CLAUSEWITZ, Carl von.

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Vom Kriege. First edition of On War, the Prussian general's magnum opus and one of the most influential books in military theory, published as the first three volumes of his collected works.Clausewitz (1780-1831) fought as a foot soldier in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars: his unit fought the battle at Wavre which deprived Napoleon of vital reinforcements at Waterloo. After the war, he served as head of the Military Academy at Berlin, where he wrote the work.Far more than a simple military manual, the work explores the wider interdependence of politics and warfare, and the considerations influencing them. Clausewitz approaches war via the nascent Romantic movement, emphasizing the impossibility of reducing conflict to a rigid series of principles. His famous aphorism - potentially the most quoted military bon mots of all time - appears on page 28 of Volume I: "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" ("war is the continuation of state policy by other means"). The works were published posthumously by Clausewitz's widow. The remaining seven volumes collect his historical studies of particular military campaigns.

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