Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815–1945 (1994) by Christopher Bassford

Carl von Clausewitz’s masterpiece “On War” was published posthumously in Prussia in the 1830s. Arguably the most thoughtful and influential treatise on warfare ever written, his impact on the English-speaking world, especially the United States, was very slow in coming. Author Christopher Bassford claims this was due to several reasons. First, “On War” wasn’t available in English until 1873, and then only in a handful of copies. Second, prior to the German wars of unification beginning in 1866 German writings on military affairs were obscure. Third, the most influential German military theorist of the age, Antoine Jomini, spoke disparagingly of Clausewitz. Finally, a general anti-intellectualism pervaded the American and British armed forces.

By the outbreak of the First World War, however, Clausewitz had achieved a certain level of renown in Great Britain (but not the United States). The key turning points were the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War. The Haldane Reforms after the Boer War and the fact that many Japanese officers had been taught by the Germans and cited Clausewitz led to a genuine interest in the war theorist for the first time in the English-speaking world. The reissue of “On War” sold extremely well in comparison to the first publication in 1873, which perhaps sold 100 copies over thirty years. Bassford notes that the interest in Clausewitz was his focus on the dynamics of war (friction, genius, etc.), the accentuation of moral forces, and the new aspects of historical analyses – not his famous dictum “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” What influence Clausewitz had in the United States came from secondary German sources. Although the American military underwent a major reform period around the same time as Britain after the Spanish-American War, Clausewitz played no role, at least so far as Bassford can tell.

According to the author, it wasn’t until the Cold War that Clausewitz became enormously influential in the United States. “On War” was clearly known in the US Army in the interwar period and it appeared in lectures at the war colleges, but the direct influence on US military doctrine or education was nil. There were, he writes, three main factors promoting the interest of Clausewitz after the Second World War. First, Hiroshima and the rise of thermonuclear weapons suddenly made Clausewitz’s theoretical “absolute war” a possibility. Second, the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union made thermonuclear war possible. Third, Vietnam, like the British reaction to the Boer War, caused serious soul-searching in the US military. If there was a particular year that Clausewitz burst onto the scene it was 1957, the year that three key books that positively referenced “On War” first appeared: 1) Henry Kissinger’s “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy”; 2) Samuel Huntington’s “Soldier and the State”; and 3) Robert Osgood’s “Limited War.”

Increasingly military reformers became Clausewitzians. (Two notable exceptions were B.H. Lidell Hart and J.F.C. Fuller, authors that Bassford bashes relentlessly, claiming “these two men’s egotistical reluctance to be ‘followers’ of anyone else led them to reject Clausewitz in public.”) Anglo-American interpretations focused on the morality of war. If the Brits and Americans agreed on a focus on morality, they differed on the essentially political nature of war. Bassford claims the British took that fundamental aspect of Clausewitz as a given while the American military had a hard time accepting it.

The author also notes that one must not confuse Clausewitzian logic and Clausewitzian language. For instance, he says the British showed reluctance to give too much credit to any single author, especially a German, and the general British reluctance to embrace theory at all, yet Clausewitzian concepts are clearly visible in British writings. The Germans, meanwhile, used Clausewitz terminally and called him “the master,” but their works frequently showed substantial divergences from true Clausewitzian theory, according to Bassford.

In sum, Bassford emphasizes several basic themes in “Clausewitz in English.” Primarily, Clausewitz has suffered because readers and writers have misinterpreted him. The worst result is that many people only know his work by reading selected quotes and faulty interpretations. Another fundamental focus is that the nature of war is determined by each period’s zeitgeist, not individual actors or theorists.