Comments on: Clausewitz, On War: Finis

By: zenpundit

zenpundit — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:14:09 +0000

“Jomini’s cut-and-paste military how to manuals must have made Clausewitz foam at the mouth. Here was the Tony Robbins of military self-help”

Best one-liner of the roundtable. :)

By: Lexington Green

Lexington Green — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:41:11 +0000

“…after 1915″ — should be “after 1815″, of course.

It is amazing that a figure as influential as Clausewitz on Anglospheric militiary thought has not had every last scrap translated by now.

Priorities are out of whack, gentlemen. Far, far out of whack.

By: josephfouche

josephfouche — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:29:03 +0000

Pity that they never completed the translation of Clausewitz’s papers into English.

By: Lexington Green

Lexington Green — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:30:20 +0000

“Clausewitz yearned to be a man of affairs like Jomini but he didn’t have a sound-bite personality (or writing style) so he was passed over for men whose names are now long forgotten.” Perhaps “passed over” is an overstatement here? I just read The Age of German Liberation, 1795-1815 (1905) by Friedrich Meinecke. A quick read, and good background for Clausewitz’s life and career and the political and cultural milieu that he came out of. Meinicke shows Clausewitz as a respected and recognized player in the reform movement. Of course, they were all driven out of power, after 1915. Scharnhorst was dead, and Gniesenau and Claustwitz were both pushed aside. Only then did he push for “posthumous immortality” in the form of the book. Of course, if he had finished and published the book, it may have been part of a bid for a restoration of the military reformers to positions of actual authority. Whether that was the plan, or if there was a plan, may be disclosed by Clausewitz’s collected papers, or in a biography that draws on his correspondence and memoranda. But I just don’t know the answer.