No single writer has had more influence on the professional militaries of our age than Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz nor has any writer been so often quoted while so rarely read.
The grandson of a Lutheran pastor and son of a minor functionary in the Prussian revenue service, Clausewitz enlisted in the Prussian army at the age of 12. Captured by Napoleon’s forces after the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, he later left the Prussian army (largely in opposition to the enforced alliance with Napoleon) and served in the Russian army during Napoleon’s Russian campaign. His personal experiences from the battlefields as an opponent of Napoleon helped Clausewitz distill the Corsican’s genius into theory.
What is most significant about his magnum opus, On War, is that this volume of eight books was never finished yet its influence runs deep in the intermediate service schools and war colleges of most developed nations’ militaries. Only Book I was considered truly complete by Clausewitz before his death in 1831 at the age of 51.
