Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz was born June 1, 1780 in Burg bei Magdeburg, Prussia. Drawing from influences such as his professor of theology grandfather as well as philosopher Immanuel Kant, Clausewitz is regarded as a very experienced military strategist and the father of war philosophy. Due to my Army ROTC commitment and future career path, I chose him to suit my interests and aspirations. He grew up as the youngest son of a middle class family and became a cadet in the Prussian military service in his early teens. Eventually, holding positions such as staff officer with political and military responsibilities, he rose through the ranks and attained Major General and married into a high class family. During one of his tours as a combative field soldier, he was captured by Napoleon along with 25,000 others, wiping out the fighting force of the Prussian state. Clausewitz drew extensive influence on the styles of Napoleonic warfare and returned to Prussia to aid in the reformation process of his home country. Years later, he helped negotiate the alliance between Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom resulting in Napoleon’s defeat. Carl von Clausewitz is referred to as “the only philosopher of war” by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy due to his extreme and narrow focus exclusively on war.
Clausewitz is most notable for his collection of writings titled Vom Kriege, or On War, published in 1832 despite being unfinished due to his death on November 16, 1831. On War is classified as one of the most influential pieces of military philosophy in the Western world and has been translated into virtually every major language. The widespread success and praise was very real, however disagreement and debate arose about the mo...
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... Clausewitz by Christopher Bassford." Carl Von Clausewitz. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. .
Clausewitz, Carl von, On War. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1968. J. J. Graham translation, 1908. Anatol Rapoport, editor. Introduction and notes (c) Anatol Rapoport, 1968.
Handel, Michael I., ed. Clausewitz and Modern Strategy. Papers presented at an international conference on Clausewitz held at the US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, April 1985. London and Totowa, NJ: Frank Cass, 1986.
Herberg-Rothe, Andreas, Jan Willem Honig, and Daniel Moran, eds. Clausewitz: The State and War. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011.
Orend, Brian. "War." Stanford University. Stanford University, 04 Feb. 2000. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. .
The Art of War. Translated by Samuel B. Griffith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963. Von Clausewitz, Carl. A. Translated and edited by Sir Michael Howard and Peter Paret.
Clausewitz’s thoughts on war termination effectively summarize the situation for the Japanese and Russian Empires preceding peace negotiations, “Inability to carry on the struggle can, in practice, be replaced by two other grounds for making peace: the first is the improbability of victory; the second is its unacceptable cost.” (Clausewitz, 91). The Japanese effectively identified their culminating point of victory and predicted that continued success would be highly improbable. The Russian Empire had the means to eventually turn the tide of the war, but the cost to do this was unacceptable. As a result, both chose to negotiate peace while continuing to take steps to improve their negotiating position. The Russo-Japanese War highlights the Japanese Empire’s ability to effectively plan, execute and negotiate the termination of a war, despite being considered a vastly inferior power at the onset of war.
War is the means to many ends. The ends of ruthless dictators, of land disputes, and lives – each play its part in the reasoning for war. War is controllable. It can be avoided; however, once it begins, the bat...
The Young People of Today, a series of opinion polls conducted among young educated Frenchmen by Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde find romantic sentiments for war much like von Treitschke. The two authors interviewed a professor who tried to explain that there were in fact unjust wars, however, according to the professor, “the class obviously did not follow me; they rejected that distinction” (Massis and de Tarde 224). Massis and de Tarde go on to write about the many young men who left their high studies to pursue lives as soldiers because for them “it is not enough, for them to learn history: they are making it” (Massis and de Tarde 224).
Adams, Michael C. C. The "Best War Ever: America and World War II" Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 1994. Bailey, Ronald H. The Home Front, U.S.A. Time-Life Publishing, Chicago, IL. 1978 Bard, Mitchell G.
In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul, the main character is a nineteen-year-old man who voluntarily joins the German army to fight in World War I against the French. Paul went into the war full of nationalism and ready to fight for his country. Soon after entering training, Paul began to realize that there is way more to war than just fighting for his country. Because it contains evidence of dehumanization and disconnectedness with the world, Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front reveals soldiers who are blindsided by the effects war has on them.
Goldhagen, Daniel J. (1997) Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Abacus : London)
Storm of Steel provides a memoir of the savagery and periods of beauty that Ernst Jünger’s experienced while serving the German army during the First World War. Though the account does not take a clear stand, it lacks any embedded emotional effects or horrors of the Great War that left so few soldiers who survived unaffected. Jünger is very straightforward and does remorse over any of his recollections. The darkness of the hallucinations Jünger reports to have experienced provides subtle anti-war sentiment. However, in light of the descriptive adventures he sought during the brief moments of peace, the darkness seems to be rationalized as a sacrifice any soldier would make for duty and honor in a vain attempt for his nation’s victory. The overall lack of darkness and Jünger’s nonchalance about the brutality of war is enough to conclude that the account in Storm of Steel should be interpreted as a “pro” war novel; however, it should not be interpreted as “pro” violence or death.
O'Neill, William L. World War II: A Student Companion. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
Woodworth, Steven E. Davis and Lee at War. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. 1995.
4.Harsh, Joseph L., ?Battlesword and Rapier: Clausewitz, Jomini, and the American Civil War,? Military Affairs, Dec. 1974, 133-138. Accessed on: http://www.jstor.org/ 03-04-02.
Since the unification of Germany in the late 19th century, attitudes of nationalism, Prussian militarism and expansionism saturated German society. As one can clearly see in the writings of the influential German historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, war and territorial expansion were seen as being necessary to the preservation and advancement of German society. He states that, “War is for an afflicted people the only remedy… Those who preach the nonsense about everlasting peace do not understand the life of the Aryan race, the Aryans are before all brave.” The mobilization of the people and resources, for the purpose of making war, were believed to be the means of preservation and advancement of German society. These ultra-nationalistic attitudes and beliefs resulted in widespread German enthusiasm with the coming of war in 1914. As expressed in a German newspaper, The Post, “Another forty years of peace would be a national misfortune for Germany.”
Carl von Clausewitz, “What is War?” On War. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, 89-112. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Barringer, Mark, Tom Wells. “The Anti-War Movement in the United States.” www.english.illinois.edu. Oxford UP. 1999. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
Kober, Stanley. "What Napoleon and Bismarck Teach Us About Preventive War." Cato Institute. N.p., 18 Sept. 2004. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.