Carl von Clausewitz
German-Prussian general and military theorist · Germany · Lived 1780 to 1831 · aged 51
Carl von Clausewitz is read about 1,619 times a day, in 71 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He gave war its most quoted maxim - that it's politics by other means - and wrote the book that military academies still assign two centuries later. Clausewitz argued that fog, fear, and friction matter more than geometry, and that no formula captures the chaos of actual combat.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
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In their own words 10
, To introduce into the philosophy of War itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.
War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.
Action in war is like movement in a resistant element.
Awards
In their orbit 2
About this person
Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz was born 1 July 1780 and became a Prussian army officer who turned his attention to why wars unfold as they do. He stressed the psychological and political forces at work, insisting that history mattered more than abstract theory and that war resisted the tidy equations other thinkers tried to impose. His aphorisms circulated widely - "War is the continuation of policy with other means" among them - but his real contribution was Vom Kriege, the unfinished treatise that mapped the fog, doubt, and rapid command decisions that define battle. He died 16 November 1831, leaving behind a work that remains a seminal text on military strategy and science.
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