Talk:John Hackett (British Army officer)

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Untitled[edit]

John Hackett's book, "World War III," the 1978 version, was required reading for Air Force Academy students in the late 70's and it reflected the defeatist, "better red than dead" attitude prevalent at the time. In this book, and others like it, the Soviets overran Europe and threw US forces out. I remember wondering, "what is the point?" and why don't we just surrender now and get it over with? However, I also remember studying Soviet strategy & tactics and realized Soviet forces always followed the same pattern during major exercises. Much later, I read Tom Clancy's "Into the Storm" and noted how Soviet-indoctrinated and armed Iraqi troops were soundly defeated during Desert Storm using a strategy founded in the 80's to counter a possible Soviet invasion of Europe. It was then I knew the Soviets would have been beaten had they invaded Europe in a "World War III" scenario and our defeatist attitude of the 70's was dead wrong. It took President Reagan, "Reagonomics" and a declaration ("Mr Gorbachev: Tear down this wall!) to stamp out this defeatist attitude toward the Soviets for all time.

Remember this when you read the same dogma about "losing" to the terrorists/insurgents during the War on Terror.

I remember reading General Sir John Hackett's books, and they did not reflect that attitude at all. NATO took a beating in the hypothetical war, but NATO was able to exploit its weaknesses and win the war. I've been re-reading it because I'm writing more for the Team Yankee article. -- GABaker 2205 22 Nov 05 UTC.

Hackett's book wasn't defaitist; it was at first blush alarmist but even that was deceptive. The basic message was: "We can beat the Soviets if only we invest a bit more". If you analyse more carefully though, you will see that the hypothetical forces in 1985 were just as large as the real forces in 1978! What he gave to the British, Hackett took away from the Dutch. That was a bit of an inside joke: Hackett had had a conflict with the Dutch because they had the only Army Corps with its own reserve division. He wanted us to enlarge our sector by 50%, freeing a British division as NORTHAG reserve. Of course we reacted by pointing out that — while creating a British reserve division was a very commendable course of action — if he desired so, he was at liberty to convince his own government to provide one :o). I've always found it regrettable that it never became clear to the larger public what a brilliant tactician he was...And certainly no defaitist! And indeed a Soviet invasion with conventional means would have had very little chance of success. In Hackett's scenario there is a massive use of chemical weapons. By the way, the Reagan government issued a lot of alarmist publications, with grave and systematic distortions of the facts. --MWAK 19:29, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Principal of King's College London[edit]

I added this reference. I was a student at KCL from 1974-1979, and I remember Sir John as a very charismatic figure. The students missed him greatly when he retired. Sasha 14:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't he very cross to have missed out on being Army Chief of Staff or even Chief of Defence Staff? His abilities would surely have qualified him, but he lost the Whitehall political battle, I seem to recall. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.192.0.10 (talk) 10:41, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Education??[edit]

I have removed an unsourced assertion by an anon user who has been frequently vandlaising pages that Hackett was educated at "Geelong Church of England Grammar School." — Stumps 11:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject class rating[edit]

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:06, 10 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chief of Defence Staff[edit]

Was he not passed over for the post of Chief of Defence Staff because of his criticism of the Wilson Government? I seem to remember it being in his obituary when he died.Paulturtle (talk) 04:02, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]