McNair Paper Number 52, Chapter 3, Notes, October 1996
1. Marie von Clausewitz, quoted in Carl von Clausewitz, On War , trans. Peter Paret and Michael Howard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 65.
2. Charles Edward White, "The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Milit"rische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805," Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1986, 19-26 and 33-36.
3. Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 62. "Scharnhorst," Howard noted, Ais rightly revered as one of the giants in the creation of Germany, a man as distinguished as a thinker and a statesman as he was as a soldier" (ibid., 6).
4. Carl von Clausewitz (and Gneisenau), AOn the Life and Character of Scharnhorst," Historical and Political Writings, trans. and eds. Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 89. This official biography of Scharnhorst was believed at the time to have been written by August Wilhelm Neidhardt von Gneisenau (1760-1831), but was Aalmost certainly written in collaboration with Clausewitz" (ibid., 85).
5. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 63; White, AThe Enlightened Soldier," 36.
6. aret, Clausewitz and the State, 64. For the final paragraph of Hammerstein's report on the retreat from Menin, see Clausewitz (and Gneisenau), AOn the Life and Character of Scharnhorst," Historical and Political Writings, 89-90.
7. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 64. Prussia's involvement in the War of the First Coalition ended with the Treaty of Basel in 1795 (Howard, Clausewitz, 6).
8. Gunther E. Rothenberg, "Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the 'Military Revolution' of the Seventeenth Century," in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret, with Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 32. Rothenberg argues that it was during the period 1560-1660 that Amodern armies, founded on the principle of hierarchical subordination, discipline, and social obligation, took the shape they have retained to the present day" (ibid., 36-37).
9. Michael Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 15
10. Clausewitz, On War, 590-591.
12. White, "The Enlightened Soldier," 42.
14. Howard, Clausewitz, 7; also see Clausewitz, On War, 609.
16. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 64.
17. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 64; Howard, Clausewitz, 7; White, "The Enlightened Soldier," 42-43 and 95-99. An early product of Scharnhorst's speculations on what he had observed in the War of the First Coalition was a 50-page essay, "The Basic Reasons for French Success [Entwicklung der allgemeinen Ursachen des Glhcks der Franzosen in dem Revolutionskreige]," which he and his friend Friedrich von der Decken published in their periodical Neue Milit"rische in 1797 (Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 32, note 25, and 64).
18. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 33; Clausewitz, On War, 610.
20. R. R. Palmer, "Frederick the Great, Guilbert, B(low: From Dynastic to National War," in Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret, with Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 95.
21. The foremost American proponent of the hypothesis that the early 21st century will see a combined-systems revolution in how wars are fought driven by technological advances is Andrew W. Marshall. See, for example, A. W. Marshall, "Some Thoughts on Military Revolutions," Office of Net Assessment (OSD/NA) memorandum, 27 July 1993, especially 1-5; Commanders James R. FitzSimonds and Jan M. van Tol, "Revolutions in Military Affairs," Joint Force Quarterly (Spring 1994): 24-31; and, Thomas E. Ricks, "Warning Shot: How Wars Are Fought Will Change Radically, Pentagon Planner Says," The Wall Street Journal, 15 July 1994, A1. Soviet military thinkers such as Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov began talking openly in the early 1980s about the possibility that advances in nonnuclear weaponry, including the development of so-called "automated reconnaissance-and-strike complexes," long-range and high-accuracy munitions, and electronic-control systems, "make it possible to sharply increase (by at least an order of magnitude) the destructive potential of conventional weapons, bringing them closer, so to speak, to weapons of mass destruction in terms of effectiveness" (Interview with Marshal of the Soviet Union N. V. Ogarkov, "The Defense of Socialism: Experience of History and the Present Day," Krasnaya zvezda [Red Star], lst ed. in Russian, 9 May 1984, 2-3.
23. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 65.
24. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 65. During the years 1795-1801, Scharnhorst also longed for his own command, "but his superiors politely declined his requests" (White, "The Enlightened Soldier," 40).
25. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 68.
27. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 76.
30. John Shy, AJomini," in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, 148-150. Antoine-Henri Jomini (1779-1869) felt that Ahe owed his greatest intellectual debt to General Henry Lloyd" (ibid., 148). Scharnhorst was also stimulated by Lloyd's writings, but in a very different way than Jomini (White, "The Enlightened Soldier," 28).
31. Lanchester's so-called "laws of war" postulated two distinct relationships, his "linear" and "square" laws, between casualties, force ratios, and defeat in tactical engagements, depending on whether the opposing sides are armed with "ancient" weapons such as swords, or with "modern long-range" weapons like rifles [F. W. Lanchester, Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm (London, 1916), 40-41]. Lanchester's approach used differential equations to develop his so-called laws, and his pioneering work was included in the U.S. Navy's classic textbook on operations research (Philip M. Morse and George E. Kimball, "Operations Evaluation Group Report No. 54: Methods of Operations Research," Chief of Naval Operations, Washington, DC, 63-74). For those uncomfortable with differential equations, a purely arithmetic illustration of Lanchester's square law can be found in Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986), 66-69.
32. Henry Lloyd, quoted in Howard, Clausewitz, 13. Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, many in the U.S. have again raised Lloyd's idea of bloodless or, to use the current term, "nonlethal" warfare. By the time Clausewitz began the manuscript that we know as On War, he had experienced war three times: as an adolescent in 1794 and 1795, when "he was swept, passive and uncomprehending, into a stream of exertion, violence, and suffering"; briefly in 1806 when, as a young officer, he participated in Prussia's bitter defeat at Auerst(dt; and, between 1812 and 1815, when "he took part in, or was able to observe at close hand, the unfolding of great strategic combinations, as well as major battles, detached operations, arming of the people, and political-military negotiations," including "the human reality of 'corpses and dying men among smoking ruins, and thousands of ghostlike men [who] pass by screaming and begging and crying in vain for bread'" (Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 222). Small wonder, then, that in the fourth paragraph of On War Clausewitz wrote: "Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is such a dangerous business that mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst" (On War, 75). One also cannot help but wonder whether these words will prove any less true in the wars of the 21st century.
33. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 92. The young Clausewitz, writing in 1805, raised numerous objections to B(low's attempts to reduce the conduct of war to quantitative principles, not the least of which was that B(low's own historical illustrations showed that campaigns had been won from an inadequate base of operations, and lost with a base that met B(low's criteria (ibid.). In On War the mature Clausewitz was even harsher, rejecting the sort of geometrical result produced by B(lows principles as "completely useless" fantasy (On War, 135 and 215).
34. Clausewitz (and Gneisenau), "On the Life and Character of Scharnhorst," Historical and Political Writings, 90.
35. Paret, Clausewitz and the State, 71. Paret is clear that Scharnhorst never fully resolved the conflict between theory and war as it actually is in his own mind (ibid.).
36. "In war . . . all action is aimed at probable rather than certain success. The degree of certainty that is lacking must in every case be left to fate, chance, or whatever you like to call it. . . . But we should not habitually prefer the course that involves the least uncertainty. That would be an enormous mistake . . . There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom." (Clausewitz, On War, 167). In the twentieth century, the exploitation of the opportunities provided by chance is something that became second nature to top-performing World War II armor commanders such as Heinz Guderian and John S. Wood (see BDM Corporation, "Generals Balck and von Mellenthin on Tactics: Implications for NATO Military Doctrine," BDM/W-81-399-TR, 1 July 1981, 26, 31-32, and 39; also, Hanson W. Baldwin, Tiger Jack (Ft Collins, CO: Old Army Press, 1979), 39-46 and 61-69).
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