Anything but a detached theorist, Clausewitz was as fully engaged in the intellectual and cultural currents of his time as in its political and military conflicts. Late-eighteenth century thought helped shape the analytic methods he developed for the study of war. The essays in this volume follow his career in a complex military society, together with that of other students of war, both friends and rivals, providing a broad perspective that leads to significant documents so far unknown or ignored. They add to our understanding of Clausewitz’s early ideas and their expansion into a comprehensive theory that continues to challenge our thinking about war today.
These essays provide an authoritative introduction to Carl von Clausewitz and enlarge the history of war by joining it to the history of ideas and institutions and linking it with intellectual biography.
Originally published in 1976, Clausewitz and the State presents a comprehensive analysis of one of the significant thinkers of modern Europe. Peter Paret combines social and military history and psychological interpretation with a study of Clausewitz's military theories and of his unduly neglected historical and political writing. This timely new edition includes a preface which allows Paret to recount the past thirty years of discussion on Clausewitz and respond to critics. A companion volume to Clausewitz's On War, this book is indispensable to anyone interested in Clausewitz and his theories, and their proper historical context.
In interpreting its own age art often turns to the past. At the beginning of the twentieth century one of these encounters between present and past was prompted by the interest a major figure in German modernism, the sculptor Ernst Barlach, came to take in the medieval epic The Song of the Nibelungen. There exists no statement by Barlach to explain what prompted his interest and the resulting sequence of large drawings on the epic’s climactic final segment, reproduced here. In conception and execution these drawings stand out in Barlach’s graphic oeuvre, as they stand apart from the multitude of interpretations the Nibelungen inspired in art, literature, and music. This book discusses the epic and its course through German history, the artist’s biography and the course of his work, as well as the place the drawings occupy in the art, culture, and politics of Germany in the 1920s and 30s and beyond to the ideological and political crises of Central Europe before and after the First World War.
In German Encounters with Modernism, Peter Paret traces the reception of modern art, from the 1840s through the Nazi era, through the lens of social and political developments in Germany. Addressing broad cultural topics, such as the early history of Expressionism, the role of anti-Semitism in German reactions to modernism, and the impact of World War I on the arts, he also includes new interpretations of the work of artists such as the sculptor Ernst Barlach. Based on new archival discoveries, this study combines a strong narrative approach with interdisciplinary analysis.
Responding to the enemy's innovation in war presents problems to soldiers and societies of all times. This book traces Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1806 and Prussia's effort to recover from defeat to show how in one particular historical episode operational analyses together with institutional and political decisions eventually turned defeat to victory. The author moves from a comparative study of French and Prussian forces to campaign narrative and strategic analysis. He examines processes of change in institutions and doctrine, as well as their dependence on social and political developments, and interprets works of art and literature as indicators of popular and elite attitudes toward war, which influence the conduct of war and the kind and extent of military innovation. In the concluding chapter he addresses the impact of 1806 on two men who fought on opposing sides in the campaign and sought a new theoretical understanding of war--Henri Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz. Fields of history that are often kept separate are brought together in this book, which seeks to replicate the links between different areas of thought and action as they exist in reality and shape events.
A new view of the years of Prussian reform is presented here, showing the military impact of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France on Prussia, the nature of the challenge, the efforts of Prussian institutions and society to master the new situation, the obstacles, and changes. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The conflict between National Socialism and Ernst Barlach, one of the important sculptors of the twentieth century, is an unusual episode in the history of Hitler's efforts to rid Germany of 'international modernism'. Barlach did not passively accept the destruction of his sculptures. He protested the injustice, and continued his work. The author's discussion of Barlach's art and struggle over creative freedom, are joined to an analysis of Barlach's opponents. Peter Paret's fine study of an artist in a time of crisis seamlessly combines the history of modern Germany and the history of modern art.
The 319 posters, culled from a collection started by Herbert Hoover after World War I, depict the methods that have been used to persuade entire societies into supporting war and revolution since the beginning of the century.
This is the first book to set out a comprehensive framework by which to understand terrorism as strategy. It contends that even terrorism of the supposedly nihilist variety can be viewed as a bona fide method for distributing means to fulfil the ends of policy, that is, as a strategy. The main purpose of the work is to describe the dynamics of terr
This text discusses Machiavelli, Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, Vauban, Frederick the Great, Guibert, Bulow, Napoleon, Jomini, Clausewitz, Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, Engels, Marx, Moltke, Schlieffen, Delbruck, Bugeaud, Gallieni, Lyautey, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Liddell Hart, De Gaulle, and other military strategists.
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