![]() ![]() ![]() Like others before him, Clausewitz recognised that standing armies could also employ some of these tactics. Such tactics were often favoured by insurgents unable to recruit large, regular armies or mount major attacks. What interested Clausewitz most about these wars were the tactics employed, notably the use of mobile forces, often lightly-armed, to harass enemy soldiers, attack weak points or gather intelligence. Clearly, war could embrace combatants other than uniformed regulars. And he was very familiar with the war in Spain where Napoleon’s army had struggled against a combination of partisans, irregular troops and the armies of England, Portugal and Spain itself. He knew more of the Vendée uprising in which lightly-armed peasants fought against France’s revolutionary regime from 1793-96. He knew of the American War of Independence when irregular forces played a significant role in defeating the British (though he does not mention the conflict in On War). Most of the references to fighting in On War are to clashes between national armies under the command of a state.īut Clausewitz recognised that war could be more complex. Combat, Clausewitz says, ‘is not a contest between individuals’ but between soldiers who are ‘recruited, clothed, armed and trained’ to be able to ‘fight at the right place and the right time’. Second, ‘serious means’ refers to fighting by soldiers as part of a state’s military organisation. Individuals and groups other than states do not normally wage war. There are two requirements.įirst, war entails ‘a clash between major interests.’ For Clausewitz it is the interests of states that constitute the ‘serious end’. War, Clausewitz insists, must be ‘a serious means to a serious end’. Human beings fight and kill one another in many ways and for many reasons without this necessarily constituting ‘war’. Nor does he include murders, gang-fights, riots, massacres and the like in his definition. Wrestling may be ‘fighting of a kind’ but it is not war. Obviously, Clausewitz does not equate all fighting with war. No armchair theorist, Clausewitz was actively engaged in combat on at least 20 occasions between 17, and received a bayonet wound to the head in May 1813. On War has over 600 references to battle ( Schlacht – which also means slaughter in German). It is the spilling of blood that makes war ‘a special activity, different and separate from any other pursued by man’. ‘There is only one means in war: combat’ ( das Gefecht). ‘War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale’ – a physical contest between people, each using force ‘to compel our enemy to do our will’. One is bottom-up, focusing on the very practical business of war, namely fighting and killing the other is top-down and begins by imagining war in its most abstract form.Ĭlausewitz goes ‘straight to the heart of the matter’. In Book I of On War Clausewitz tackles the problem of definition in two distinct ways. So how does Clausewitz define war? What are the boundaries of that definition? What are its limitations, if any, in the contemporary world? The Germans used long range super guns to bombard Paris in 1918.Any book on the nature of war needs to identify its subject. 760,000 German civilians died during WW1 (compared to 500,000 in WW2), almost all from starvation due to the naval blockade. The British naval blockade, which had the intention of (and successfully accomplished) starving Germany into surrender. ![]() German u-boats attacked and sank civilian merchant shipping and liners. When the war ended, Britain was constructing a heavy bomber force that they were planning to use to attack German cities. German naval bombardment of coastal British towns, and air raids over London. Women working in munitions factories, heavy industry, and many other jobs they hadn't done before.In Britain, women were conscripted into such work.Ī War Economy adopted in Britain, France,and Germany, whereby manufacture of weapons, munitions, and other war materiel was prioritized. Total War is when the entire resources and population are mobilized towards the war effort,which takes priority over everything else.Further, Total War also involves prosecuting the war against the entire population of the enemy, not just against its military.Ĭonscription into the military for all countries involved. ![]()
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