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

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (; July 1, 1780 – November 16, 1831 ) was a Prussian soldier and military theorist who stressed the moral ( in modern terms, " psychological ") and political aspects of war.

Clausewitz's family claimed descent from the Barons of Clausewitz in Upper Silesia, which was eventually confirmed, but now is doubted by scholars.

Clausewitz was held prisoner in France from 1807 to 1808.

In 1815, the Russo-German Legion was integrated into the Prussian Army and Clausewitz re-entered Prussian service.

Clausewitz was promoted to Major-General in 1818 and appointed director of the Kriegsakademie, where he served until 1830.

Clausewitz was appointed chief of staff of the only army Prussia was able to mobilize, which was sent to the Polish border.

Clausewitz was a professional soldier who was involved in numerous military campaigns, but he is famous primarily as a military theorist interested in the examination of war.

Clausewitz constantly sought to revise the text, particularly between 1827 and his departure on his last field assignment, to include more material on " people's war " and forms of war other than between states, but little of this material was included in the book.

While Clausewitz was intensely aware of the value of intelligence at all levels, he was also very skeptical of the accuracy of much military intelligence: " Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory ; even more are false, and most are uncertain ....

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.

Clausewitz was well educated and had strong interests in art, history, science, and education.

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.

Clausewitz himself never saw the 20th-century states and armies to which Creveld refers — the states with which he himself was familiar were quite different.

This military revolution was described and codified by Clausewitz.

He suggested that this was primarily so because as Clausewitz suggested, " unlike in any other science or art, in war the object reacts ".

The book's significance is attested to by the fact that until the middle of 2008, it was included on the list of required reading for United States Army officers, and ( with Sun Tzu and Clausewitz ) the third non-American entry on the list.

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.

Lynn Montross, writing on that topic in War Through the Ages ( 1960 ), said ; " This outcome ... may be explained by the fact that Jomini produced a system of war, Clausewitz a philosophy.

Nonetheless, Clausewitz conceived of war as a political, social, and military phenomenon which might — depending on circumstances — involve the entire population of a nation at war.

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.

Modern perception of war are based on the concepts Clausewitz put forth in On War, though these have been very diversely interpreted by various leaders ( e. g., Moltke, Vladimir Lenin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mao Zedong, etc.

The " dualism " of Clausewitz's view of war ( i. e., that wars can vary a great deal between the two " poles " he proposed, based on the political objectives of the opposing sides and the context ) seems simple enough, but few commentators have proven willing to accept this crucial variability — they insist that Clausewitz " really " argued for one end of the scale or the other.

This is badly dated ( based on the 1873 Graham translation ), severely abridged ( leaving out, for instance, Book Six on defense — which Clausewitz considered to be the stronger form of warfare ), and badly biased ( because of its Vietnam War era and the editor's hostility to " neo-Clausewitzian " Henry Kissinger ).

The breakthrough of sorts made by Clausewitz in suggesting eight principles on which such methods can be based, in Europe, for the first time presented an opportunity to largely remove the element of chance and error from command decision making process.

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.

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

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.

* For translations of excerpts of both the Essai général de la Tactique and De la force publique into modern English, see Beatrice Heuser, The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz ( Santa Monica, CA: Greenwood / Praeger, 2010 ), ISBN 978-0-275-99826-4, pp. 147 – 170.

* 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.

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

The official Bundeswehr traditions are based on three major lines: the military reformers at the beginning of the 19th century such as Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Clausewitz, the members of the military resistance against Hitler such as Claus von Stauffenberg and Henning von Tresckow and its own tradition since 1955.

Aron wrote important works on Karl Marx and on Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian theorist of war.

* June 1 – Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian military strategist ( d. 1831 )

* June 1-Carl von Clausewitz, soldier and military historian and theorist ( died 1831 )

* Clausewitz, Carl von, On War, Book One, Chapter 1.

* November 16 – Carl von Clausewitz, German military strategist ( b. 1780 )

In the service of the Russian Empire, Clausewitz helped negotiate the Convention of Tauroggen ( 1812 ), which prepared the way for the coalition of Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom that ultimately defeated Napoleon and his allies.

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 military history had previously been influenced by Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred von Schlieffen and von Moltke the Elder, who were proponents of maneuver, mass, and envelopment.

Clausewitz espoused a romantic conception of warfare, though he also had at least one foot planted firmly in the more rationalist ideas of the European Enlightenment.

Clausewitz had many aphorisms, of which the most famous is that " War is the continuation of Politik by other means " ( Politik being variously translated as ' policy ' or ' politics ,' terms with very different implications ), a description that has won wide acceptance.

Clausewitz entered the Prussian military service at the age of twelve as a Lance-Corporal, eventually attaining the rank of Major-General.

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.

Clausewitz, Hermann von Boyen ( 1771 – 1848 ) and Karl von Grolman ( 1777 – 1843 ) were Scharnhorst's primary allies in his efforts to reform the Prussian army between 1807 and 1814.

Clausewitz served during the Jena Campaign as aide-de-camp to Prince August.

Clausewitz did, providing a number of definitions.

The degree to which Clausewitz managed to revise his manuscript to reflect that synthesis is the subject of much debate.

Clausewitz introduced systematic philosophical contemplation into Western military thinking, with powerful implications not only for historical and analytical writing but also for practical policy, military instruction, and operational planning.

In On War, Clausewitz sees all wars as the sum of decisions, actions, and reactions in an uncertain and dangerous context, and also as a socio-political phenomenon.