Who said: "Armies prepare to fight their last war, rather than their next war"?

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Accepted answer

I think this adage is very old and has been rephrased countless times (though with slight modifications), but the modern English adaption might be from the 20th century:

  • King Wuling, "A talent for following the ways of yesterday is not sufficient to improve the world of today." [Warring States Period]

  • Lieut. Col. J. L. Schley, "It has been said critically that there is a tendency in many armies to spend the peace time studying how to fight the last war." [January–February 1929]

  • The modern proverb is dated to 1934 in 'The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (2012)' based on this site (kindly verified as a verbatim quotation by @ElizaWilson):

    • “There is a saying that is rather common among the critics of the military profession that ‘soldiers are always preparing to fight the last war.’ Business must not incur the rebuke that it is devoting itself to preparing to sell goods under the conditions of the last economic cycle.”1934 Edward P. Warner, “Present Conditions under the N.R.A. [National Recovery Act],” American Marketing Journal 1: 12:

  • Dallas Morning News, "There is a partly justified criticism that peacetime generals are always fighting the last war instead of the next one." [20 November 1937]

  • W. Churchill, "It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war. But this is probably true of other departments and of other countries, and it was certainly true of the French Army." [1948, 'The Gathering Storm']

  • B. Tuchman, "Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war." [1962]

  • See here for a more comprehensive listing (though not necessarily sourced to specific people).

Edit: Some back-and-forth between myself and @T.E.D.:

I went through my historical quotations (I tend to write out the "good" ones when I see them), and there was nothing really in this specific mold (though my reading has been more random than systematic) except for the Chinese mention which is close but not spot on. The Greek and Roman military mentions went more into the "know your enemy" camp.

It could be this is because it wasn't really known/accepted that warfare could change as rapidly as in the 1920–1939 period. That said, WWI is also a lesson of how the 1861–1865, 1898, and 1904–5 lessons weren't learnt so with enough hindsight we can apply it to other previous situations as well.

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