In this ground-breaking study, Professor Azar Gat examines how the theories of mechanized war developed throughout the industrial world in the first decades of the twentieth century. He explains why the most famous pioneers of these theories were asssociated with proto-facscism. Professor Gat then drastically re-evaluates B.H. Liddell Hart's contribution to strategic theory, overturning much of the criticism recently levelled against him. He argues that, in the wake of the trauma of the First World War, and in response to the Axis challenge, Liddell Hart developed the doctrine of containment and cold war long before the advent of nuclear weapons. He reveals Liddell Hart as a pioneer of the modern western liberal way in warfare which is still with us today.