Karl von Clausewitz

German military leader and strategist Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) has been called the "father of modern warfare." As a member of the officers' corps of the mighty Prussian army from an early age, Clausewitz witnessed some of the most decisive European battles of his century and culled his observations into a body of theories that were outlined in his 1832 tract, On War. Its most enduring statement, "War is a continuation of policy by other means," has been widely misconstrued.

Clausewitz was born Karl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz on June 1, 1780 in the Prussian city of Burg, near Magdeburg, capital of Saxony-Anhalt. He was one of six children of Friedrich Gabriel von Clause-witz, a retired Prussian army officer. Though Prussia no longer exists as a sovereign nation, during Clausewitz's lifetime it was one of Europe's most formidable powers. It originated as a duchy in the seventeenth century, and eventually acquired enough territory and influence to crown a king. Prussia remained independent from the Holy Roman Empire, but enjoyed close ties to it. The military campaigns led by the armies of Frederick the Great greatly added to its territory.

Clausewitz's formal military training began at the age of twelve, when his father brought him to the headquarters of the 34th Infantry Regiment in Potsdam in 1792. Here he began his training as an officer cadet. Such early martial instruction was not uncommon in the Prussia of the late eighteenth century. His older brother, Wilhelm, was already a second lieutenant with the corps. Not long after his arrival at the barracks, Clausewitz witnessed his first battle, when his regiment was sent to liberate the cathedral city of Mainz from French occupying forces. Clausewitz's duties as a Fahnenjunker, or ensign, apart from carrying the regimental standard in marches, included visiting the wounded in the field hospitals and writing reports on them to his commanding officer.

At the King's Court

When the Prussian army withdrew from participation in the French Revolutionary Wars in 1795, Clausewitz was posted to a remote garrison for several years. He occupied his time by reading a great deal, and studying for the entrance examination to the Institute for Young Officers in Berlin. In 1801, he took the test and was accepted. Its director, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, would become a key figure in the modernization of the Prussian army. He implemented changes that would make it one of the most successful forces of the coming century.

Scharnhorst recognized Clausewitz's abilities and became the young officer's mentor. In 1803, Clausewitz graduated first in his class from the Institute, and was appointed military adjutant to the young Prussian prince, August. With this prime posting, he entered the rarefied world of the Berlin royal court, with its round of balls, banquets, and lavish official ceremonies. It was an enriching, but difficult time for Clausewitz. He was still a low-ranking officer with a correspondingly paltry pay rank. Many of his fellow officers were of noble birth and possessed independent family incomes. Still, Clausewitz became acquainted with many famous European political and cultural luminaries of the day here, and also met his future wife at a Berlin gathering late in 1803. Countess Marie von Bruhl came from an old, esteemed Saxon line of aristocrats. It took several years of engagement before her family would grant approval for her marriage to Clausewitz.

Prisoner of War

In France, Napoleon Bonaparte had exploited the political and economic chaos of the post-revolutionary years and seized power. He proclaimed himself emperor in 1804, and launched a war that added territory to France despite opposition from a coalition of British, Austrian, Russian, and Swedish forces. Prussia joined the fight in 1806, but suffered devastating losses at Jena and Auerstadt. It would mark a turning point for both Clausewitz and Prussia. He and Prince August were captured in the area near Prenslau and taken as prisoners of war.

Clausewitz's captivity was not a punitive one. Officers who were taken into custody by a foreign power were usually allowed to move about freely; they only had to surrender their insignia and weapons, and swear an oath that they would not take up arms against the detaining army. Thus Clausewitz spent part of 1806 in Berlin and Neu-Ruppin, but was then sent with Prince August to Soissons, France, where he spent half of 1807. He began writing articles about the military debacles of the previous year. "Observations on Prussia in its Great Catastrophe" was finished in 1806. Its criticisms of how the Prussian regiments had lost at Jena and Auerstadt were considered so inflammatory that the work would not be published in Germany for another seven decades.

Sided with Russia

A major political capitulation occurred in 1807, when Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm signed an agreement with Napoleon. The treaty handed over nearly half of Prussian land to the French. This was seen as a humiliating defeat and incensed many officers, including Clausewitz. Still, it meant that he and the prince were released from official detention. Clausewitz returned to Berlin to aid Scharnhorst, who had been named head of the newly created Prussian Ministry of War and was working to reorganize and reform the army. In 1810, Clausewitz was promoted to the rank of major and began teaching at Berlin's Kriegsschule, the newly reconstituted school from which he had himself graduated with top honors. His salary and good repute combined to finally win the approval of the von Bruhl family. He and the Countess were married at St. Mary's Church in Berlin on December 17, 1810.

Tension between Prussia and Napoleonic France became strained. In February 1812, King Friedrich Wilhelm approved a request to send a Prussian corps of 20,000 men to join Napoleon's march on Russia. Clausewitz wrote a severe denunciation of this act of treachery that went unpublished for several years. Then he resigned, (as did many other high-ranking officers), and took up arms on the Russian side. Before his departure, he left with Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm—for whom he served as military tutor— a manuscript for safekeeping. This work, containing many of his theories and tactics, was the forerunner of his later treatise, On War.

Victory at a Terrible Price

In Russia, Clausewitz participated in several infamous battles. The French army managed to reach Moscow, but was decimated by its long, harsh winter. In late November 1812, a turning point was reached when the French were routed at the Berezina River. In the last days of the calendar year, Clausewitz was involved in negotiations that came to be known as the Convention of Tauroggen. This changed the course of the war decisively. The entire Prussian army joined with the Russians to defeat the French, and won a great victory at Leipzig in October 1813. Paris was seized five months later, and Napoleon was banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba.

After Tauroggen, Clausewitz was reinstated in the Prussian army as a colonel. However, he still was disliked by King Friedrich Wilhelm, and was not appointed to any command position. In early 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba and once again gathered a force that retook Paris and did battle with a combined force of Prussian, Austrian, British, and Russian troops. At the battle of Ligny, at which Clause-witz was present, the French inflicted great casualties. Napoleon was defeated that same week by the British at Waterloo, in Belgium.

A Low Profile

In October 1815, Clausewitz was appointed chief of staff for Prussia's Army of the Rhine. He and his wife lived in Koblenz, Germany at this time. In 1818, Clausewitz was promoted to the rank of general and became the administrative director of the Kriegsschule. He had been recommended for the post by another key figure in the Prussian military organization, August von Gneisenau. Clausewitz had come to known Gneisenau through Scharnhorst, and had served under him during the Napoleonic Wars.

The position was a rather dull one, however, and Clausewitz spent much of the 1820s writing his opus. Because of the continued disfavor of the king and a postwar mood of conservatism, he was not able to teach or implement any of his ideas at the officers' college. He kept a low profile, and was even known as somewhat of a recluse. There were rumors that he was a drinker, due to his ruddy complexion. But this was caused by dermatological damage he had suffered during the Russian winter of 1812, when battlefield temperatures sometimes dropped to forty degrees below zero.

In 1830, tensions erupted at Prussia's border with Poland. Clausewitz had harsh words for the Poles, whom he considered unfit for self-government. He was appointed chief of staff to Gneisenau, commander of Prussia's Army of the East, and departed for Breslau, to serve as an inspector near the border. Before he departed, he sealed all his manuscripts, including what would become On War.

War was averted, but a cholera epidemic struck the area in late 1831, and felled Gneisenau in Poznan. Clause-witz was quarantined for a time, but then allowed to return to Breslau. Ten days later, on November 16, 1831, he died of cholera. His wife edited the manuscripts and had them published in 1832.

Theories of Conflict

On War, the work's English title, is difficult reading in any language. Its eight sections bear headings such as "On the Nature of War," "The Engagement," "Defense," and "War Plans." Clausewitz believed that the time-tested mathematical strategies for battle were increasingly useless in his modern age. War, unlike mathematics, was mostly unpredictable. In his writing, Clausewitz draws upon his own battlefield experiences in detailing innovative methods of retreat, flank positions, marches, and subsistence. He also wrote at length on more theoretical topics, such as his notion of what he called "absolute war." This would become On War 's most infamous and misunderstood passage. According to Clausewitz, absolute war was violence unchecked by any controls, whose aim is to utterly annihilate the enemy. "The destruction of the enemy's military force is the leading principle of war; … The results will be greatest when combats unite themselves into one great battle," he wrote. But Clausewitz went on to note that in reality, such abstract "pure" war did not exist, for political strategies and goals served to restrain such massive carnage.

On War belongs to a genre of controversial works that have, at times, been subject to many conflicting interpretations—Machiavelli's The Prince and Das Kapital by Karl Marx have earned a similar place on the bookshelves of history. Indeed, the Marxist-Leninist theory of war is culled significantly from Clausewitz's theories. It remains an important, though controversial text in military academics, and has been an integral part of the United States officers' curriculum since the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Clausewitz's groundbreaking writings have prompted some to note wryly that as people became more civilized, warfare grows increasingly vicious. Despite the nature of his professional beliefs, Clausewitz was anything but a belligerent man. Extant images and memoirs reveal him as serious, shy, and, in appearance, closer to that of a poet or composer than the stereotypical Prussian general.

Further Reading

Aron, Raymond, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, Simon and Schuster, 1983.

Parkinson, Roger, Clausewitz: A Biography, Stein and Day, 1971. □

Clausewitz, Karl Von

WORKS BY CLAUSEWITZ

WORKS ABOUT CLAUSEWITZ

Karl von Clausewitz, military theorist, was born in 1780 in Burg, Prussia, into a Protestant family of administrators and theologians. His father had assumed the particule of nobility and entered the Prussian Army. Like many other middle-class officers, he was dismissed after the Seven Years’ War for being unable to substantiate his title; however, his military connections enabled three of his four sons to gain admittance to the service, in which they reached senior rank.

After joining an infantry regiment at the age of 12, Clausewitz took part in the campaigns against the French Republic and then served in a provincial garrison until he was sent to the Berlin War Academy in 1801—an event which he later described as the turning point of his life. At the academy Clausewitz studied military theory, philosophy, history, and literature, wrote his first essays, and gained the friendship of Scharnhorst, the leader of progressive thought in the army.

During the disastrous Prussian campaign against Napoleon in 1806, Clausewitz was captured and spent ten intellectually fruitful months in France and Switzerland before returning to Prussia. He soon became one of Scharnhorst’s most trusted collaborators in the task of changing the classridden military establishment into a fighting force that tapped all sources of energy and enthusiasm in the nation. He contributed to the evolution of strategic and tactical doctrine through lectures at the new Allgemeine War Academy (Kriegsschule) on the functions of the general staff and on irregular warfare and through his work on the new infantry manual. His marriage to Countess Marie Briihl brought him in closer contact with the court, as did his appointment as teacher of military science to the crown prince. Nevertheless, when the Franco–Prussian alliance was concluded in the spring of 1812 he resigned his commission and joined the Russian Army, with which he served throughout the French invasion. At the end of the year he played a major role in the negotiations at Tauroggen, which detached the Prussian auxiliary corps from Napoleon’s army, and during the following weeks he helped organize the East Prussian militia—two events with far-reaching political and military implications. Despite these achievements, conservative resentment of his readiness to subordinate monarchic loyalty to political convictions delayed his readmission to the Prussian Army until 1815 and continued to handicap him afterwards. In 1818 Clausewitz was promoted to major general and appointed director of the War Academy—a purely administrative post that allowed him no voice in the curriculum but did give him time to write. Dissatisfaction with routine duties prompted him several times to seek a place in the diplomatic service. In 1830 he was at last transferred to a more active position and the next year was appointed chief of staff of the observation forces mobilized at the outbreak of the Polish insurrection. On the verge of what appeared to be a new and promising stage in his career, Clausewitz died of cholera in Breslau in 1831.

Clausewitz belonged to that sizable group of cultured officers that formed a distinctive part of the German classical movement. He wrote on education, aesthetics, and national character, as well as on professional topics, and occasionally attempted poetry. From Scharnhorst he learned the value of historical studies in the training of judgment, a lesson to which his admiration for Schiller’s writings rendered him particularly receptive. The tenets of idealistic philosophy exerted a lasting influence on his thought from his twenties, when he acquired a sound knowledge of Kant’s works and discussed Machiavelli with Fichte, to the years when he wrote On War and mustered his arguments in an almost Hegelian dialectic.

Where Clausewitz differed from other military intellectuals of his day was in combining the tools of logical analysis with a realistic appreciation of political and military affairs. He rejected the theorists who tried both to explain war and to provide keys for successful generalship in systems of universal rules, derived from mathematics, geography, ethics, and even technology. Force and the willingness to use it constituted in his mind the essential element of war, but he went beyond such writers as Jomini, who had grasped the Napoleonic technique of seeking decision by battle, in his stress on the political and psychological factors that were steadily increasing the intensity of war. No contemporary recognized so clearly as he that an adequate theory of conflict must accommodate both general propositions and the constant changes introduced by new weapons and new political forces. A solution to this fundamental problem was suggested by his view of the past, which approached that of early historicism. Like Ranke, whom he resembled also in his distaste for moral judgments, he acknowledged the singularity of each period and each event: a particular campaign, therefore, can be understood only in its specific context. But in the varied history of warfare he discerned certain elements that are, in one way or another, present in every type of armed conflict: the force of accident; the role of the irrational, of emotions such as enthusiasm and patriotism; the power of numbers, both in regular units and in guerrilla bands; and, above all, the political nature and purpose of war. He reasoned that since war is basically political, its course should be determined by the political leadership. In his major but uncompleted work, On War, he attempted to develop his ideas into a comprehensive theory whose function was to guide inquiry and educate judgment, not to be an “algebraic formula” for victory.

Much of the criticism that has been leveled at Clausewitz stems from a failure to understand his purpose and methods. Readers have not always followed such distinctions as his differentiation between the ideal and the real: since violence is not in principle subject to limitations, the reciprocity of action and reaction escalates to the “ideal”—total war; but in real life considerations of policy, technology, and morality modify this absolute. Too often he has been misinterpreted as the prophet of brute force, perhaps because his dialectic does not lend itself easily to excerpting. Nevertheless, his writings have exerted great influence on the study of war, particularly among communist theorists from Engels and Lenin onward, enabling them to see significant concepts behind the operational speculations, which today are of largely historical interest. What is of lasting value in On War is its suggestive discussion of the relation between political and military power, its ability to delineate some basic problems of armed conflict between states, and its demonstration that these problems are amenable to logical analysis and empirical research.

Peter Paret

[See alsoMilitary power potential; Strategy; War.]

WORKS BY CLAUSEWITZ

Clausewitz published little during his lifetime. The bulk of his writings on the history and theory of war was brought out by his widow in ten volumes, 1832–1837, of which the first three constitute On War. Other manuscripts and much of his correspondence have appeared since. Between the Franco—Prussian War and 1914, many of Clausewitz’ writings were translated into French; several works have appeared in Russian; and Lenin’s annotations to On War are in print. The only work available in English, aside from incidental pieces, excerpts, and some campaign histories, is On War, but even the 1943 translation is based upon corrupted texts.

(1832–1834) 1943 On War. Translated by O. J. M. Jolles. New York: Modern Library. → First published in German as Vom Kriege, in three volumes.

1832–1837 Hinterlassene Werke des Generals Carl von Clausewitz über Krieg und Kriegführung. 10 vols. Berlin: Dümmler.

Politische Schriften und Briefe. Edited by Hans Rothfels. Munich: Drei Masken, 1922.

WORKS ABOUT CLAUSEWITZ

Croce, Benedetto 1935 Action, succès et jugement dans le Vom Kriege de Clausewitz. Revue de métaphysique et de morale 42:247–258.

Hahlweg, Werner 1957 Carl von Clausewitz: Soldat, Politiker, Denker. Göttingen (Germany): Musterschmidt.

Paret, Peter 1965 Clausewitz: A Bibliographic Survey. World Politics 17:272–285.

Paret, Peter 1965 Clausewitz and the Nineteenth Century, Chapter 2 in Michael Howard (editor), The Theory and Practice of War: Essays Presented to Captain B. H. Liddell Hart. London: Cassell.

Rothfels, Hans 1943 Clausewitz. Pages 93–113 in Edward Mead Earle (editor), Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought From Machiavelli to Hitler. Princeton Univ. Press.

Schwartz, Karl 1878 Leben des Generals Carl von Clausewitz und der Frau Marie von Clausewitz. 2 vols. Berlin: Dümmler.