Detail of Painting "Die Tafelrunde" by Josef Schneider, 1815
Displayed on the Clausewitz Homepage
by courtesy of the Headquarters of the
German Army Forces Command, Koblenz.
(HQ GARFCOM)
 

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Purpose, Editorial Philosophy, and Target Audiences

The site is designed to help anyone seeking to know more about the life, works, ideas, or impact of the influential Prussian soldier and strategic theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831). Clausewitz was a professional fighting soldier and a military educator, but he was also a profound political, strategic, and historical theorist. This is not a dead historical subject. Clausewitz remains a powerful living influence on strategists and doctrine writers. Recent  references to Clausewitz in the news media are tracked (erratically) here. The site  includes images, links, bibliographies in several languages (including links to materials on-line), on-line bookstores, articles and other readings (including academic papers, military manuals, and complete books), as well as indexes to Clausewitz's On War. The items listed under "readings" are mostly recent, mostly scholarly studies, plus other items of importance or interest. The latter include some older items, such as Jomini's 1838 essay on military theory and a 1909 critique of the Clausewitzian naval theorist Julian Stafford Corbett by the equally Clausewitzian military critic Spenser Wilkinson. The reader will also find the first complete on-line text of Clausewitz's 1832 On War (in an obsolescent but still useful 1873 translation), the full original 1832 German edition (Vom Kriege), and his 1812 Principles of War (in the 1942 English translation). At some point we will post his study of  The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (an 1843 translation). We have a great deal of material on the reception of Clausewitz by writers in the English language. Under "Research Links," the visitor will find links to historical websites, related books and thinkers, student papers about Clausewitz, etc. A scientific section, "Clausewitz and Complexity," provides links to materials connecting Clausewitzian theory to the emerging nonlinear sciences (e.g., Chaos and Complexity, etc.). A growing Business section is designed to help the growing number of business strategy consultants interested in getting a grasp on Clausewitz's approach.

Many "Clausewitz experts" tend to be opinionated (to politely understate the matter). The tone of debates among them tends at times to take on a quasi-theological tone—with all the usual accompaniments thereof, including personal attacks, scholarly sneers, and squeals of "Heresy!" Given the importance of Clausewitzian theory, this is understandable. But it is also a bit absurd, since Clausewitz was just a human being and he's now dead—thus unable to have a specific opinion about developments after 1831. There are many interesting ways to interpret Clausewitz, some of which are valuable but have little relationship to his original intent. We enjoy the theoretical hair-splitting the theoretical debate often engenders, but we try not to be dull.

On the other hand, there are many arguments made about Clausewitz that are flatly wrong. We try to be open-minded, balanced, and unbiased—but not suckers. Thus we are:

a) unabashedly positive (though still critical) about the value of Clausewitz's ideas and about intelligent, creative discussion about them, and

b) bluntly intolerant of certain kinds of foolishness—i.e., arrogantly expressed opinions on "Clausewitz and the Clausewitzians" based not on thoughtful reading and informed thinking but on half-remembered third-party rumors.

Editor

The Clausewitz Homepage is edited by National War College professor Christopher Bassford.  A brief academic biography is here. (To contact, click HERE). A list of the editor's published writings on the subject is available here.

Navigation

We have attempted to make the site as easy to navigate as possible through a FAQs page, the creation of numerous internal and external links, tables of contents, and a Site Index. Most of the relevant material resides on our own server, but some is merely linked. Those files that are integral parts of the Clausewitz Homepage are fully searchable via Google. Certain special items are individually searchable via cgi-driven search engines. The site can also be viewed in many languages other than English via machine-translation., using (in order of priority) Google, BabelFish, and WorldLingo.

Copyright

The Clausewitz Homepage is copyrighted by Christopher Bassford. Every effort is made to see that copyrights on other texts and graphics are fully respected. If you have any concerns regarding copyright on any materials displayed, please contact the page editor. Reprint and other copyright permissions must be obtained from the listed copyright owners (we try to provide convenient electronic links for that purpose). The site editor cannot be responsible for obtaining copyright permissions: such permissions must be provided before any copyrighted material is posted to this site.

Technical

The Clausewitz Homepage is hosted on a virtual server managed by Interland. It was originally created using Netscape Gold 3.1 and its successor Netscape Composer. Today, we use Macromedia's DreamWeaver and FireWorks, which, unlike most Microsoft web applications, are both efficient and friendly to web code created by other software. The cgi-bin search engines, form-mail, random-quotation-serverr, and other scripts adapted by the Clausewitz Homepage were mostly created by Matt Wright. There is an interesting Java applet (3D Rotating Cube Java Applet V2.0 (c) Copyright 1996 by Stefan Ruettinger) which is included purely for kicks, but it does link to several items elsewhere on this website. We also have some animations by web artist Rex Sutton, the "Rexinator," though we've lost track of him lately.

Bookstore

The electronic bookstore feature is offered in association with Amazon.com and its British, French, German, and Japanese units. We offer this service, not for profit (though any proceeds go to defray the costs of maintaing this website) but as a convenient way for users to track relevant published materials. All transactions are strictly between the buyer and Amazon.com.

Site Visitor Statistics

Individual pageviews/month on The Clausewitz Homepage vary widely. Statistics in 2007, for example, ranged from 122,256 in September, when US professional military schools were typically teaching their military theory courses, to 59,665 in June (school's out!) We do not get information on the individual identity of visitors, nor do we record or use visitor data for any purpose other than improving the website, but we do look carefully at what pages are being used, by visitors from what domains (e.g., military, educational, business, scientific). We also get a fair amount of informative mail, ranging from high school students doing book reports to soldiers planning or reviewing operations to university professors designing courses on war; from MicroSoft marketing managers in South America to Ministries of Defence—and from, no doubt, the occasional terrorist. And, of course, there is a great deal of mail from PME students and instructors in various countries. (PME: professional military education—the war colleges, command & staff schools, etc.) So, while we have occasionally gotten messages wondering why we have "so much spare time on our hands," we find maintenance of The Clausewitz Homepage to be a rewarding hobby.