• ClausewitzStudies.org •
| • For all of our Clausewitz bibliographies, click here. |
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| • For a bibliography of Clausewitz's works published in English, click here. |
| • For a bibliography of Clausewitz's works published in German, click here. (This includes links to various on-line facsimiles.) |
| • For a bibliography of Clausewitz's works published in French, click here. |
| • See also physical books in print available though Amazon.com via the Clausewitz Bookstore (US - UK - Germany - France). |
| • For efforts to index Clausewitz's work, click here. |
ON-LINE TEXTS*
BEST ON-LINE TEXT OF VOM KRIEGE
The most useful on-line posting of Clausewitz's magnum opus is the text posted here on ClausewitzStudies.org. It is based on the first edition, but it has been carefully edited to be fully consistent with Werner Hahlweg's 19th German edition (Bonn, FRG: Dümmler, 1991), ISBN: 342782019X. This is universally regarded as a scholarly masterpiece and as the standard German edition. Our version, however, is only Clausewitz's own writing (as edited and published by his wife Marie), uncluttered by editorial insertions, notes, and commentary. It has also corrected some typographical errors and clarified the paragraph breaks (which are sometimes undetectable in Hahlweg's printed book because of the publisher's mysterious failure to indent each paragraph's first line).
It does not include the large appendices that were printed at the back of the third volume of Vom Kriege, but these are available elsewhere on our site in both German and in English translations.
We have posted it in two versions. In the regular version, each Chapter is posted as a separate file for rapid downloading but embedded in an overall structure built around the Table of Contents and a dedicated search indexer. The second version is textually identical but is posted in a single, very large file in order to facilitate rapid searching through the entire text, statistical analysis, etc.
BEST ON-LINE SOURCE OF CLAUSEWITZ'S COLLECTED WORKS
The digital State Library of Upper Austria has all 10 volumes of Clausewitz's collected works in various file formats, including PDF. These were made from copies of the first (1832-37) editions. They display in Fraktur but have been fairly well OCR'd and it is possible to extract useable text in modern type.
4. Der Feldzug von 1796 in Italien (Band 4 ; / 1833)
5. Die Feldzüge von 1799 in Italien und der Schweiz ; 1 (Band 5: 1 ; / 1833)
6. Die Feldzüge von 1799 in Italien und der Schweiz ; 2 (Band 6: 2 ; / 1834)
8. Der Feldzug von 1815 in Frankreich (Band 8 ; / 1835)
10. Strategische Beleuchtung mehrerer Feldzüge von Sobieski, Münich, Friedrich dem Großen und dem Herzog Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Braunschweig und andere historische Materialien zur Strategie (Band 10 ; / 1837)
SEE ALSO:
1. Carl von Clausewitz, Hinterlassenes Werke des Generals Carl von Clausewitz über Krieg und Kriegführung, links to all 10 vols. (Berlin 1832-1837) of Clausewitz's collected works in the original German. (Vols. 1-3 constitute On War.)
Vol.1 - Vol.2 - Vol.3 - Vol.4 - Vol.5 - Vol.6 - Vol.7 - Vol.8 - Vol.9 - Vol.10
2. There is an excellent (though technically very cumbersome) posting of [only] the third volume of the 1834 edition of Vom Kriege, including the appendices, at the Deutsches Textarchiv. There are various settings to shows the text in various formats and in both modern type and Fraktur.
• Another full text of Vom Kriege: The Clausewitz Gesellschaft has a on-line version of Vom Kriege nicely formatted for printing.
• Full English Translation: ClausewitzStudies.org has a complete (i.e., all 8 books) posting of On War (Vom Kriege) in the 1873 J.J. Graham translation.
3. An old French translation is Theorie de la grande guerre, trans. Lt-Colonel de Vatry, 3 vols., Paris: L. Baudoin, 1886-1887.
4. Carl von Clausewitz, Der Feldzug von 1815 in Frankreich, 2nd edition (Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler's Verlagsbuchhandlung, Harrwiß und Goßmann, 1862). This is a transcription made for research purposes and contains a large number of typographical errors. A PDF in the original Fraktur typeface is here.
5. Christopher Bassford, Daniel Moran, and Gregory W. Pedlow, eds./trans., On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington, and the Campaign of 1815 (ClausewitzStudies.org, 2010). This on-line edition of the printed book contains Wellington's initial battle report; two of Clausewitz's post-battle letters to his wife Marie; correspondence within Wellington's circle concerning Clausewitz's work; a complete, modern (2010) translation of Clausewitz's 1815 campaign study; Wellington's 1842 memorandum in response; and enlightening essays by the editors. The original German text is listed immediately above.
6. Carl von Clausewitz, Principles of War, trans. Hans Gatzke (Harrisburg, PA: The Military Service Publishing Company, 1942). The original text is Die wichtigsten Grundsätze des Kriegführens zur Ergänzung meines Unterrichts bei Sr. Königlichen Hoheit dem Kronprinzen, which was published as an appendix to Vom Kriege, vol. 3. Principles of War is NOT a summary of On War (1832) but a distant and quite different precursor (written in 1812). We also have the 1873 translation by J.J. Graham.
7. The original German text, "Skizze eines Plans zur Taktik oder Gefechtslehre" ["Sketch of a plan for tactics or combat theory"] was also published as an appendix to Vom Kriege, vol. 3. It is posted on the ClausewitzStudies.org website, extracted and reformatted from the version in the German Text Archive. Graham's English translation, entitled "Sketch of a Plan For Tactics, Or the Theory of the Combat Guide to Tactics, Or the Theory of the Combat" can be found in a posting of the Graham translation at "The Online Library of Liberty." NOTE: The information provided at that URL is full of errors concerning the author (i.e., Clausewitz), the translation, the translator (Col. J.J. Graham), and the much later English editor (Col. Frederick Natusch Maude). However, a new and far superior translation can be found on-line in Olivia A. Garard's An Annotated Guide to Tactics: Carl von Clausewitz’s Theory of the Combat (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2021). See also her Review of the Graham translation in The Strategy Bridge, 23 MAR 2020.
8. Carl von Clausewitz, trans/ed Peter Paret and Daniel Moran, Two Letters on Strategy (Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1984). The CSI website constantly changes its link structure, making it difficult to maintain working links. If you have difficulty finding it on CSI's website, try our local backup.
9. Clausewitz, Carl von. Über das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst ("On the Life and Character of Scharnhorst"), aus dem Nachlasse des General Clausewitz, in Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, herausgegeben von Leoplold Ranke (Berlin, 1832). This is a handy way to view the text. However, the provider's Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system has done an extraordinarily poor job of recognizing Fraktur characters and it is impossible to extract useable text.
10. Carl von Clausewitz, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia, trans. anonymous [Francis Egerton, Lord Ellesmere] (London: J. Murray, 1843). From Carl von Clausewitz, Hinterlassenes Werke des Generals Carl von Clausewitz über Krieg und Kriegführung, 10 vols., Berlin, 1832-37, Vol. 7: "Der Feldzug von 1812 in Russland," Berlin, 1835. (This English text does not include "Der Feldzug von 1813 bis zum Waffenstillstand" or "Der Feldzug von 1814 in Frankreich," which are contained in the original volume 7.) This is an older text of some historical interest (it was created within Wellington's inner circle), but a much better—but incomplete—text can be found in Clausewitz, Carl von. Historical and Political Writings. Eds./trans. Peter Paret and Daniel Moran. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
11. Excerpts from Carl von Clausewitz, "Notes On Prussia In Her Grand Catastrophe of 1806," in Jena Campaign Sourcebook (Fort Leavenworth: The General Service Schools Press, 1922). Translated by COL [US Army] Conrad H. Lanza. Based on Clausewitz's Nachrichten über Preussen in seiner grossen Katastrophe, in Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften, Berlin, 1888. Most sections not provided by Lanza can be found in Carl von Clausewitz, "Observations on Prussia in her Great Catastrophe," in Historical and Political Writings, eds./trans. Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp.30-84. The published document from which Lanza worked, however, was quite different from Clausewitz's original manuscripts.
See also the on-line text by Christopher Bassford, Clausewitz in English: The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). This discusses the problems involved in tracing Clausewitz's "influence" or "impact" on subsequent thinkers and actors, then investigates his "reception" in the English speaking world. We pursue the book's reception because we actually have meaningful evidence—in the form of books, articles, reviews, diaries, course syllabi, letters, written doctrine, book-sales records, etc.—for the manner in which On War was read, interpreted, discussed, described, etc. On the other hand, it is quite impossible to meaningfully describe the book's actual 'impact' on readers' real-world actions or on events. Efforts to do the latter are acts of pure speculation. Clausewitz in English covers the era 1815-1945, with a substantial postscript discussing developments 1945-1994. See reviews here.
