Clausewitz, Carl Von (1780–1831)

Prussian general and military thinker, whose posthumous book On War has become the most respected military classic, Carl von Clausewitz's ideas were shaped by the coming together of two revolutions that dominated his life and times: the French Revolution and the Romantic reaction against the ideas of the Enlightenment.

Joining the Prussian army at the age of 12, he took part in the invasion of France in 1793 and participated in Prussia's disastrous defeat before Napoleon at Jena-Auerstädt (1806). Then, in an effort to rescue Prussia from the verge of extinction, he became one of the young members of the Prussian reform movement, headed in the army by his mentor, war minister Gerhard von Scharnhorst. The reformers traced the roots of French military power to the political and social revolution that had given the French state the legitimacy and means to harness the whole nation—fired with civic and patriotic energies—to the cause of war. In the teeth of oligarchic opposition, they worked for a social and political reform of Prussia as the only means for reviving its great-power status in the age of mass social participation. A fervent German nationalist and Prussian patriot, Clausewitz shared Johann Gottlieb Fichte's admiration for Niccolò Machiavelli's elevation of the patriotic cause above all else, the concept of power as the paramount political factor, and rejection of moral considerations in the anarchic international arena.

Resigning the Prussian service for a while to join the Russian army to fight Napoleon in 1812, Clausewitz and his fellow-reformers saw their aspirations fulfilled with Napoleon's downfall (1813–1815). However, once the danger had gone, their program faced even greater resistance than before, as reaction set in. Clausewitz's main efforts were now channeled to the writing of a great work on war. Deeply impressed by Napoleon's crushing strategy that completely overwhelmed the armies of the ancien régime, Clausewitz rejected the limited warfare of the 18th century. He believed that the “nature,” “essence,” “concept,” or “spirit” of war required mobilization of all available forces to be thrown against the enemy's main army with the aim of destroying it in a major battle in pursuit of ambitious political aims. These notions, cultivated by the reformers during the heroic struggle against Napoleon, were systematized in On War. However, after drafting the first six books (of eight) that make up On War, Clausewitz realized, contrary to his lifelong views, that limited war was as legitimate as all-out war because “war is nothing but the continuation of state policy by the admixture of other means.” He developed these fundamental new insights in writing Books 7 and 8 of On War, and in revising Chapter 1 of Book 1, but he died before completing the revision of the rest of the work.

The posthumous work thus conserves two different, and conflicting, layers of Clausewitz's thought—the cause of much confusion among later readers. Clausewitz became a man for all seasons: the people of the 19th century canonized his work for its emphasis on the decisive clash of forces, whereas in the nuclear age he has been celebrated for postulating the supremacy of the political aim and for his concept of limited war.

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