Von Clausewitz Essay

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz wrote one of the most influential works of military philosophy called On War. Clausewitz’s family was in the middle class but in 1827 King Friedrich Wilhelm III confirmed the family’s nobility. Clausewitz was in the Prussian army and first starting fighting when he was thirteen. Prussia ended up withdrawing from the French Revolution which left Clausewitz bored. Because Clausewitz was bored, he picked up an interest for art, science, and education which had an impact on his writing. Clausewitz was in the Institute for Young Officers in Berlin when he had met Gerhard von Scharnhorst, who was the Chief of the General Staff, that became Clausewitz’s mentor and sponsor. A lot of Clausewitz’s views on history, politics, and military came from Scharnhorst and other generals. Because of the French victoires, Prussia got ready for war to try and fight France. Prussia lost however and in a peace settlement, French took Prussia's territory. Prussia ended up allies with France and Clausewitz did not like that so he enrolled in the Russian army. When the Napoleonic Wars were …show more content…
Clausewitz talks about how physical force is the means and the enemy yielding to our will would be the object. The whole goal in obtaining the object is to disarm the enemy. This is true. Every war that has happened in history has had an act of violence (even the cold war). The cold wars act of violence was that at any moment there could be a nuclear war. In order to disarm the enemy and have them yield to our will (the object) needs some type of physical force. In a war, you can not just ask somebody to surrender, you have to use some type of physical force in order for them to do what you want them to do. It appears that Clausewitz has a good point when he said war is an act of violence because all wars are violent even if there is no actual fighting going