively the finest fighting force the world had ever seen. Better than Germany, better than France, better than America.
Better than everybody.
These guys had over a century’s worth of real world experience fighting and winning against Third World Insurgencies all over the Third World.
Note I said winning.
The Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan-type insurgencies that wracked us for decades and broke our self-image over two generations?
That stuff was just another Tuesday for the fighting forces of the British Empire.
And not only would they defeat these insurgencies without the help of tanks, airplanes, helicopters, drones, and satellites, they would do it “on time and under budget.”
But more important than all that, the British would use these victories to build up their own self-image and prestige.
The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire.
But it didn’t stop there.
THE DREAM TEAM ASSEMBLED
After the Boer War, the last great Colonial conflict, the British knew that they had to take these lessons they had learned from winning Third World insurgencies and scale them up BIG TIME.
With a war brewing with Germany on the Continent, they knew that resting on their laurels was rusting on their laurels.
And old Britannia wasn’t about that.
So under the War Office leadership of Lord Haldane and then Lord Kitchener, Britain scaled up its fighting force. They took all the lesson learned on:
- Morale
- PT
- Small Unit Tactics
- Combined Arms Warfare
And they formalized them to spread them to the WHOLE NATION thrown into the fight on the Western Front.
Sir Henry Newbolt was the point man to handle the Morale to keep the troops motivated and self-confident.
Gen. Ivor Maxse would run the PT and Small Unit Tactics.
And Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller would tie it all together with the Combined Arms Warfare.
And they would do such a good job, they would have dangerous imitators…
THAT WAS THAT…CONSISTENTLY
The Germans were getting their behinds kicked with all of this, and were sick of it.
So consequently, they developed their famed “Storm Trooper” units and specialized tactics…but these were not at all what they seemed.
You see, the famed “Storm Trooper” tactics of German fame were not German at all…they were stolen from captured British Small Unit Tactics manuals that were compilations of lessons learned from fighting insurgents!
But the Germans made a fatal flaw in their copycat execution.
The Germans only trained specialized “Storm Trooper” units in these Small Unit Tactics.
But the British trained THEIR ENTIRE ARMY in all these things.
That meant that they could rotate units in and out of the field faster, preserving their strength, minimizing casualties, and still be able to sustain the same level of professionalism and intensity against the enemy…
Consistently!
The Germans on the other hand, their “Stormtroopers” were a finite resource, so once they were used up, that was that.
Their best troops were thrown into the cauldron, and all that was left were the “ash and trash” units of the mainline force.
And that was how Germany lost WWI.
THE RESTING AND THE RUSTING
This is the tale I told in my first book, The Forgotten History of WWI: From the Dark Ages to 1939.
But what happened after the War?
I mean, if the Tommies were so great, and the Huns were so terrible, then how did those same Huns pull off Blitzkrieg and conquer Fortress Europe a generation later?
How did the British go from being the finest fighting force on the planet to looking like a bunch of idiots that America and Russia had to rescue?
The reason is because after WWI, old Britannia made a big mistake.
She decided to rest on her laurels…
And thereby rusted on her laurels.
WEEDS IN THE GARDEN
After WWI, the British threw away all of its hard-won wisdom paid for in blood, toil, sweat, and tears.
Britain has lost approximately 600,000 men in the Great War, and had no interest in anything to do with it.
She had won the Great War, but her Victory was Phyric
Britain’s Morale was broken. Its self-image and prestige had dried up, leaving a self-induced Spiritual Vacuum of Doubt and Despair.
And within this vacuum, Nihilistic Philosophies and Symbolism began to choke the Spiritual Life out of the nation like weeds choke out the flowers of the garden.
The Warrior Caste Ethos languished.
And the trouble soon began.
LOST MOJO, LOST KNOW-HOW
So Britannia shrunk the Army.
And dialed back the PT.
And forgot the Small Unit Tactics.
And ignored the Combined Arms Warfare.
This started causing Britain problems in fighting Third World Insurgencies…fights that they formerly had no problems with.
Sure, after WWI, they had armored cars, tanks, and bomb-dropping airplanes…but they had lost their mojo, and they had lost their know-how.
Everything became about the new tech…but nobody could work the new tech into a system to win the human element of War…
Nobody could work all these things into Combined Arms Warfare…because they didn’t know how. And they didn’t believe in themselves enough to even try to learn.
It was as if they hoped that the tech would be a Magic Bullet that could just make all the lessons and hardships of the past disappear…
But of course, it didn’t work out that way!
FROM KRAUTS TO SUPER-SOLDIERS
Meanwhile, the foe in Germany did not have any of these problems.
Just as they had stolen the British Small Unit Tactics manuals for their Stormtrooper Units in WWI, they got busy again…
This time, they would fix the mistakes that had led to their defeat in WWI.
Felix Steiner was an old Stormtrooper who had seen what happened with the disposal resource of his frontline Heroes.
He knew he had to scale up BIG TIME, just as the British General Ivor Maxse did in the Great War.
So with the blessing of Heinrich Himmler, he was given command of the Waffen-SS..and turned every kraut-eating son-of-a-gun into a British-style Super-Soldier.
High Morale. Extreme PT. Classic Small Unit Tactics. Tied together with Combined Arms Warfare.
Right off the bat, the Waffen-SS consisted of 1/3rd of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Fighting Force.
And the other 2/3rds weren’t lying around either.
In the Wehrmacht, Germany’s National Army, General Heinz Gunderian would get the books of British Combined Arms Warfare Master, Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller…and put them into practice.
While Britain would ignore J.F.C. Fuller’s hard-won and carefully formulated wisdom, Gunderian would adopt them as not just a doctrine, but a way of life…the Whermacht was ready.
And it wasn’t just in Body that Germany would be ready for the coming fight…
They would be ready in Spirit as well.
THE LINK AND THE CHAIN
On the Morale Front, while Britain was tearing itself apart with Nihilistic Philosophies and Symbolism, Germany was building itself up.
Hitler’s Propaganda Chief Joseph Goebells understood that the Spiritual motivation of the War was just as important as the Physical Material available.
Using Plato and Aristotle, he understood that Form drove Matter, and Matter was inanimate without the Spark to set it into motion.
So he got rid of depressing, Nihilistic books like Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front…and instead made Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel mandatory reading for all Military personnel.
Storm of Steel the true tale autobiography of a WWI German Stormtrooper who loses his mind to PTSD after intense combat…
Who then works like hell to regain his sanity stronger than ever!
By the force of his Will, his spiritual unity is restored, and he is reborn as a hard-fighting hero, re-joining his friends to fight the foe unto death!
Front the depths of despair, Ernst Junger would arise out of the ashes to become a Hero, both for Himself and his Nation…the individual link that makes up the great chain.
Goebells made Ernst Junger the model for all SS and Wehrmacht Troops to emulate, making each link strong to make an unbreakable chain.
Just like Sir Henry Newbolt, Gen. Ivor Maxse, and Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller did for the British in WWI.
And the rest, of course, is history…
COULD THE HORROR HAPPEN AGAIN?
The German War Machine swept the British Army aside in 1940.
What had once been the premier fighting force of the earth had become a shadow of its former self.
And a foe who had once been looked down upon for shallow and slip-shod execution had ascended like an Eagle to mercilessly capture its prey.
Britain’s cause was only rescued by the intervention of America in North Africa, Italy, and Europe, and the bleeding dry of Russia on the Eastern Front.
But the real question is…could the horror happen again today?
This time…to America?
IN THE TOILET
The signs are not encouraging.
The reality is, America hates itself today. Her Morale is in the toilet.
The vacuum of Nihilistic Philosophy and Symbolism that once plagued Britain one hundred years ago is plaguing us today.
We don’t believe in the Justice of our Wars or in the Superiority of our Way of Life.
Heck..we don’t even know what our Way of Life is!
Postmodern Philosophy which spawns the weeds of Wokeness is choking out the Flowers of our beloved Wisdom Garden.
And what’s worse, we hate our Warrior Caste and our Working Class which provides all the Manpower for our great deeds and adventures.
Our PT across the country is a joke. Civilian obesity is through the roof.
And not to mention the Mental Health Crisis plaguing just about everyone everywhere we look.
We have forgotten the many lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and even Vietnam, paid for in blood, toil, sweat, and tears.
What they have to teach about PT, Small Unit Tactics, and Combined Arms Warfare have been cast back into the dusty recesses of our minds.
What can we do to fix this?
MORALE
First, we need to address the areas of Morale. That is the entire point of Pulp Fiction Renaissance.
It’s about helping us understand the Ins and Outs of our Indo-European Warrior Caste Heritage throughout all of History.
In the Department of Defense, we have to get rid of two books to address the Morale problem.
We need to get rid of Achilles in Vietnam by Jonathan Shay, and On Killing by Lt. Col. David Grossman.
The entire goal of both of these books is to promote the idea that the Warrior Caste is by nature damaged goods. Their entire thesis is that honorably slaying the foe in combat does not make our Warriors into Heroes, but into basket cases.
This is the entire psychological foundation of our combat training in the Department of Defense today, and it needs to be thrown out the window…yesterday.
This alone is worth an entire follow-up article.
In their place, books like Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James Bond Stockdale, Metaphysics of War by Julius Evola, and Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola need to fill in the breach.
In short, we need to ditch the depression of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front…
And we need to embrace the power of Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel.
PT
Second, we need to address the PT issue.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is working overtime on this, and I am thankful for it.
However, I believe more needs to be done at a conceptual level. This too is the main purpose of Pulp Fiction Renaissance, and the real reason why I currently work as a Personal Trainer.
What specifically needs to be done on this front is the purpose of not just another in-depth article, but a collection of in-depth. Many have been written here. Many more need to be written.
And they all need to go into a book.
SMALL UNIT TACTICS AND COMBINED ARMS WARFARE
Third, we cannot forget the Small Unit Tactics and Combined Arms Warfare Lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Vietnam.
As the inter-war years between WWI and WWII shows, we cannot assume that we will always have the Tactical and Operational edge of our foes.
As Eric Prince has noted, the Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures of the Russian Army have improved greatly since the start of the Ukraine War.
And if the Russians start disseminating this hard-won wisdom as lessons learned to its entire fighting force, then America, who has forgotten its own GWOT wisdom, will be in big trouble on the battlefield.
And that’s not the only problem…
NO ROOM FOR HAND-WRINGING
What is worse, the Russians are not telling their Soldiers that they are destined to be basket cases for honorably slaying their foes in combat.
Oh no…“Putin’s Brain” Alexander Dugin, the Chief Strategist of the Kremlin, is a big Evola guy…and he’s taking his cues from Metaphysics of War and Revolt Against the Modern World.
He’s making sure that the psychological foundation of his fighting force is a celebration of Heroism and Storm of Steel-esque power.
There’s no room for hand-wringing Nihilism in the Horde of Huns unleashed from the East.
A CALL TO ARMS
But there is still time.
Books like Victory From Defeat: The British Army 1918-1940 by Richard Dannatt and Robert Lymann present us with a choice.
Like Britain one hundred years ago, America has two paths to choose from today.
We can choose if we will be the innovative Heroes of WWI, or the shadow shells of WWII.
And only we can choose.
Western Civilization is on the line.
We better choose wisely.
Like the Tommy said…this is an Appeal to You.
Sincerely,
Richard Barrett
04-12-2025
Written at 12:26 AM, on the 164th Anniversary of the Start of the American Civil War, somewhere in the USA…
PULP FICTION RENAISSANCE 
