Carl von Clausewitz ( Burg , 1 as June as 1780 – Breslau , 16 as November as 1831 ) was a Prussian soldier and strategist. He obtained international recognition as a military theorist for his great work entitled De la guerra .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Military career
- 2 Death
- 2 Acknowledgments
- 3 Source
Biographical synthesis
He was born in the year 1780 in Burg, near Magdeburg , Germany , in a family of the small nobility.
Military career
He took part in the campaign against France in 1792, as a standard bearer, when he was barely 12 years old.
He studied at the Berlin Military Academy . In the period of the Napoleonic Wars , he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Jena , the 14 of October of 1806 , and after being exchanged as a prisoner two years later, he taught at the academy that had been formed, and also served in the Ministry of Defense .
He served in the Russian Tsar’s army when his country was forced to ally itself with France in the fight against Napoleon Bonaparte . Later he returned to his country and joined the army again, in 1814, with which he was in the Battle of Waterloo .
In 1818 he was appointed division general and became director of the Berlin War College from that year until 1830.
Death
He died on 16 of November of 1821 , at 51 years old, sick with cholera .
Acknowledgments
He obtained international recognition as a military theorist for his great work entitled De la guerra , in it he established a comparison between war and politics, since, as he pointed out:
War is nothing more than an extension of politics.
Carl von Clausewitz
He is considered the founder of modern military doctrine for the theories he coined in this work, in which he also established that maximum effectiveness is obtained in the war period by unifying the political and military leadership – as would be done in Germany during the two wars worldwide―.
He also created the concept of total war, which commits all the resources and energies of the country, and takes the entire enemy country as a war objective.
