The German Genius

different roads and were therefore harder to attack. Napoleon also discovered that by pursuing defeated troops, giving his cavalry their head, he could significantly “magnify the scale of the original victory.” 56 Despite these manifold advances, it was only on the eve of war, in 1806, that Prussia established permanent divisions.
    And so, militarily, when Clausewitz came to maturity, war was becoming far more brutal. This profoundly shaped On War and made many of the theorists who immediately preceded him—Adam Heinrich Dietrich von Bülow, Georg Heinrich von Berenhorst, Antoine Henri de Jomini, and even Scharnhorst—look dated, though it was Scharnhorst who had first called for the introduction of divisions into the Germany army. 57 All agreed that chance was an important factor in war, and so was morale, but beyond that there was little agreement. If one writer influenced Clausewitz more than anyone else it was probably Niccolò Machiavelli, whose view about the unchanging nature of the human condition, and politics—constant conflict—he shared.
    On War is a big book that at times is “inconsistent, obscure and opaque” yet it has stayed influential “because it illuminates by simplifying complex issues and dramatising the human element of war…[Clausewitz] is passionately involved in the subject and at the same time detached and objective.” 58 The key elements are probably that there are two types of war—one to overthrow the enemy, the other to secure limited objectives; and that war needs to be understood not as an independent variable but as a function of policy. If Clausewitz has one message it is that “only major engagements involving all forces lead to major success… On War never fully escapes the spirit of all-out war that values the great, decisive battle.” 59 This argument—which may seem obvious and commonsensical—was newer then than it seems now, because in the eighteenth century it had always been exceptional for one battle to settle an entire war. It was as if the lesson of Napoleon had been learned most by the people he had humiliated. (This too was one of Clausewitz’s arguments—that the defeated feel defeat more keenly than victors enjoy their victory, an observation that was to echo down the nineteenth century, and all the way up to 1939.)
    Clausewitz also introduced the concept of “centers of gravity.” This was his way of confirming that strategies “require some link between military activity and political objectives.” He identifies four centers of gravity: territory, the capital of a country, its armed forces, and its alliances. 60 Among these, the pre-eminent center of gravity is a nation’s army. That must be destroyed for decisive victory.
    In a sense, Clausewitz’s achievement was to clear the air. He realized that, with the change from engagements between battalions and regiments to engagements between divisions, corps, or armies, the whole concept of war became more terrible, and that with the growth of conscription and mass armies, commanders had to face up to the new realities.
    Since the publication of On War between 1832 and 1834, Clausewitz has become a key figure in understanding war. 61 At the outset he was criticized, not least by de Jomini, whose reputation outshone Clausewitz’s for much of the nineteenth century. But Clausewitz’s book gradually won support from those who realized what he was getting at. Friedrich Engels recommended Clausewitz to Marx around the middle of the nineteenth century, and Marx familiarized himself with the main ideas of On War without reading the book itself. But the initial print run of 1,500 copies was still not fully sold by then, and it is fair to say that Clausewitz had fallen into “respectful oblivion.” Despite this, the publishers, Dümmler of Berlin, put out a second edition in 1853 and its reception was better. In Prussia the book was taken up in earnest in the 1860s by leading generals, Helmuth von Moltke in particular. He was impressed by what he took to be Clausewitz’s advocacy of “Napoleonic” war, with its emphasis on size, morale, patriotism, and leadership. Moltke’s own victories against Austria in 1866 and France in 1870–71 helped to shape the view that war was “a practical, proper and glorious instrument of national policy.” 62 Moltke embroidered Clausewitz’s idea, even arguing that soldiers should take over from politicians in wartime.
    A French translation of On War