On War
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- This article is about the treatise on military strategy; for the controversial manga series, see Neo Gomanism Manifesto Special - On War.
On War (German Vom Kriege) is a book on military strategy and tactics by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1818, and published posthumously by his wife in 1832. It is one of the most important treatises on strategy ever written, and is prescribed at various military academies to this day.
On War is actually an unfinished work; Clausewitz had set about revising his accumulated manuscripts in 1827, but did not live to finish the task.
Contents |
History
Carl von Clausewitz was a disillusioned Prussian officer among those baffled by how Napoleon's army had changed the nature of war through his ability to motivate the populace and thus unleash war on a greater scale than was generally fought previously. Von Clausewitz spent a considerable part of his life fighting against Napoleon and there is no doubt that the insight he gained from his experiences provided much of the raw material for the book. On War represents the compilation of his cogent observations published after his death by his wife.
Synopsis
Among many strands of thought, three stand out as essential to Clausewitz' concept:
- War must never be seen as a purpose to itself, but as a means of physically forcing one's will on an opponent ("war as continuation of politics").
- War presupposes human weakness and is directed against it.
- The laws of war will always favor the party devoting more resolve and resource ("total war").
The West's modern perception of war is based on the Clausewitzian principles taught in On War. Its military doctrine, organization, and norms are all based on Clausewitzian premises, even to this day.
On War has been seen as the place where the concept of total war was made explicit and has been blamed1 for the level of destruction involved in the First and Second World War, whereas it seems rather that Clausewitz had merely foreseen the inevitable development starting with the huge, patriotically motivated armies of the Napoleonic wars and resulting (though not ending) in the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with all forces and capabilites of a state devoted to destroying forces and capabilities of the enemy state (thus "total war").
The book contains a wealth of historical examples used to illustrate the various concepts. Frederick II of Prussia (the Great) figures prominently for having made very efficient use of the limited forces at his disposal. Napoleon also is a central figure.
On War is a work rooted solely in the world of the state. Martin Van Creveld states that Clausewitz takes the state "almost for granted" as he rarely looks at anything previous to Westphalia. He does not address any form of intra/supra-state conflict, such as rebellion, because he could theoretically not account for warfare before the existence of the state. Previous kinds of conflict were demoted to criminal activities without legitimacy and not worthy of a declaration of war. Clausewitz explains that war requires the state to act in conjunction with the people and the army, the state becoming a massive engine built to exude military force against an identical opponent. This statement is easily verified by looking at the conventional armies in existence throughout the 20th century.
Notes
- For example, writing in his introduction to Sun Tzu's Art of War, B.H. Liddell Hart states that Civilization might have been spared much of the damage suffered in the world wars of this century if the influence of Clausewitz's monumental tomes On War, which molded European military thought in the era preceding the First World War, had been blended with and balanced by a knowledge of Sun Tzu's exposition on `The Art of War'. Whilst this comment is tempered by the comment that the ill-effects of Clausewitz's teaching arose largely from his disciples' too shallow and too extreme interpretation of it, it still ranks as a strong criticism. Extracted from "The Art of War (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works)" Samuel B. Griffith [1]
Editions
(Translations are into English unless otherwise noted)
- Translated by Colonel J. J. Graham, 1874, republished 1909 Project Gutenberg eBook
- Translated by O. J. Matthijs Jolles, 1943
- Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton University Press, 1976 (index added 1984) ISBN 0-691-05657-9
- Edited with introduction by Anatol Rapoport, Viking Penguin, 1982 (Paperback, 464 pages) ISBN 0140444270