As a sometime student of History and War Studies I read this book a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away...I have the abridged Wordsworth Classics edition, abridged because the original consists of eight books in three volumes, and of course was written in German, so it's not a light read.On War is certainly one of the great books of military history. It is probably also one of the most dangerous, because his theories can, and have been, taken out of context and misused as justification for a range of sins in politics and warfare.My particular interest in On War at the moment is to refresh my memory of my original reading. I like Clausewitz's very logical and philosophical approach to the subject, coloured by his acerbic comments about other unidentified theorists (he annoyed a fair few other writers). It's an interesting blend of the supremely logical and the romantic, bearing in mind that he was a contemporary of Byron.On War is both a manual for the practitioner of war, for politicians and generals, and a closely argued thesis about the nature of war. It has a similar place to Machiavelli's The Prince, but was written for a 19th century audience and concentrates on the relationship between war and politics.

"On War" is one of those books that was at the same time amazingly influential and almost never actually read. While Clausewitz is quoted and discussed by military men repeatedly, it fascinates me how many military officers serve long and distinguished careers without ever having read this book. In many ways this is understandable. Clausewitz is very philosophical and abstract, to the point that many of his ideas are simply not applicable to everyday military planning. One must also remember that, despite the frequency with which he is cited, Clausewitz was a radical and very much opposed to the thinking of military men in his own day, and certainly in ours. While Clausewitz wrote in the first half of the 19th Century, his thought never really came to be accepted in the armies of France, Britain or the United States until well into the 20th century. Why was that? For one thing, Clausewitz bucked tradition by refusing to write about historical examples from antiquity. While most military authors waxed eloquently about the battles of Cannae, Thermopylae and Agincourt, Clausewitz felt, correctly I believe, that it is useless to take military lessons from battles so long ago because the tactics and technology of those days were very different from our own. For another thing, Clausewitz wrote far more at length about the defense, praising the defense as an excellent way to buy time and attrit the enemy before wearing him down enough to take the initiative in the attack. In most militaries of the 19th Century such thinking was heresy. The attack was the decisive form of battle, and it took on the aspect of almost a religion among military planners. These thinkers would scoff at the tendency of Clausewitz to praise the defense and discuss it at such great length. Finally, Clausewitz discussed the goal of a military campaign, not to take the enemy's capital, some key fortification or some key terrain feature, but rather to attack the enemy's "Center of Gravity". This concept applied to whatever it was that drove the enemy's military strength. In most cases this would be his forces, but perhaps it could be his ideology or perhaps even his leaders. Again, such thinking was scoffed by military thinkers who were sure that their objective must be some fixed location on the map. It was only in the wars of the 20th Century that we have learned how even an insignificant place like Stalingrad or Omaha Beach could be so decisive in war.This particular edition of "On War" is undoubtedly the best one out there. The introduction gives the reader a great background on Clausewitz and the world in which he lived. Since most of us are relatively unfamiliar with the wars of Fredrick the Great, or the wars of the French Revolution and Napolean, this insight is invaluable. Reading this really made me want to understand better the Napoleanic era about which Clausewitz writes. Another thing that fascinated me about this book is how similar Clausewitz's view of war was to the view of Adam Smith concerning the economy. Whereas Smith spelled out the key components of the economy as land, labor, capital, transportation and entrepreneurial ability, Clausewitz discusses the five great elements of military success as the terrain, the troops, the weapons, maneuver and generalship. It would be fascinating to compare and contrast these similarities, especially since military theory has in recent years become so much in vogue among Corporate executives.Overall I would highly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in military theory. It is an indispensable read for military leaders. And this edition is particularly valuable for both.

This is the classic work of military strategy, written by a Prussian general in the nineteenth century, which has been often discussed but little understood. It is often held up as the ultimate example of Prussianism, of stifling military correctness, or as the champion of absolute war and the use of brutality and abandonment of rules in order to annihilate the enemy. It is blamed for the outbreak of both World Wars and for the horrors which those and subsequent conflicts loosed on the world.None of this is true. What we really have here is an unfinished text, since Clausewitz died before he could complete it, and I suspect that the complete version would have actually been shorter, as he cut out repetition and some of the less relevant digressions. Still, there is plenty here to chew on, and more than enough to disprove most of the above assertions. Clausewitz is, of course, both Prussian and a military man, and his subject is war, but he is not uncompassionate. In fact, he takes into consideration the difficulties suffered by men in the field, not least because he has been one himself. He is aware that, at the time he was writing, disease was responsible for the loss of more soldiers than combat, and he does not advocate prolonged forced marches or other cruel methods. He is very much aware that the spirit of the men has an impact on the outcome of battle, and the terrible responsibility a commander has in making choices that will minimize the destruction and suffering of those under his command. He is also aware that vacillating and over-cautiousness can lead to worse catastrophes than boldness, in some circumstances. So far as absolute war goes, yes, he does use the term. But he doesnt necessarily advocate it as a better way to fight. There are two reasons for his use of it. The first is theoretical, in line with the idealist philosophy predominant in his time, he tries to use an idealized picture of war as a theoretical basis, from which particulars can be derived and adapted to real world conditions. This may or may not be the best approach, but it is not a matter of preferring war in its absolute state. The other reason he speaks of it is that as a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, he had witnessed the escalation of war much closer to its absolute state than had previously been considered possible. And he learned from Napoleons successes that where one side is willing to go to such an extreme while the other holds back, the more ruthless side will be at a distinct advantage. The other side is forced to adapt itself in order to survive.So far as his influence is concerned, there is no doubt that Alfred von Schlieffen, who planned the German attack that started World War One, had read Clausewitz. But, Schlieffen didnt start the war by himself, and had he used some other source in his planning, it wouldnt have made the war any pleasanter. Hitler never read anything as long as this book (he boasted that he could learn all he needed to know by reading just the beginning and end of any book), and wouldnt have cared for a lot of what Clausewitz had to say anyway. The phrase that is best known from this book is translated here as War is the continuation of policy by other means. I have seen arguments that this translation misses the true meaning of this statement, and I cant comment on that. It is true that Clausewitz also defines war as an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will. I have seen it argued that the earlier statement is meant as a dialectical antithesis to this one. If that is true either a) Clausewitz was a very poor dialectician or b) there is something wrong in the translation of both statements. They do not negate one another. One could easily synthesize them by stating that war is a continuation of policy by means of force, in order to compel a foreign nation to do the will expressed by our nations policy. No new concept arises from this.In all, the book is worthwhile, certainly from a historical standpoint, and maybe from a military science standpoint as well, but it is too long and too flawed to hold the interest of most readers. The best chapters are at the beginning and end of the book, while Books six and seven are the worst book six because of too much repetition and book seven because of lack of analysis. The final chapters are where Clausewitz finally puts his theory to work by giving detailed historical analysis, and to me they would have been better if they had been placed earlier. This edition includes a large amount of contextual prefatory matter, and a bloated summarizing essay at the end. Most of this could be dispensed with, though it is interesting to see the commenter apply Clausewitzs concepts to the wars of the Twentieth Century. I would recommend this book primarily to specialists.

I listened to Volume 1.Carl von Clausewitz like Marcel Proust takes delight in unnecessarily complicated sentences. His style of writing isn't very suitable to the audiobook format.In the beginning he spends some time defining fundamentals and debunking bullshitters.His writing is most interesting when he uses examples to illustrate his ideas.Ultimately, I was bored too often and his remarks frequently couldn't capture my attention, 2,5 stars.

Almost 200 years later, this masterpiece is still misunderstood and ignored.Clausewitz argues that the purpose of war is to disarm your opponent and thereby force him to give you want you want. Based on this premise, he concludes that wars are essentially unwinnable on the battlefield: it is virtually impossible to completely disarm your opponent through might alone. Instead, your opponent at some point has to decide to give you want you want--and getting your opponent to come to that decision means that a war must be fought as part of a larger political strategy. Moreover, the goals of battle must always be subservient to the political context in which the war is being fought; if winning the war becomes the end and not the means to a greater goal, the aggressor will find himself bogged down in an ceaseless conflict.