On War

by Carl von Clausewitz

men who are to the previous type like heat to a shower of sparks.

strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one's balance in spite of them.

there is no activity like war to rob men of confidence in themselves and in others, and to divert them from their original course of action.

No degree of calm can provide enough protection: new impressions are too powerful, too vivid, and always assault the emotions as well as the intellect.

By giving precedence, in case of doubt, to our earlier convictions, by holding to them stubbornly, our actions acquire that quality of steadiness and consistency which is termed strength of character.

Strength of character can degenerate into obstinacy.

Obstinacy is a fault of temperament.

It might also be called vanity, if it were not something superior: vanity is content with the appearance alone; obstinacy demands the material reality.

Admittedly, this definition may not be of much practical use; but it will nevertheless help us avoid the interpretation that obstinacy is simply a more intense form of strong character.

war, though it may appear to be uncomplicated, cannot be waged with distinction except by men of outstanding intellect.

Circumstances vary so enormously in war, and are so indefinable, that a vast array of factors has to be appreciated—mostly in the light of probabilities alone.

easily grasps and dismisses a thousand remote possibilities which an ordinary mind would labor to identify and wear itself out in so doing.

The novice cannot pass through these layers of increasing intensity of danger without sensing that here ideas are governed by other factors, that the light of reason is refracted in a manner quite different from that which is normal

Danger is part of the friction of war. Without an accurate conception of danger we cannot understand war.

The textbooks agree, of course, that we should only believe reliable intelligence, and should never cease to be suspicious, but what is the use of such feeble maxims?

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

He should be guided by the laws of probability. These are difficult enough to apply when plans are drafted in an office, far from the sphere of action; the task becomes infinitely harder in the thick of fighting itself, with reports streaming in. At such times one is lucky if their contradictions cancel each other out, and leave a kind of balance to be critically assessed.

Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.

Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal.

This tremendous friction, which cannot, as in mechanics, be reduced to a few points, is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured, just because they are largely due to chance.

Is there any lubricant that will reduce this abrasion? Only one, and a commander and his army will not always have it readily available: combat experience.

In war the experienced soldier reacts rather in the same way as the human eye does in the dark: the pupil expands to admit what little light there is, discerning objects by degrees, and finally seeing them distinctly. By contrast, the novice is plunged into the deepest night.

tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war.

One such error occurs when strategic combinations are believed to have a value irrespective of their tactical results. One works out marches and maneuvers, achieves one's objective without fighting an engagement, and then deduces that it is possible to defeat the enemy without fighting.

people failed to take adequate account of the endless complexities involved.

An irreconcilable conflict exists between this type of theory and actual practice.

to reduce the whole secret of the art of war to the formula of numerical superiority at a certain time in a certain place was an oversimplification that would not have stood up for a moment against the realities of life.

They aim at fixed values; but in war everything is uncertain, and calculations have to be made with variable quantities. They direct the inquiry exclusively toward physical quantities, whereas all military action is intertwined with psychological forces and effects. They consider only unilateral action, whereas war consists of a continuous interaction of opposites.

Military activity is never directed against material force alone; it is always aimed simultaneously at the moral forces which give it life, and the two cannot be separated.

Theorists are apt to look on fighting in the abstract as a trial of strength without emotion entering into it. This is one of a thousand errors which they quite consciously commit because they have no idea of the implications.

Fear is concerned with physical and courage with moral survival.

forego duplicity because death will not respect it,

Thus it is natural that military activity, whose plans, based on general circumstances, are so frequently disrupted by unexpected particular events; should remain largely a matter of

So once again for lack of objective knowledge one has to trust to talent or to luck.

A POSITIVE DOCTRINE IS UNATTAINABLE Given the nature of the subject, we must remind ourselves that it is simply not possible to construct a model for the art of war that can serve as a scaffolding on which the commander can rely for support at any time. Whenever he has to fall back on his innate talent, he will find himself outside the model and in conflict with it; no matter how versatile the code, the situation will always lead to the consequences we have already alluded to: talent and genius operate outside the rules, and theory conflicts with practice.

Thus it is easier to use theory to organize, plan, and conduct an engagement than it is to use it in determining the engagement's purpose. Combat is conducted with physical weapons, and although the intellect does play a part, material factors will dominate. But when one comes to the effect of the engagement, where material successes turn into motives for further action, the intellect alone is decisive. In brief, tactics will present far fewer difficulties to the theorist than will strategy.

THEORY SHOULD BE STUDY, NOT DOCTRINE

Even these principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference for the movements he has been trained to carry out, rather than to serve as a guide which at the moment of action lays down precisely the path he must take.

It is the task of theory, then, to study the nature of ends and means.

A second question is, how far theory should carry its analysis of the means. Obviously only so far as the separate attributes will have significance in practice.

Strategy uses maps without worrying about trigonometric surveys;

indeed, that distinguished commanders have never emerged from the ranks of the most erudite or scholarly officers, but have been for the most part men whose station in life could not have brought them a high degree of education.

The simplicity of the knowledge required in war has been ignored: or rather, that knowledge has always been lumped together with the whole array of ancillary information and skills. This led to an obvious contradiction with reality, which could only be resolved by ascribing everything to genius that needs no theory and for which no theory ought to be formulated.

There are commanders-in-chief who could not have led a cavalry regiment with distinction, and cavalry commanders who could not have led armies.

Knowledge in war is very simple, being concerned with so few subjects, and only with their final results at that. But this does not make its application easy.

The knowledge needed by a senior commander is distinguished by the fact that it can only be attained by a special talent, through the medium of reflection, study and thought: an intellectual instinct which extracts the essence from the phenomena of life, as a bee sucks honey from a flower.

But there are numerous cases of men who served with the greatest distinction in the lower ranks and turned out barely mediocre in the highest commands, because their intellectual powers were inadequate.

Knowledge must be so absorbed into the mind that it almost ceases to exist in a separate, objective way.

When an architect sits down with pen and paper to determine the strength of an abutment by a complicated calculation, the truth of the answer at which he arrives is not an expression of his own personality.

By total assimilation with his mind and life, the commander's knowledge must be transformed into a genuine capability.