This review appeared in War in History, 1995, vol.2 (3), p.359. It is displayed here with the permission of War in History and its publisher, Edward Arnold. Copyright Edward Arnold, 1994. All rights reserved.

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A study of Clausewitz's influence and of the way he was interpreted by later generations must be based on a sound understanding both of what Clausewitz meant to say and of the general historical background of those who interpreted him. Clausewitz in English, growing out of a doctoral dissertation, falls short on both counts.

The introductory chapter intended to present Clausewitz's ideas relies apart from On War itself, only on his The Principles of War, and ignores the continuous and highly important sequence of writings, from 1804 on, in which he developed his views on the theory of war. Bassford's presentation is thus confined to the same narrow source material which always hindered English readers of Clausewitz; indeed, it duplicates their `misconceptions', especially of the kind popular since the mid­1950s. Apparently, some time during the course of his work Bassford became aware of the more recent scholarly attention to the fact that before the crucial shift which had taken place in Clausewitz's thought from 1827 onward, he had exalted all­out war as the only legitimate type of war. When Clausewitz began to qualify and amend this earlier view he was already half­way through his work on On War, which he never lived to complete. All the same, although Bassford recognizes at one point that On War is an incomplete draft and is `essentially two very different books superimposed' (p. 14), in the rest of this chapter he none the less repeats his predecessors' attempts to explain the book's ideas as a coherent whole, reproducing their much­worn cliches. In addition, he takes no account of the very real nature of the predicament of readers of On War ever since, who were obliged to make sense of these `two very different books' under one cover.

In respect to Clausewitz's influence or reception in Britain and the United States, the subject­matter of most of the book, Clausewitz in English faces the problem that there was scarcely any such influence in Britain until the late 1890s, and even less in the United States until the interwar period or even the Second World War. The author thus often resorts to peculiar assertions and speculations, and exhibits dubious historical judgement, in order to keep his subject alive and interesting. He cites, for example, Clausewitz's campaign histories, a couple of standard, insignificant reviews of On War in British journals (as well as John Mitchell's exceptional Germanophile case, which has been treated by others) as evidence that Clausewitz was not entirely unknown in Britain before 1873, the year On War was translated. He then claims that there is no evidence that the translation, appearing at that particular time rather than at any other during the preceding forty years, was prompted by Prussia's triumphs in 1866 and 1870­1, notwithstanding the fact that the whole British defence system was then undergoing major reform (Cardwell's) in response to the Prussian achievement. He suggests that Clausewitz was known, and influential, in America through Jomini's criticism of him in the former's highly influential books. And he toys with the speculation that Lincoln himself was familiar with, and influenced by, Clausewitz's teaching.

During the twenty years preceding the First World War, Clausewitz and German military ideas finally became fairly well known and influential in Britain. Bassford meticulously catalogues references to Clausewitz, but his discussion of their significance rarely goes beyond the trivial and is poorly integrated into the wider historical picture. He fails to make use of books which bear directly on his subject, such as Tim Travers' The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare 1900-1918 (1987). There is nothing new in his discussion of Fuller and Liddell Hart during the interwar period, and the only interesting stuff is the details on the life stories of the German expatriates (mostly of Jewish origin) who emigrated to the United States during the Nazi period. As Bassford writes correctly, they were instrumental in bringing about the `Clausewitz renaissance' in the West from the 1950s onwards. But this period falls beyond the chronological scope of Clausewitz in English.

AZAR GAT
Tel Aviv University

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