Clausewitz learned the fundamentals of grammar,
arithmetic and Latin in a provincial municipal school and was later exposed to
a more sophisticated curriculum during his three years at the Allgemeine Kriegsschule (the German
Army’s premier institution of higher learning). In France ( as a prisoner of
war) and Berlin, he rad a dfiverse selection of authors, including Ancillon ,
Fichte, Gentz, Herder, Kant, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Johannes von Muller and
Rousseau. But above all, Clausewitz read history to augment his personal
experience and to discover the underlying dynamics of war.
Clausewitz lived through a particularly turbulent era of German and European
history that encompassed the French Revolution, the French and Napoleonic Wars,
the industrial revolution, the rise of nationalism and the
counter-Enlightenment. The latter is a catchall term for a variety of movements
and tendencies, including conservatism, critical philosophy, historicism,
nationalism, revivalism and holism, that developed in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, in large part in reaction to the Enlightenment. The
Enlightenment put faith in the power of reason to unlock the secrets of the
universe and to deduce from first principles laws and institutions that would
allow human beings to achieve their potential in just, ordered and secure
societies. Counter-Enlightenment thinkers considered these expectations naïve and
dangerous; they saw the world as complex, contradictory, composed of unique
social entities and in a state of constant flux. They rejected the
Enlightenment conception of a human being as a
tabla rasa, and the mere sum
of internal and external forces, as well as its emphasis on body over soul,
reason over imagination and thought over the senses. They insisted on a
holistic understanding that built on these dichotomies, and one, moreover, that
recognized individuals and social groups as the source of action motivated by
their search for expression and
authenticity.
The counter-Enlightenment began in France and gained a wide audience through the
writings of Rousseau. It found German spokesmen in the 1770s, among them Hamann,
Herder, the young Goethe, and Lavater and Moser, the dramatists of Sturm und Drang, and the Schiller of his
early plays. The French Revolution of 1789, and Napoleon’s subsequent
occupation of German territories, provoked a widespread reaction to French
cultural and political imperialism and to the Enlightenment more generally. In
literature this found expression in the early romanticism of Novalis (Friedrich Hardenberg), the
Schlegel brothers and Christian Friedrich Tieck, in religion with Friedrich Schliermacher,
and in the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and later, Georg F. W. Hegel.
Clausewitz knew their writings intimately, wrote a letter to Fichte and was
personally acquainted with Schlegel,
Tieck and Novalis. On more than one occasion he played cards with Hegel; at the
home of August Henrich von Fallersleben.
Clausewitz is often described as someone who wholeheartedly embraced the the
counter-Enlightenment. There are indeed many aspects of his thought that
reflect and build upon
counter-Enlightenment assumptions, but he owes an equal debt to the
Enlightenment. Like Kant, from whom he borrowed heavily, Clausewitz straddled
the Enlightenment and the German reaction to it. His life-long ambition to
develop a theory of war through the application of reason to history and psychology
was a quintessential Enlightenment project,. His recognition that such a theory
could never reduce war to a science nor guide a commander in an inherently
complex and unpredictable world reflected counter-Enlightenment views, as did
his emphasis on emotive force and personality and the ability of genius to make
its own rules. But, in a deeper sense, Clausewitz remained faithful to the
Enlightenment. He appropriated many concepts from philosophers of the
‘German Movement,’ but stripped them of
their metaphysical content. He borrowed their tools of inquiry to subject war
to a logical analysis, and looked beyond pure reason to a psychology of human
beings to find the underlying causes for their behavior.
The same duality marked Clausewitz’s political thinking; his un-reflexive
nationalism and visceral hatred of France coexisted with his belief that
education, economic development and good government could bring about a better
world. Clausewitz’s political beliefs evolved more rapidly than his
philosophical ones, and he made little efforts to reconcile their contradictions.
His thoughts about war were more extensive and productive. One of the
remarkable features of On War is its
largely successful synthesis of assumptions and methods from opposing schools
of thought. In this sense too, Clausewitz follows the footsteps of Thucydides.
Scharnhorst exercised the most direct
and decisive influence on Clausewitz’s thinking and writing. He was among the
leading Aufklarers [proponents of the
Enlightenment] in the Prussian service. He was born in 1765 to a retired Hanoverian
non-commissioned officer and the heiress of a wealthy farmer. He entered the
Hanoverian army in 1779, and later taught in a regimental school that he
established. In 1782, he founded and edited the first of a series of military
periodicals, and wrote two widely read ‘how to’ books for officers before
leaving his desk job to fight against revolutionary France. In 1801, he entered
the Prussian service , and in 1806, he penned a long essay that summarized and
extended his thoughts on the study of war.
Scharnhorst’s writing excelled in its detailed reconstruction of historical
engagements. He believed that combat experience aside, case studies were the
next best way to capture the reality of war. Scharnhorst used his cases to infer ‘correct concepts (richtige Beriffe) that could order
warfare and identify its principle components in a useful way for
practitioners. His two books drew extensively on his wartime experience and
historical research, but he never succeeded in developing a general theory of
war. His case studies provided good
evidence for his critiques of mathematical
systems to guide the conduct of war developed by Bulow, Dumas, Muller and
Jomini.
Peter Paret observes that no military theorists of his time was as conscious as
Scharnhorst of the distinction between theory and reality. His lectures at the Allgemeine
Kriegsschule paid lip service to the conventional wisdom that good
theory and good preparation could eliminate uncertainty and chance, but he did
not for a moment believe it. In good sophistic tradition, the examples he used
to pepper his lectures encouraged perceptive students to conclude that theory
might be more effectively used to recognize and exploit departures from the expected.
Clausewitz would develop this concept further, making surprise and chance
central, positive features of his theory of war, in contrast to many earlier
writers on the subject, who treated the un-foreseen as an inconvenience, if they
addressed it at all. Scharnhorst taught his students that geometry and trigonometry
were useful in sharpening the mind, but that any theoretical understanding of
warfare had to be based on history. Good history require access to reliable
primary sources. This was another lesson the young Clausewitz assimilated, and
many of his early writings were historical case studies. Scharnhorst also
opened his students’ eyes to the broader political, social and intellectual
forces that influenced warfare and determined its nature in any historical
epoch. He taught Clausewitz that the distinguishing feature of the French
revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars was the ability of France, and then the other
European states, to extract greater resources and demand greater sacrifices
from their populations. Survival in the modern age demanded efficiency in
exploiting the physical and social resources at the disposal of the state, and
this required a governing elite open to talent and merit independent of class
or religious background.
Clausewitz’s early writings reveal the influence of Scharnhorst, but also his
ability to transcend the conceptual limits of his mentor. These works span the
years 1803-06, and consist of notes and essays on politics and strategic
principles, treatments of the Thirty Years War, the Russo-Turkish War of
1736-39, a longer study of Gustavus Adolphus and a review article of one of
Heinrich von Bulow’s many books on the theory of war. Clausewitz reveals and
early fascination with power, and a qualified acceptance of the rights of
states to extend their sways as far as they can. He also emphasized the
interest, indeed the responsibility, of other states to oppose such
aggrandizement-especially in the case of France – when it threatens their
interests or existence. This principle was so obvious to him that he found it
strange that not all statesmen conceived of foreign relations in terms of
power. He nevertheless recognized real world constraints on the exercise of
power, some of them imposed by domestic political considerations, and others
the result of deliberate and wise moderation by many leaders.
Clausewitz’s fascination with power may have come from his reading of
Machiavelli or Fredrick the Great, but it was positively Newtonian in
conception. He conceived of power in terms of the latter’s Third Law; a body in
motion would stay in motion until acted upon by an equal and opposite force.
States could be expected to expand their power until checked by an equal and
opposite political-military force. This was a law of politics, but, unlike laws
of physics, it was tempered in reality by other influences that kept states
from expanding as far as their power might allow, and others from checking them
as their interests dictated. Paret speculates that it was a short step from
Clausewitz’s formulation of power to the conception of war he developed in his
mature years: that war in theory led to the extreme through a process of
interactive escalation, but was constrained in practice by numerous sources of
‘friction’. This concept too was borrowed from Newtonian physics.
Clausewitz’s early writings alternated between case studies and more theoretical
writings, and the two were related. His case studies were theoretically
informed, more so than those of his mentor, Scharnhorst. He wrote military
history to explore the possibilities and limits of theory, and then refined his
nascent concepts in follow-up case studies. It is apparent in retrospect that
Clausewitz was trying to discover which aspects of warfare were amenable to theoretical
description and which were not, and what else he would need to know to construct
a universally valid theory. ‘While history may yield no formulae,’ he concluded,
it does provide an exercise for judgment,
here as everywhere else.’ There is no evidence that Clausewitz began his
research program with this insight in mind; it seems to have developed in the
course of his reading and writing. It may even represent an unconscious effort
to reconcile two distinct and otherwise antagonistic aspects of his intellect:
a pragmatic bent that focused his attention on concrete issues and problems,
and a desire to step back and understand issues and problems as specific
instances of broader classes of phenomena.
Clausewitz’s case studies addressed campaigns, not engagements, and were more
analytical than descriptive. His study of Gustavus Adolphus’ campaigns of
1630-32 was ye most concrete expression of this approach. He sought to analyze
the underlying causes of Swedish strategy during one phase of the Thirty Years
War. He ignored the order of battle (the forces at the disposal of the two
sides), and gave short shrift to individual engagements, including the Swedish
victory at Breitenfeld and the battle of Lutzen in which Gustavus Adolphus lost
his life. Clausewitz made clear at the outset his intention to focus on the
more important ‘subjective forces,’ which includes the commander’s personality,
goals, abilities and his own comprehension of them. He produced what can only
be described as a psychological study of Gustavus Adolphus, and, to a lesser
degree, of his Catholic opponents; he treats the war as a clash of wills, made
notable by the energy and courage of the adversaries. He concluded that the
Thirty Years War lasted so long because the emotions of the leaders and peoples
had become so deeply engaged that nobody could accept a peace that was in
everyone’s interest.
Clausewitz described Gustavus Adolphus as a man of ‘genius,’ a concept he
picked up from Kant and would develop further in On War. William Tell,
Wallenstein, William of Orange, Fredrick the Great, and above all, Napoleon, qualified
as geniuses because the grasped new military possibilities and changed the
nature of warfare, and most other social activities, and made a mockery of
attempts to create static theoretical system. The concept of genius was
Clausewitz’s fist step towards a systematic understanding of change. It was
based on his recognition, developed more extensively in On War, that change
could be both dramatic and gradual. Gradual change, in the form of improvements
in armaments, logistics and tactics, was an ongoing process, the pace of which
varied as a function of political organization, technology and battlefield
incentives. Dramatic changes were unpredictable in timing and nature, and
transformed warfare - and how people
thought about warfare – in more fundamental ways. They were somewhat akin to
what Thomas Kuhn would later call paradigm shifts.
Clausewitz used the findings of his psychological case studies of Gustavus
Adolphus and Fredrick the Great to attack existing military theory, especially
the work of Heinrich Dietrich von Bulow. Bulow maintained that the outcome of
military campaigns was determined primarily by the angle formed by two lines drawn
between the perimeters of the base of operations and the objective. Victory was
assured if commanders situated their base close enough to their objective and
extended their perimeters far enough so that the imaginary lines converged on
the objective at an angle of at least ninety degrees. Clausewitz marshalled
examples of defeat under these conditions, and of victories in cases where the
angle had been less than prescribed. He attributed both outcomes to the skill
of the generals, the elan of their forces and simple good luck.
Bulow’s system reflected the 18th century preference for wars of
maneuver over combat, and was ridiculed by Clausewitz who insisted that war is
about fighting. Strategy, he wrote, is ‘nothing without battle, for battle is
the raw material with which it works. The means it employs.’ The ultimate goal
[Zweck] of war was political: ‘to destroy
one’s opponent, to terminate his political existence, or to impose conditions
on him during peace negotiations.’ Either way, the immediate purpose [Ziele] of war becomes destruction of the
adversary’s military capability which can be achieved ‘by occupying his territory, depriving him of military supplies, or by
destroying his army.’ Clausewitz introduced a further distinction, between
strategy and tactics: ‘Tactics constitute the theory of the use of armed forces
in battle; strategy forms the theory of using battles for the purpose of war.’
The distinction between Zweck and Ziele, and strategy and tactics, would
become essential components of his later theory of war.
Bulow and Jomini built their systems around the order of battle and relative
positioning of deployed forces because they were amenable to quantitative measurement.
They considered quantification an essential step in transforming strategy into
military science. Clausewitz insisted that science requires propositions that
can be validated empirically, and was
struck by how uninterested the leading military theorists of his day were in
using historical, or any other kind of, evidence for this purpose. Like
Scharnhorst, Clausewitz thought the study of strategy should begin with history,
not with mathematics. It had to be rooted in psychology because the motives and
means of war were determined by political considerations, and ultimately by
human intelligence, imagination and emotions. The study of strategy had ‘to
move away from the tendency to rationalize to the neglected riches of the
emotions and the imagination.’ It had to find a systematic way of bringing these
more tangible but critical considerations into the picture, while at the same time
recognizing that chance, by its very nature, would always defy conceptualization
and confound prediction.
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