Carl von Clausewitz

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Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz
Carl von Clausewitz.PNG
Portrait while in Prussian service, by Karl Wilhelm Wach
Born 1 June 1780
Burg bei Magdeburg, Prussia (now Germany)
Died 16 November 1831 (aged 51)
Breslau, Prussia (now Wroclaw, Poland)
Allegiance Prussia
Russia (1812�1813)
Service/branch Prussian Cavalry Officer Army
Years of service 1792�1831
Rank Major-general
Unit Russian-German Legion (III Corps)
Commands held Kriegsakademie
Battles/wars French Revolutionary Wars
Siege of Mainz
Napoleonic Wars

Battle of Jena�Auerstedt
Battle of Borodino
Battle of Ligny
Battle of Wavre
Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz[note 1] (/'kla?z?v?ts/; 1 June
1780 � 16 November 1831)[1] was a Prussian general and military theorist who
stressed the "moral" (meaning, in modern terms, psychological) and political
aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege (On War), was unfinished at his
death. Clausewitz was a realist in many different senses and, while in some
respects a romantic, also drew heavily on the rationalist ideas of the European
Enlightenment.

Clausewitz's thinking is often described as Hegelian because of his dialectical

method; but, although he was probably personally acquainted with Hegel, there
remains debate as to whether or not Clausewitz was in fact influenced by him.
[2]:183�232 He stressed the dialectical interaction of diverse factors, noting how
unexpected developments unfolding under the "fog of war" (i.e., in the face of
incomplete, dubious, and often completely erroneous information and high levels of
fear, doubt, and excitement) call for rapid decisions by alert commanders. He saw
history as a vital check on erudite abstractions that did not accord with
experience. In contrast to the early work of Antoine-Henri Jomini, he argued that
war could not be quantified or reduced to mapwork, geometry, and graphs. Clausewitz
had many aphorisms, of which the most famous is "War is the continuation of
politics by other means."[3]

Contents
1 Name
2 Life and military career
3 Theory of war
3.1 Principal ideas
4 Interpretation and misinterpretation
5 Influence
5.1 Late 20th and early 21st century
6 In popular culture
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
Name
Clausewitz's Christian names are sometimes given in non-German sources as "Karl",
"Carl Philipp Gottlieb," or "Carl Maria." He spelled his own given name with a "C"
in order to identify with the classical Western tradition; writers who use "Karl"
are often seeking to emphasise his German (rather than European) identity. "Carl
Philipp Gottfried" appears on Clausewitz's tombstone.[4] Nonetheless, sources such
as military historian Peter Paret and Encyclop�dia Britannica use Gottlieb instead
of Gottfried.[5]

Life and military career

Clausewitz was born on 1 June 1780 in Burg bei Magdeburg in the Prussian Duchy of
Magdeburg as the fourth and youngest son of a family that made claims to noble
status which Carl accepted. Clausewitz's family claimed descent from the Barons of
Clausewitz in Upper Silesia, though scholars question the connection.[6] His
grandfather, the son of a Lutheran pastor, had been a professor of theology.
Clausewitz's father, once a lieutenant in the army of Frederick the Great, King of
Prussia, held a minor post in the Prussian internal-revenue service. Clausewitz
entered the Prussian military service at the age of twelve as a lance-corporal,
eventually attaining the rank of major general.[1]

Clausewitz served in the Rhine Campaigns (1793�1794) including the Siege of Mainz,
when the Prussian army invaded France during the French Revolution, and fought in
the Napoleonic Wars from 1806 to 1815. He entered the Kriegsakademie (also cited as
"The German War School", the "Military Academy in Berlin", and the "Prussian
Military Academy") in Berlin in 1801 (aged 21), probably studied the writings of
the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and won the regard of General Gerhard von
Scharnhorst, the future first chief-of-staff of the newly reformed Prussian Army
(appointed 1809). Clausewitz, Hermann von Boyen (1771�1848) and Karl von Grolman
(1777�1843) were among Scharnhorst's primary allies in his efforts to reform the
Prussian army between 1807 and 1814.[citation needed]

Clausewitz served during the Jena Campaign as aide-de-camp to Prince August. At the
Battle of Jena-Auerstedt on 14 October 1806 � when Napoleon invaded Prussia and
defeated the massed Prussian-Saxon army commanded by Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke
of Brunswick � he was captured, one of the 25,000 prisoners taken that day as the
Prussian army disintegrated. He was 26. Clausewitz was held prisoner with his
prince in France from 1807 to 1808. Returning to Prussia, he assisted in the reform
of the Prussian army and state.[1]

Marie von Clausewitz (n�e, Countess von Br�hl)

On 10 December 1810 he married the socially prominent Countess Marie von Br�hl,
whom he had first met in 1803. She was a member of the noble German von Br�hl
family originating in Thuringia. The couple moved in the highest circles,
socialising with Berlin's political, literary and intellectual �lite. Marie was
well-educated and politically well-connected�she played an important role in her
husband's career progress and intellectual evolution.[7] She also edited,
published, and introduced his collected works.[8]

Opposed to Prussia's enforced alliance with Napoleon I, Clausewitz left the

Prussian army and served in the Imperial Russian Army from 1812 to 1813 during the
Russian Campaign, taking part in the Battle of Borodino (1812). Like many Prussian
officers serving in Russia, he joined the Russian-German Legion in 1813. In the
service of the Russian Empire, Clausewitz helped negotiate the Convention of
Tauroggen (1812), which prepared the way for the coalition of Prussia, Russia, and
the United Kingdom that ultimately defeated Napoleon and his allies.[1]

In 1815 the Russian-German Legion became integrated into the Prussian Army and
Clausewitz re-entered Prussian service as a colonel. He was soon appointed chief-
of-staff of Johann von Thielmann's III Corps. In that capacity he served at the
Battle of Ligny and the Battle of Wavre during the Waterloo Campaign in 1815. An
army led personally by Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Ligny (south of Mont-
Saint-Jean and the village of Waterloo) on 16 June 1815, but Napoleon's failure to
destroy the Prussian forces led to his defeat a few days later at the Battle of
Waterloo (18 June 1815), when the Prussian forces unexpectedly arrived on his right
flank late in the afternoon to support the Anglo-Dutch-Belgian forces pressing his
front. Clausewitz's unit fought at Wavre (18�19 June 1815), preventing large
reinforcements from reaching Napoleon at Waterloo. After the war Clausewitz served
as the director of the Kriegsakademie, where he served until 1830. In that year he
returned to duty with the army. Soon afterwards, the outbreak of several
revolutions around Europe and a crisis in Poland appeared to presage another major
European war. Clausewitz was appointed chief of staff of the only army Prussia was
able to mobilise in this emergency, which was sent to the Polish border. Its
commander, Gneisenau, died of cholera (August 1831), and Clausewitz took command of
the Prussian army's efforts to construct a cordon sanitaire to contain the great
cholera outbreak (the first time cholera had appeared in modern heartland Europe,
causing a continent-wide panic). Clausewitz himself died of the same disease
shortly afterwards, on 17 November 1831.[1]

His widow edited, published, and wrote the introduction to his magnum opus on the
philosophy of war in 1832. (He had started working on the text in 1816, but had not
completed it.)[9] She wrote the preface for On War and by 1835 had published most
of his collected works.[8] She died in January 1836.

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Clausewitz was a professional combat soldier who was involved in numerous military
campaigns, but he is famous primarily as a military theorist interested in the
examination of war, utilising the campaigns of Frederick the Great and Napoleon as
frames of reference for his work.[10] He wrote a careful, systematic, philosophical
examination of war in all its aspects. The result was his principal book, On War, a
major work on the philosophy of war. It was unfinished when Clausewitz died and
contains material written at different stages in his intellectual evolution,
producing some significant contradictions between different sections. The sequence
and precise character of that evolution is a source of much debate, as are exact
meaning behind his seemingly contradictory claims (discussions pertinent to the
tactical, operational and strategic levels of war are one example). Clausewitz
constantly sought to revise the text, particularly between 1827 and his departure
on his last field assignments, to include more material on "people's war" and forms
of war other than high-intensity warfare between states, but relatively little of
this material was included in the book.[9] Soldiers before this time had written
treatises on various military subjects, but none had undertaken a great
philosophical examination of war on the scale of those written by Clausewitz and
Leo Tolstoy, both of which were inspired by the events of the Napoleonic Era.

Clausewitz's work is still studied today, demonstrating its continued relevance.

More than sixteen major English-language books that focused specifically on his
work were published between 2005 and 2014, whereas his 19th-century rival Jomini
faded from influence. The historian Lynn Montross said the outcome, "may be
explained by the fact that Jomini produced a system of war, Clausewitz a
philosophy. The one has been outdated by new weapons, the other still influences
the strategy behind those weapons."[11] Jomini did not attempt to define war but
Clausewitz did, providing (and dialectically comparing) a number of definitions.
The first is his dialectical thesis: "War is thus an act of force to compel our
enemy to do our will." The second, often treated as Clausewitz's 'bottom line,' is
in fact merely his dialectical antithesis: "War is merely the continuation of
policy by other means." The synthesis of his dialectical examination of the nature
of war is his famous "trinity," saying that war is "a fascinating trinity�composed
of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind
natural force; the play of chance and probability, within which the creative spirit
is free to roam; and its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy,
which makes it subject to pure reason."[12] Christopher Bassford says the best
shorthand for Clausewitz's trinity should be something like "violent
emotion/chance/rational calculation." However, it is frequently presented as
"people/army/government," a misunderstanding based on a later paragraph in the same
chapter. This misrepresentation was popularised by U.S. Army Colonel Harry Summers'
Vietnam-era interpretation,[13] facilitated by weaknesses in the 1976 Howard/Paret
translation.[14]

The degree to which Clausewitz managed to revise his manuscript to reflect that
synthesis is the subject of much debate. His final reference to war and Politik,
however, goes beyond his widely quoted antithesis: "War is simply the continuation
of political intercourse with the addition of other means. We deliberately use the
phrase 'with the addition of other means' because we also want to make it clear
that war in itself does not suspend political intercourse or change it into
something entirely different. In essentials that intercourse continues,
irrespective of the means it employs. The main lines along which military events
progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue
throughout the war into the subsequent peace."[15]

� A prince or general who knows exactly how to organise his war according to
his object and means, who does neither too little nor too much, gives by that the
greatest proof of his genius. But the effects of this talent are exhibited not so
much by the invention of new modes of action, which might strike the eye
immediately, as in the successful final result of the whole. It is the exact
fulfilment of silent suppositions, it is the noiseless harmony of the whole action
which we should admire, and which only makes itself known in the total result.
�
�?Clausewitz, On War, Book III, Chapter 1[16]:Vol. I pgs. 85�86
Clausewitz introduced systematic philosophical contemplation into Western military
thinking, with powerful implications not only for historical and analytical writing
but also for practical policy, military instruction, and operational planning. He
relied on his own experiences, contemporary writings about Napoleon, and on deep
historical research. His historiographical approach is evident in his first
extended study, written when he was 25, of the Thirty Years War. He rejects the
Enlightenment's view of the war as a chaotic muddle and instead explains its drawn-
out operations by the economy and technology of the age, the social characteristics
of the troops, and the commanders' politics and psychology. In On War, Clausewitz
sees all wars as the sum of decisions, actions, and reactions in an uncertain and
dangerous context, and also as a socio-political phenomenon. He also stressed the
complex nature of war, which encompasses both the socio-political and the
operational and stresses the primacy of state policy.[17]:viii

The word "strategy" had only recently come into usage in modern Europe, and
Clausewitz's definition is quite narrow: "the use of engagements for the object of
war." Clausewitz conceived of war as a political, social, and military phenomenon
which might � depending on circumstances � involve the entire population of a
nation at war. In any case, Clausewitz saw military force as an instrument that
states and other political actors use to pursue the ends of policy, in a dialectic
between opposing wills, each with the aim of imposing his policies and will upon
his enemy.[18]

Clausewitz's emphasis on the inherent superiority of the defence suggests that

habitual aggressors are likely to end up as failures. The inherent superiority of
the defence obviously does not mean that the defender will always win, however:
there are other asymmetries to be considered. He was interested in co-operation
between the regular army and militia or partisan forces, or citizen soldiers, as
one possible � sometimes the only � method of defence. In the circumstances of the
Wars of the French Revolution and with Napoleon, which were energised by a rising
spirit of nationalism, he emphasised the need for states to involve their entire
populations in the conduct of war. This point is especially important, as these
wars demonstrated that such energies could be of decisive importance and for a time
led to a democratisation of the armed forces much as universal suffrage
democratised politics.[19]

While Clausewitz was intensely aware of the value of intelligence at all levels, he
was also very sceptical of the accuracy of much military intelligence: "Many
intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are
uncertain.... In short, most intelligence is false."[16]:Vol. I pg. 38 This
circumstance is generally described as part of the fog of war. Such sceptical
comments apply only to intelligence at the tactical and operational levels; at the
strategic and political levels he constantly stressed the requirement for the best
possible understanding of what today would be called strategic and political
intelligence. His conclusions were influenced by his experiences in the Prussian
Army, which was often in an intelligence fog due partly to the superior abilities
of Napoleon's system but even more to the nature of war. Clausewitz acknowledges
that friction creates enormous difficulties for the realisation of any plan, and
the fog of war hinders commanders from knowing what is happening. It is precisely
in the context of this challenge that he develops the concept of military genius,
whose capabilities are seen above all in the execution of operations. 'Military
genius' is not simply a matter of intellect, but a combination of qualities of
intellect, experience, personality, and temperament (and there are many possible
such combinations) that create a very highly developed mental aptitude for the
waging of war.[20]

Principal ideas

The young Clausewitz

Key ideas discussed in On War include:[17]

the dialectical approach to military analysis

the methods of "critical analysis"
the economic profit-seeking logic of commercial enterprise is equally applicable to
the waging of war and negotiating for peace
the nature of the balance-of-power mechanism
the relationship between political objectives and military objectives in war
the asymmetrical relationship between attack and defence
the nature of "military genius" (involving matters of personality and character,
beyond intellect)
the "fascinating trinity" (wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit) of war[21]
philosophical distinctions between "absolute war," "ideal war," and "real war"
in "real war," the distinctive poles of a) war of limited objectives and b) war to
"render the enemy helpless"
"war" belonging fundamentally to the social realm�rather than to the realms of art
or science
"strategy" belongs primarily to the realm of art, but is constrained by
quantitative analyses of political benefits versus military costs & losses
"tactics" belongs primarily to the realm of science (most obvious in the
development of siege warfare)
the importance of "moral forces" (more than simply "morale") as opposed to
quantifiable physical elements
the "military virtues" of professional armies (which do not necessarily trump the
rather different virtues of other kinds of fighting forces)
conversely, the very real effects of a superiority in numbers and "mass"
the essential unpredictability of war
the "fog" of war[note 2]
"friction" � the disparity between the ideal performance of units, organisation or
systems and their actual performance in real world scenarios (Book I, Chapter VII)
strategic and operational "centers of gravity"[note 3]
the "culminating point of the offensive"
the "culminating point of victory"
Interpretation and misinterpretation
Clausewitz used a dialectical method to construct his argument, leading to frequent
misinterpretation of his ideas. British military theorist B. H. Liddell Hart
contends that the enthusiastic acceptance by the Prussian military establishment �
especially Moltke the Elder, a former student of his [22] � of what they believed
to be Clausewitz's ideas, and the subsequent widespread adoption of the Prussian
military system worldwide, had a deleterious effect on military theory and
practice, due to their egregious misinterpretation of his ideas:

As so often happens, Clausewitz's disciples carried his teaching to an extreme

which their master had not intended.... [Clausewitz's] theory of war was expounded
in a way too abstract and involved for ordinary soldier-minds, essentially
concrete, to follow the course of his argument � which often turned back from the
direction in which it was apparently leading. Impressed yet befogged, they grasped
at his vivid leading phrases, seeing only their surface meaning, and missing the
deeper current of his thought.[23]

As described by Christopher Bassford, then-professor of strategy at the National

War College of the United States:

One of the main sources of confusion about Clausewitz's approach lies in his
dialectical method of presentation. For example, Clausewitz's famous line that "War
is a mere continuation of politics by other means," ("Der Krieg ist eine blo�e
Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln") while accurate as far as it goes, was
not intended as a statement of fact. It is the antithesis in a dialectical argument
whose thesis is the point � made earlier in the analysis � that "war is nothing but
a duel [or wrestling match, a better translation of the German Zweikampf] on a
larger scale." His synthesis, which resolves the deficiencies of these two bold
statements, says that war is neither "nothing but" an act of brute force nor
"merely" a rational act of politics or policy. This synthesis lies in his
"fascinating trinity" [wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit]: a dynamic, inherently unstable
interaction of the forces of violent emotion, chance, and rational calculation.[1]

Another example of this confusion is the idea that Clausewitz was a proponent of
total war as used in the Third Reich's propaganda in the 1940s. In fact, he never
used the term "total war": rather, he discussed "absolute war" or "ideal war" as
the purely logical result of the forces underlying a "pure," Platonic "ideal" of
war. In what he called a "logical fantasy," war cannot be waged in a limited way:
the rules of competition will force participants to use all means at their disposal
to achieve victory. But in the real world, he said, such rigid logic is unrealistic
and dangerous. As a practical matter, the military objectives in real war that
support political objectives generally fall into two broad types: "war to achieve
limited aims"; and war to "disarm" the enemy, "to render [him] politically helpless
or militarily impotent." Thus the complete defeat of the enemy may not be
necessary, desirable, or even possible.[24]

In modern times the reconstruction of Clausewitzian theory has been a matter of

much dispute. One analysis was that of Panagiotis Kondylis, a Greek-German writer
and philosopher, who opposed the interpretations of Raymond Aron in Penser la
Guerre, Clausewitz, and other liberal writers. According to Aron, Clausewitz was
one of the first writers to condemn the militarism of the Prussian general staff
and its war-proneness, based on Clausewitz's argument that "war is a continuation
of politics by other means." In Theory of War, Kondylis claims that this is
inconsistent with Clausewitzian thought. He claims that Clausewitz was morally
indifferent to war (though this probably reflects a lack of familiarity with
personal letters from Clausewitz, which demonstrate an acute awareness of war's
tragic aspects) and that his advice regarding politics' dominance over the conduct
of war has nothing to do with pacifist ideas. For Clausewitz, war is simply one
unique means that is sometimes applied to the eternal quest for power, of raison
d'�tat in an anarchic and unsafe world.[citation needed]

Other notable writers who have studied Clausewitz's texts and translated them into
English are historians Peter Paret of the Institute for Advanced Study and Sir
Michael Howard, and the philosopher, musician, and game theorist Anatol Rapoport.
Howard and Paret edited the most widely used edition of On War (Princeton
University Press, 1976/1984) and have produced comparative studies of Clausewitz
and other theorists, such as Tolstoy. Bernard Brodie's A Guide to the Reading of
"On War", in the 1976 Princeton translation, expressed his interpretations of the
Prussian's theories and provided students with an influential synopsis of this
vital work.

The British military historian John Keegan attacked Clausewitz's theory in his book
A History of Warfare.[25] Keegan argued that Clausewitz assumed the existence of
states, yet 'war antedates the state, diplomacy and strategy by many millennia.'

Influence
Clausewitz died without completing On War, but despite this his ideas have been
widely influential in military theory and have had a strong influence on German
military thought specifically. Later Prussian and German generals, such as Helmuth
Graf von Moltke, were clearly influenced by Clausewitz: Moltke's widely quoted
statement that "No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy" is a
classic reflection of Clausewitz's insistence on the roles of chance, friction,
"fog," uncertainty, and interactivity in war.[26]:20�21

Clausewitz's influence spread to British thinking as well, though at first more as

a historian and analyst than as a theorist.[26] See for example Wellington's
extended essay discussing Clausewitz's study of the Campaign of 1815�Wellington's
only serious written discussion of the battle, which was widely discussed in 19th-
century Britain. Clausewitz's broader thinking came to the fore following Britain's
military embarrassments in the Boer War (1899�1902). One example of a heavy
Clausewitzian influence in that era is Spenser Wilkinson, journalist, the first
Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford University, and perhaps the most
prominent military analyst in Britain from c. 1885 until well into the interwar
period. Another is naval historian Julian Corbett (1854�1922), whose work reflected
a deep if idiosyncratic adherence to Clausewitz's concepts and frequently an
emphasis on Clausewitz's ideas about 'limited war' and the inherent strengths of
the defensive form of war. Corbett's practical strategic views were often in
prominent public conflict with Wilkinson's � see, for example, Wilkinson's article
"Strategy at Sea," The Morning Post, 12 February 1912. Following the First World
War, however, the influential British military commentator B. H. Liddell Hart in
the 1920s erroneously attributed to him the doctrine of "total war" that during the
First World War had been embraced by many European general staffs and emulated by
the British. More recent scholars typically see that war as so confused in terms of
political rationale that it in fact contradicts much of On War.[27] One of the most
influential British Clausewitzians today is Colin S. Gray; historian Hew Strachan
(like Wilkinson also the Chichele Professor of Military History at Oxford
University, since 2001) has been an energetic proponent of the study of Clausewitz,
but his own views on Clausewitz's ideas are somewhat ambivalent.

With some interesting exceptions (e.g., John McAuley Palmer, Robert M. Johnston,
Hoffman Nickerson), Clausewitz had little influence on American military thought
before 1945 other than via British writers, though Generals Eisenhower and Patton
were avid readers. He did influence Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin,
Leon Trotsky[2] :233�60 and Mao Zedong, and thus the Communist Soviet and Chinese
traditions, as Lenin emphasised the inevitability of wars among capitalist states
in the age of imperialism and presented the armed struggle of the working class as
the only path toward the eventual elimination of war.[28] Because Lenin was an
admirer of Clausewitz and called him "one of the great military writers", his
influence on the Red Army was immense.[29] The Russian historian A.N. Mertsalov
commented that "It was an irony of fate that the view in the USSR was that it was
Lenin who shaped the attitude towards Clausewitz, and that Lenin's dictum that war
is a continuation of politics is taken from the work of this [allegedly] anti-
humanist anti-revolutionary."[29] The American mathematician Anatol Rapoport wrote
in 1968 that Clausewitz as interpreted by Lenin formed the basis of all Soviet
military thinking since 1917, and quoted the remarks by Marshal V.D. Sokolovsky:

In describing the essence of war, Marxism-Leninism takes as its point of departure

the premise that war is not an aim in itself, but rather a tool of politics. In his
remarks on Clausewitz's On War, Lenin stressed that "Politics is the reason, and
war is only the tool, not the other way around. Consequently, it remains only to
subordinate the military point of view to the political".[30]:37

Henry A. Kissinger, however, described Lenin's approach as being that politics is a

continuation of war by other means, thus turning Clausewitz's argument "on its
head."[26]:198

Rapoport argued that:

As for Lenin's approval of Clausewitz, it probably stems from his obsession with
the struggle for power. The whole Marxist conception of history is that of
successive struggles for power, primarily between social classes. This was
constantly applied by Lenin in a variety of contexts. Thus the entire history of
philosophy appears in Lenin's writings as a vast struggle between "idealism" and
"materialism". The fate of the socialist movement was to be decided by a struggle
between the revolutionists and the reformers. Clausewitz's acceptance of the
struggle for power as the essence of international politics must had impressed
Lenin as starkly realistic.[30]:37�38

Clausewitz directly influenced Mao Zedong, who read On War in 1938 and organised a
seminar on Clausewitz for the Party leadership in Yan'an. Thus the "Clausewitzian"
content in many of Mao's writings is not merely a regurgitation of Lenin but
reflects Mao's study.[31] The idea that war involves inherent "friction" that
distorts, to a greater or lesser degree, all prior arrangements, has become common
currency in fields such as business strategy and sport. The phrase fog of war
derives from Clausewitz's stress on how confused warfare can seem while immersed
within it.[32] The term center of gravity, used in a military context derives from
Clausewitz's usage, which he took from Newtonian mechanics. In U.S. military
doctrine, "center of gravity" refers to the basis of an opponent's power at the
operational, strategic, or political level, though this is only one aspect of
Clausewitz's use of the term.[33]

Late 20th and early 21st century

The deterrence strategy of the United States in the 1950s was closely inspired by
President Dwight Eisenhower�s reading of Clausewitz as a young officer in the
1920s. Eisenhower was greatly impressed by Clausewitz�s example of a theoretical,
idealised �absolute war� in Vom Krieg as a way of demonstrating how absurd it would
be to attempt such a strategy in practice. For Eisenhower, the age of nuclear
weapons had made what was for Clausewitz in the early 19th century only a
theoretical vision an all too real possibility in the mid-20th century. From
Eisenhower's viewpoint, the best deterrent to war was to show the world just how
appalling and horrific a nuclear �absolute war� would be if it should ever occur,
hence a series of much publicised nuclear tests in the Pacific, giving first
priority in the defence budget to nuclear weapons and delivery systems over
conventional weapons, and making repeated statements in public that the United
States was able and willing at all times to use nuclear weapons. In this way
through the massive retaliation doctrine and the closely related foreign policy
concept of brinkmanship, Eisenhower hoped to hold out a creditable vision of
Clausewitzian nuclear �absolute war� in order to deter the Soviet Union and/or
China from ever risking a war or even conditions that might lead to a war with the
United States.[34]

� ...Philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skilful method of disarming

and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the
proper tendency of the art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is
an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors
which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are just the worst. As the use of
physical power to the utmost extent by no means excludes the co-operation of the
intelligence, it follows that he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to
the quantity of bloodshed, must obtain a superiority if his adversary does not act
likewise. By such means the former dictates the law to the latter, and both proceed
to extremities, to which the only limitations are those imposed by the amount of
counteracting force on each side. �
�?Clausewitz, On War, Book I, Chapter 1[16]:Vol. I pgs. 1�2
After 1970, some theorists claimed that nuclear proliferation made Clausewitzian
concepts obsolete after the 20th-century period in which they dominated the world.
[35] John E. Sheppard, Jr., argues that by developing nuclear weapons, state-based
conventional armies simultaneously both perfected their original purpose, to
destroy a mirror image of themselves, and made themselves obsolete. No two powers
have used nuclear weapons against each other, instead using conventional means or
proxy wars to settle disputes. If such a conflict did occur, presumably both
combatants would be annihilated. Heavily influenced by the war in Vietnam and by
antipathy to American strategist Henry Kissinger, the American biologist, musician,
and game-theorist Anatol Rapoport argued in 1968 that a Clausewitzian view of war
was not only obsolete in the age of nuclear weapons, but also highly dangerous as
it promoted a "zero-sum paradigm" to international relations and a "dissolution of
rationality" amongst decision-makers.[30]:73�77

The end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century have seen many
instances of state armies attempting to suppress insurgencies, terrorism, and other
forms of asymmetrical warfare. Clausewitz did not focus solely on wars between
countries with well-defined armies. The era of the French Revolution and Napoleon
was full of revolutions, rebellions, and violence by "non-state actors", such as
the wars in the French Vend�e and in Spain. Clausewitz wrote a series of �Lectures
on Small War� and studied the rebellion in the Vend�e (1793�1796) and the Tyrolean
uprising of 1809. In his famous �Bekenntnisdenkschrift� of 1812, he called for a
�Spanish war in Germany� and laid out a comprehensive guerrilla strategy to be
waged against Napoleon. In On War he included a famous chapter on �The People in
Arms.�[36]

One prominent critic of Clausewitz is the Israeli military historian Martin van
Creveld. In his book The Transformation of War,[37] Creveld argued that
Clausewitz's famous "Trinity" of people, army, and government was an obsolete
socio-political construct based on the state, which was rapidly passing from the
scene as the key player in war, and that he (Creveld) had constructed a new "non-
trinitarian" model for modern warfare. Creveld's work has had great influence.
Daniel Moran replied, 'The most egregious misrepresentation of Clausewitz's famous
metaphor must be that of Martin van Creveld, who has declared Clausewitz to be an
apostle of Trinitarian War, by which he means, incomprehensibly, a war of 'state
against state and army against army,' from which the influence of the people is
entirely excluded."[38] Christopher Bassford went further, noting that one need
only read the paragraph in which Clausewitz defined his Trinity to see "that the
words 'people,' 'army,' and 'government' appear nowhere at all in the list of the
Trinity�s components.... Creveld's and Keegan's assault on Clausewitz's Trinity is
not only a classic 'blow into the air,' i.e., an assault on a position Clausewitz
doesn't occupy. It is also a pointless attack on a concept that is quite useful in
its own right. In any case, their failure to read the actual wording of the theory
they so vociferously attack, and to grasp its deep relevance to the phenomena they
describe, is hard to credit."[21]

Some have gone further and suggested that Clausewitz's best-known aphorism, that
war is a continuation of policy by other means, is not only irrelevant today but
also inapplicable historically.[39] For an opposing view see the sixteen essays
presented in Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century edited by Hew Strachan and
Andreas Herberg-Rothe.[40]

In military academies, schools, and universities worldwide, Clausewitz's literature

is often mandatory reading.[41]

In popular culture
Literature

1945: In the Horatio Hornblower novel The Commodore, by C. S. Forester, the

protagonist meets Clausewitz during the events surrounding the defence of Riga
1945: In That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis, Lord Feverstone (Dick Devine)
defends rudely cutting off another professor by saying "[...] but then I take the
Clausewitz view. Total war is the most humane in the long run."
1952: In John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden, the character of Lee makes several
references to Clausewitz in Chapter 43.
1955: In Ian Fleming's novel Moonraker, James Bond reflects that he has achieved
Clausewitz's first principle in securing his base, though this base is a
relationship for intelligence purposes and not a military installation.
1977: In The Wars by Timothy Findley, a novel about a 19-year-old Canadian officer
who serves in the First World War, one of his fellow soldiers reads On War, and
occasionally quotes some of its passages.
2000: In the Ethan Stark military science fiction book series by John G. Hemry,
Clausewitz is often quoted by Private Mendoza and his father Lieutenant Mendoza to
explain events that unfold during the series.
2004: Bob Dylan mentions Clausewitz on pages 41 and 45 of his Chronicles: Volume
One, saying he had "a morbid fascination with this stuff," that "Clausewitz in some
ways is a prophet" and reading Clausewitz can make you "take your own thoughts a
little less seriously." Dylan says that Vom Kriege was one of the books he looked
through among those he found in his friend's personal library as a young man
playing at The Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village.
Film

1962: In Lawrence of Arabia, General Allenby (Jack Hawkins) contends to T. E.

Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) that "I fight like Clausewitz, you fight like Saxe", to
which Lawrence replies, "We should do very well indeed, shouldn't we?"
1977: In Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron, Feldwebel Steiner (James Coburn) has an
ironic conversation in the trenches in gaps in hostilities with the advancing Red
Army with his comrade, Cpl. Schnurrbart, in which they refer to German philosophers
and their views on war. Schnurrbart: "Clausewitz said, 'war is a continuation of
state policy by other means.'" "Yes," Steiner says, overlooking the trenches,
" ...by other means."
1978: In the East German Television television series Scharnhorst Clausewitz was
played by Bodo Wolf.
1980: East German Television produced a television biopic, Clausewitz � Lebensbild
eines preu�ischen Generals (Clausewitz � Life picture of a Prussian General), with
J�rgen Reuter as Clausewitz, directed by Wolf-Dieter Panse. The film was released
on DVD in 2016.
1995: In Crimson Tide, the naval officers of the nuclear submarine have a
discussion about the meaning of the quote "War is a continuation of politics by
other means." The executive officer (Denzel Washington) contends that the
interpretation of Clausewitz's ideas by the captain (Gene Hackman) is too
simplistic.
2004: In Downfall, set during the last days of the Third Reich, Hitler initiates
Operation Clausewitz, as part of the last defence of Berlin
2007: In Lions for Lambs, during a military briefing in Afghanistan Lt. Col. Falco
(Peter Berg) says: "Remember your von Clausewitz: 'Never engage the same enemy for
too long or he will ...'", "adapt to your tactics", completes another soldier [42]
2009: In Law Abiding Citizen, Clausewitz is frequently quoted by Clyde Shelton
(Gerard Butler), the main character.
2012: In the film The Gatekeepers, Ayalon quotes Clausewitz's definition of
�victory� as constituting an improvement of one's political situation and gets one
of the film's very rare laughs by describing the military theorist as being "smart
even though he doesn�t seem to have been Jewish".
Video games

Paradox Development Studio's grand strategy game engine is named the "Clausewitz
Engine"
In Civilization V: Brave New World, an autocratic nation can adopt the
"Clausewitz's Legacy" tenet, granting the nation a temporary bonus on the military
offensive.
In the game Napoleon: Total War, Clausewitz is available for recruitment as a high
rated general for the Prussia faction.
See also
August Otto R�hle von Lilienstern � Prussian officer from whom Clausewitz allegedly
took, without acknowledgment, several important ideas (including that about war as
pursuing political aims) made famous in On War. However, such ideas as Clausewitz
and Lilienstern shared in common derived from a common influence, i.e.,
Scharnhorst, who was Clausewitz's "second father" and professional mentor.

Famous military writers

Niccol� Machiavelli � The Prince
Antoine-Henri Jomini
B.H. Liddell Hart
John Keegan
Sun Tzu
Chanakya
Martin van Creveld
Absolute war
Operation Clausewitz
Philosophy of war
Principles of War
Strategic studies
Total war
References
Informational notes

In German personal names, von is a preposition which approximately means of or

from and usually denotes some sort of nobility. While von (always lower case) is
part of the family name or territorial designation, not a first or middle name, if
the noble is referred to by surname alone in English, use Schiller or Clausewitz or
Goethe, not von Schiller, etc.
"[T]he great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all
action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition
not unfrequently�like the effect of a fog or moonshine�gives to things exaggerated
dimensions and an unnatural appearance."[16]:Vol. I pg. 54
"As the centre of gravity is always situated where the greatest mass of matter is
collected, and as a shock against the centre of gravity of a body always produces
the greatest effect, and further, as the most effective blow is struck with the
centre of gravity of the power used, so it is also in war. The armed forces of
every belligerent, whether of a single state or of an alliance of states, have a
certain unity, and in that way, connection; but where connection is there come in
analogies of the centre of gravity. There are, therefore, in these armed forces
certain centres of gravity, the movement and direction of which decide upon other
points, and these centres of gravity are situated where the greatest bodies of
troops are assembled. But just as, in the world of inert matter, the action against
the centre of gravity has its measure and limits in the connection of the parts, so
it is in war, and here as well as there the force exerted may easily be greater
than the resistance requires, and then there is a blow in the air, a waste of
force."[16]:Vol. II pg. 180
Citations

Bassford, Christopher (March 8, 2016). "Clausewitz and His Works". Clausewitz.com.

Retrieved July 9, 2018.
Cormier, Youri. War As Paradox: Clausewitz & Hegel on Fighting Doctrines and
Ethics, (Montreal & Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 2016)
http://www.mqup.ca/war-as-paradox-products-9780773547698.php
Clausewitz, Carl von (1984) [1832]. Howard, Michael; Paret, Peter, eds. On War
[Vom Krieg] (Indexed ed.). New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 87. ISBN 978-
0-691-01854-6.
"Clausewitz's tombstone". Clausewitz.com. Retrieved July 9, 2018.
"Carl von Clausewitz". Encyclop�dia Britannica.
Aron, Raymond (1983). Clausewitz: Philosopher of War. Taylor & Francis. pp. 12�14.
ISBN 9780710090096.
Bellinger, Vanya Eftimova. Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On
War. New York/London: Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-022543-8
Bellinger, Vanya Eftimova (January 6, 2016). "Five Things You Didn't Know About
Carl von Clausewitz". Real Clear Defense. Retrieved 7 January 2016.
Smith, Rupert, The Utility of Force, Penguin Books, 2006, p. 57
Paret, Peter (2012). "Clausewitz and Schlieffen as Interpreters of Frederick the
Great: Three Phases in the History of Grand Strategy". Journal of Military History.
76 (3): 837�45.
Lynn Montross, War Through the Ages (2nd ed. 1946) p. 583.
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, originally Vom Kriege (3 vols., Berlin: 1832�34). The
edition cited here was edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton
University Press, 1984, pp. 75, 87, 89, 605.
Summers, Harry G., Jr. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War
(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982).
 Bassford, Christopher (2007). "The Primacy of Policy and the "Trinity" in
Clausewitz's Mature Thought.". In Strachan, Hew; Herberg-Rothe, Andreas. Clausewitz
in the Twenty-First Century Proceedings of a March, 2005 conference at Oxford.
Oxford University Press. pp. 74�90.
Evan Luard, ed. (2016). Basic Texts in International Relations: The Evolution of
Ideas about International Society. Springer. p. 244. ISBN 9781349221073.
von Clausewitz, Carl (1873) [1832]. On War [Vom Krieg]. Translated by Graham, J.J.
London: N. Tr�bner & Co.
Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times
Heuser, Beatrice (2007). "Clausewitz' Ideas of Strategy and Victory". In Strachan,
Hew; Herberg-Rothe, Andreas. Clausewitz in the 21st Century Proceedings of a March,
2005 conference at Oxford. Oxford University Press. pp. 132�163.
Handel, Michael I. (1986). Clausewitz and Modern Strategy. Psychology Press. p.
71. ISBN 9780714632940.
Shepherd III, Frederick L. (2014). The Fog Of War: Effects Of Uncertainty On
Airpower Employment. Pickle Partners. p. 9. ISBN 9781782896807.
Tip-Toe Through the Trinity: The Strange Persistence of Trinitarian Warfare by
Christopher Bassford
Moltke, Helmuth (1892). Moltke: His Life and His Character Sketched in Journals,
Letters, Memoirs, a Novel, and Autobiographical Notes. Translated by Herms, Mary.
New York: Harper & Brothers Franklin Square. p. 35.
Liddell Hart, B. H. Strategy London:Faber, 1967. Second rev. ed.
Brands, Hal; Suri, Jeremi (2015). The Power of the Past: History and Statecraft.
Brookings Institution Press. p. 147. ISBN 9780815727132.
John Keegan, A History of Warfare. 1993. Second edition 2004, p. 3.
Bassford, Christopher (1994). Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz
in Britain and America, 1815�1945. Oxford UP. pp. 20�21. ISBN 9780195083835.
Strachan, Hew (2011). "Clausewitz and the First World War". Journal of Military
History. 75 (2): 367�391.
Kipp, Joseph W. "Lenin and Clausewitz: the Militarization of Marxism, 1914�1921."
Military Affairs 1985 49(4): 184�91. ISSN 0026-3931. In JSTOR
Mertsalov, A.N. "Jomini versus Clausewitz" pp. 11�19 from Russia War, Peace and
Diplomacy edited by Mark and Ljubica Erickson, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004
p. 16.
Rapoport, Anatol "Introduction" pp. 11�82 from On War, London: Penguin, 1968.
Zhang, Yuanlin (1999). "Mao Zedongs Bezugnahme auf Clausewitz". Archiv f�r
Kulturgeschichte. 81 (2): 443�71. doi:10.7788/akg.1999.81.2.443.
Berkun, Scott (2005). The Art of Project Management. Beijing: OReilly. ISBN 0-596-
00786-8.
Joseph W Graham (2002). What the U. S. Military Can Do to Defeat Terrorism. p. 7.
ISBN 9780595222599.
Gaddis, John Lewis "We Now Know, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 1998 pp.
233�234.
Sheppard, John E., Jr. (September 1990). "On War: Is Clausewitz Still Relevant?".
Parameters. 20 (3): 85�99.
Reiner Pommerin (2014). Clausewitz Goes Global: Carl von Clausewitz in the 21st
century. p. 293. ISBN 9783937885780.
Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation
of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz (New York: The Free Press, 1991).
Daniel Moran, "Clausewitz on Waterloo: Napoleon at Bay," in Carl von Clausewitz
and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington,
and the Campaign of 1815, ed./trans. Christopher Bassford, Daniel Moran, and
Gregory W. Pedlow (Clausewitz.com, 2010), p.242, n.11.
See for instance John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Knopf, 1993),
passim.
Strachan, Hew; Herberg-Rothe, Andreas, eds. (2007). Clausewitz in the Twenty-First
Century Proceedings of a March, 2005 conference at Oxford. Oxford University Press.
Giuseppe Caforio, Social sciences and the military: an interdisciplinary overview
(2006) p. 221
 "Lions for Lambs script (retrieved 14/06/09)".
Further reading

Scholarly studies
See massive Clausewitz bibliographies in English, French, German, etc., on The
Clausewitz Homepage bibliography section.
Aron, Raymond. Clausewitz: Philosopher of War. (1985). 418 pp. ISBN 0671628267 OCLC
13702496
Bassford, Christopher. Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in
Britain and America, 1815�1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN
0195083830 OCLC 27811623
Christopher Bassford, "Tiptoe Through the Trinity: The Strange Persistence of
Trinitarian Warfare." Working paper,
Cormier, Youri. "Fighting Doctrines and Revolutionary Ethics" Journal of Military
and Security Studies, Vol 15, No 1 (2013)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140729225332/http://jmss.synergiesprairies.ca/jmss/in
dex.php/jmss/article/view/519
Cormier, Youri. "Hegel and Clausewitz: Convergence on Method, Divergence on Ethics"
International History Review, Volume 36, Issue 3, 2014
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07075332.2013.859166?
tab=permissions#.U9f1XvldXGB.
Cormier, Youri. War As Paradox: Clausewitz & Hegel on Fighting Doctrines and
Ethics, (Montreal & Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 2016) pp. 183�232
Dimitriu, George. �Clausewitz and the Politics of War: A Contemporary Theory�,
Journal of Strategic Studies, (15 Oct 2018)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2018.1529567.
Echevarria, Antulio J., II. After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the
Great War. (2001). 346 pp. ISBN 0700610715 OCLC 44516530
Echevarria, Antulio J., II. Clausewitz and Contemporary War (2007) ISBN
9780199231911 OCLC 123539601
Gat, Azar. The Origins of Military Thought from the Enlightenment to Clausewitz
(1989) ISBN 0198229488 OCLC 18779344
Handel, Michael I., ed. Clausewitz and Modern Strategy. 1986. 324 pp. ISBN
0714632945 OCLC 13214672
Handel, Michael I. Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought. (2001) 482 pages.
Based on comparison of Clausewitz's On War with Sun Tzu's The Art of War ISBN
0714681326 OCLC 318033033
Heuser, Beatrice. Reading Clausewitz. (2002). 238 pages, ISBN 0-7126-6484-X
Heuser, Beatrice. "Small Wars in the Age of Clausewitz: Watershed between Partisan
War and People�s War", Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 33 No.1 (Feb. 2010), pp.
137�160 .
Holmes, Terence M. "Planning Versus Chaos in Clausewitz's On War." Journal of
Strategic Studies 2007 30(1): 129-151. ISSN 0140-2390 Fulltext: EBSCO
Sir Michael Howard, Clausewitz, 1983 [originally a volume in the Oxford University
Press "Past Masters" series, reissued in 2000 as Clausewitz: A Very Short
Introduction]. ISBN 0-192-87608-2 OCLC 8709266
Keegan, John, A History of Warfare (London: Hutchinson, 1993). See critique of
Keegan's arguments by Christopher Bassford, "John Keegan and the Grand Tradition of
Trashing Clausewitz: A Polemic," War in History, November 1994, pp. 319�336.
Kinross, Stuart. Clausewitz and America: Strategic thought and practice from
Vietnam to Iraq. (London: Routledge, 2009.) ISBN 9780415380232 OCLC 70173302
Mieszkowski, Jan. "How To Do Things With Clausewitz," The Global South, Volume 3,
Number 1, Spring 2009, pp. 18�29 in Project MUSE
Mertsalov, A.N. �Jomini versus Clausewitz� pages 11�19 from Russia War, Peace and
Diplomacy edited by Mark and Ljubica Erickson, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004,
ISBN 0-297-84913-1.
Paret, Peter. Clausewitz in His Time: Essays in the Cultural and Intellectual
History of Thinking about War. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015.
Paret, Peter. "Two Historians on Defeat in War and Its Causes," Historically
Speaking, Volume 11, Number 3, June 2010, pp. 2�8 doi:10.1353/hsp.0.0118
Paret, Peter. Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Paret, Peter. "From Ideal to Ambiguity: Johannes von M�ller, Clausewitz, and the
People in Arms." Journal of the History of Ideas 2004 65(1): 101�11. ISSN 0022-5037
Fulltext: Project Muse
Rogers, Clifford J. "Clausewitz, Genius and the Rules,"[1], The Journal of Military
History, Vol. 66, No. 4. (2002), pp. 1167�1176.
Paul Roques, Le g�n�ral de Clausewitz. Sa vie et sa th�orie de la guerre, Paris,
Editions Astr�e, 2013. ISBN 979-10-91815-01-7 http://www.editions-
astree.fr/BC/Bon_de_commande_Roques.pdf
Rothfels, Hans "Clausewitz" pages 93�113 from The Makers of Modern Strategy edited
by Edward Mead Earle, Gordon A. Craig & Felix Gilbert, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1943.
Sharma, Vivek Swarooop. "A Social Theory of War: Clausewitz and War Reconsidered"
in Cambridge Review of International Affairs 2015 28 (3): 327�47. Full text at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271941186_A_social_theory_of_war_Clausewit
z_and_war_reconsidered.
Smith, Hugh. On Clausewitz: A Study of Military and Political Ideas. (2005). 303
pp.
Stoker, Donald J. Clausewitz: His Life and Work (Oxford UP, 2014) 376 pp. online
review
Strachan, Hew (April 2011). "Clausewitz and the First World War". The Journal of
Military History. 75 (2): 367�91.
Strachan, Hew, and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, eds. Clausewitz in the Twenty-First
Century (2007) excerpt and text search
Sumida, Jon Tetsuro. "On the Relationship of History and Theory in on War: the
Clausewitzian Ideal and its Implications" Journal of Military History 2001 65(2):
333�54. ISSN 0899-3718
Sumida, Jon Tetsuro. Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War Lawrence,
Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2008. ISBN 9780700616169 OCLC 213765799
Villacres, Edward J. and Bassford, Christopher. "Reclaiming the Clausewitzian
Trinity". Parameters, Autumn 95, pp. 9�19,
Wallach, Jehuda L. The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of
Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their Impact on the German Conduct of Two World Wars.
(1986).
Waldman, Thomas (2012). "Clausewitz and the Study of War". Defence Studies.
Routledge. 13 (3): 345�374. ISSN 1470-2436.
Primary sources
Clausewitz, Carl von. Historical and Political Writings, ed. Peter Paret and Daniel
Moran (1992).
Clausewitz, Carl von. Vom Kriege. Berlin: D�mmlers Verlag, 1832.
Clausewitz, Carl von (1984) [1976]. Howard, Michael; Paret, Peter, eds. On War
(trans. ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05657-9.
Clausewitz, Carl von. On War, abridged version translated by Michael Howard and
Peter Paret, edited with an introduction by Beatrice Heuser Oxford World's Classics
(Oxford University Press, 2007) ISBN 978-0-19-954002-0
Clausewitz, Carl von. Principles of War. Translated by Hans Gatske. The Military
Service Publishing Company, 1942. Originally "Die wichtigsten Grunds�tze des
Kriegf�hrens zur Erg�nzung meines Unterrichts bei Sr. K�niglichen Hoheit dem
Kronprinzen" (written 1812).
Clausewitz, Carl von. Col. J. J. Graham, translator. Vom Kriege. On War � Volume 1,
Project Gutenberg eBook. The full text of the 1873 English translation can be seen
in parallel with the original German text at
http://www.clausewitz.com/CompareFrameSource1.htm. [2]
Clausewitz, Karl von. On War. Trans. O.J. Matthijs Jolles. New York: Random House,
1943. Though not currently the standard translation, this is increasingly viewed by
many Clausewitz scholars as the most precise and accurate English translation.
Clausewitz, Carl von. The Campaign of 1812 in Russia. Trans. anonymous
[Wellington's friend Francis Egerton, later Lord Ellesmere], London: John Murray
Publishers, 1843. Originally Carl von Clausewitz, Hinterlassene Werke des Generals
Carl von Clausewitz �ber Krieg und Krieg f�hrung, 10 vols., Berlin, 1832�37, "Der
Feldzug von 1812 in Russland" in Vol. 7, Berlin, 1835.
Clausewitz, Carl von, and Wellesley, Arthur (First Duke of Wellington), ed./trans.
Christopher Bassford, Gregory W. Pedlow, and Daniel Moran, On Waterloo: Clausewitz,
Wellington, and the Campaign of 1815. (Clausewitz.com, 2010). This collection of
documents includes, in a modern English translation, the whole of Clausewitz's
study, The Campaign of 1815: Strategic Overview (Berlin: 1835). ISBN 1-4537-0150-8.
It also includes Wellington's reply to Clausewitz's discussion of the campaign, as
well as two letters by Clausewitz to his wife after the major battles of 1815 and
other supporting documents and essays.
Clausewitz, Carl von. Two Letters on Strategy. Ed./trans. Peter Paret and Daniel
Moran. Carlisle: Army War College Foundation, 1984.
External links
Carl von Clausewitz
at Wikipedia's sister projects
Media from Wikimedia Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Mind Map of On War
Clausewitz homepage, large amounts of information.
Corn, Tony. "Clausewitz in Wonderland", Policy Review, September 2006. This is an
article hostile to "Clausewitz and the Clausewitzians." See also reply by
Clausewitz Homepage, "Clausewitz's self-appointed PR Flack."
Works by Carl von Clausewitz at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Carl von Clausewitz at Internet Archive
Works by Carl von Clausewitz at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
The Influence of Clausewitz on Jomini's Le Pr�cis de l'Art de la Guerre
Two Letters On Strategy, addressed to the Prussian general-staff officer, Major von
Roeder, respectively of 22 and 24 December 1827.
Erfourth M. & Bazin, A. (2014). Clausewitz�s Military Genius and the #Human
Dimension. The Bridge.
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