Yet, as a theoretician, his devotion to ground and caution led his contemporary, Carl von Clausewitz, to criticize his rigidity and adherence to geographic strategy.

German strategist Carl von Clausewitz stated that " the employment of battles ... to achieve the object of war " was the essence of strategy.

Vom Kriege () is a book on war and military strategy by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz ( 1780 – 1831 ), written mostly after the Napoleonic wars, between 1816 and 1830, and published posthumously by his wife in 1832.

The father of modern strategic study, Carl von Clausewitz, defined military strategy as " the employment of battles to gain the end of war.

As Clausewitz stated, a successful military strategy may be a means to an end, but it is not an end in itself.

In contrast to Clausewitz, Antoine-Henri Jomini dealt mainly with operational strategy, planning and intelligence, the conduct of the campaign, and " generalship " rather than " statesmanship ".

In his seminal book On War the Prussian Major-General and leading expert on modern military strategy Carl von Clausewitz defined military strategy as " the employment of battles to gain the end of war.

In 1960, as Cold War tensions were near their peak following the Sputnik crisis and amidst talk of a widening " missile gap " between the U. S. and the Soviets, Kahn published On Thermonuclear War, the title of which clearly alluded to the classic 19th-century treatise on military strategy, On War, by German military strategist Carl von Clausewitz.

Military strategy books like The Art of War by Sun Tzu, On War by von Clausewitz, and The Little Red Book by Mao Zedong became business classics.

" From Von Clausewitz they learned the dynamic and unpredictable nature of military strategy.

Clausewitz felt that in a situation of chaos and confusion, strategy should be based on flexible principles.

Keegan was also criticized by peers, including Sir Michael Howard and Christopher Bassford for his critical position on Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian officer and author of Vom Kriege ( On War ), one of the basic texts on warfare and military strategy.

A disciple of Carl von Clausewitz, whose theory of war was more an effort to grasp its essential nature, rather than of Jomini, who expounded a system of rules, Moltke regarded strategy as a practical art of adapting means to ends, and had developed the methods of Napoleon in accordance with altered conditions of his age.

d. In the process of adapting Clausewitz ’ s theory to the unique circumstances of naval warfare, Corbett developed his own innovative theory of limited war in maritime strategy.

e. Like Clausewitz, Corbett shared a belief in the primacy of politics in war and in devising an appropriate strategy to protect the national interests.

Clausewitz also included in the essay general principles of strategy by saying that Warfare has three main objects:

Known as " the American Clausewitz ," he was an initial architect of nuclear deterrence strategy and tried to ascertain the role and value of nuclear weapons after their creation.

Clausewitz, who disliked Jomini personally, as well as his concepts, instead emphasized the primacy of the political in warfare, and remained indifferent to theories arguing for any absolute solutions via the application of military force.

Clausewitz served in the Rhine Campaigns ( 1793 – 1794 ) including the Siege of Mainz, when the Prussian army invaded France during the French Revolution, and served in the Napoleonic Wars from 1806 to 1815.

Soldiers before this time had written treatises on various military subjects, but none had undertaken a great philosophical examination of war on the scale of those written by Clausewitz and Leo Tolstoy, both of which were inspired by the events of the Napoleonic Era.

It has been blamed for the level of destruction involved in the First and Second World Wars, but it seems rather that Clausewitz ( who did not actually use the term " total war ") had merely foreseen the inevitable development that started with the huge, patriotically motivated armies of the Napoleonic wars.

This view ignores, among many other things, the facts that Clausewitz died in the early 19th century, that Prussia itself was not a " nation-state ," and that the Napoleonic Wars included many non-conventional conflicts of which Clausewitz was well aware.

Carl von Clausewitz, in his book Vom Kriege ( On War ) published in 1832, and Antoine Henri Jomini in his book, Precis de l ' Art de Guerre, published in 1838, developed theories of warfare based on the concepts and methods used during the Napoleonic Wars.

To further understand concepts used by the German military in World War II, upon which maneuver warfare is largely based, Boyd studied Clausewitz, Jomini and the Napoleonic era.

Clausewitz correctly analyzed the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras to give posterity a thorough and complete theory of war that emphasized struggles between nations occurring everywhere, from the battlefield to the legislative assemblies, and to the very way that people think.

The concept is extended by some authors back as far as Clausewitz ’ s classic work On War as " absoluter Krieg " ( however, the relevant passages have been interpreted in diverging ways by different authors ), and to the French " guerre à outrance " during the Franco-Prussian War.

The concept arose from Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote:

He made a distinction between two possible strategies in war: attrition and annihilation ( in German, Ermattungsstrategie and Niederwerfungsstrategie, respectively ), derived from Clausewitz's distinctions between strategies seeking limited objectives and strategies aimed at rendering one's opponent militarily helpless, the latter often confused with the concept of " Total War " ( a term Clausewitz did not use ) advocated by Ludendorff and rejected by Delbrück during WWI.

The concept of absolute war was a philosophical construct developed by the military theorist General Carl von Clausewitz.

The recognition of total war since World War I has created a degree of confusion for many, who fail to understand the differences between it and the concept of absolute war, often using the terms interchangeably and blaming Germany's conduct of " total war " on the writings of Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz.

In reality, however, Clausewitz neither coined nor used the term " total war ," and " absolute ( or ideal ) war " is quite a different concept.

Clausewitz was among those intrigued by the manner in which the leaders of the French Revolution, especially Napoleon, had changed the conduct of war through their ability to motivate the populace and to gain access to the full resources of the state ; thus unleashing war on a greater scale than had previously been seen in Europe.

In the latter part of the campaign he served against the Prussian contingent of General Yorck ( von Wartenburg ), with whom, through Clausewitz, he negotiated the celebrated convention of Tauroggen, serving thereafter with Yorck in the early part of the War of Liberation.

During the height of the battle, Kutuzov's subordinates were making all of the decisions for him ; according to Colonel Karl von Clausewitz, famous for his work On War, the Russian commander " seemed to be in a trance.

Clausewitz defined the ‘ order of battle ’ as “ that division and formation of the different arms into separate parts, or sections, of the whole Army, and that form of general position or disposition of those parts which is to be the norm throughout the whole campaign or war .”

Clausewitz also noted that the order of battle depends on the effective span of control by a commander.

* Wallach, Jehuda L., The dogma of the battle of annihilation: the theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and their impact on the German conduct of two world wars.

Important Prussian reformers like Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Clausewitz served at the battle.

The battle scenes in Tolstoy's War and Peace highlight the uncertainty and confusion described by Clausewitz.

For example, Corbett did not hesitate to take issue with Clausewitz, Jomini or other continental strategists on the importance of the search for the decisive battle and the principle of concentration.

Under Henderson he absorbed the principles, derived from Jomini, Clausewitz, and Edward Hamley ’ s Operations of War ( 1866 ), of concentration of physical and moral force and the destruction of the main enemy army.