I'm surprised I don't see Carl Von Clausewuiz posted

>>2965086
Iam looking for a pdf/any other e-book format of On War, do you guys have a link to download it?

I don't think the majority of this board has fully read "On War." To start some parts are boring as fuck and don't even apply anymore. Furthermore, you will walk away from the book without really understanding the concepts; unless, you follow up the book by reading a military history book and applying his principles to explain the thought process of the military commanders.

>>2965197
Only because shield wall tactic isnt applied anymore does not mean it isnt interesting.

>>2965197
Honestly, I've read On War, while the concepts themselves are interesting, it's main issue is that it's really fucking difficult to read, might be due to the translation but it has the worst, most verbose fucking prose I have ever read, and I have to sit and look over a page for 20 minutes just to try and figure out what the fuck Clausewitz is trying to say.
The concepts themselves are easy to grasp, Clausewitz himself, is not.
I went in expecting some sort of guide to war or treatise on military tactics (Clausewitz himself admits that this really doesn't do anything however) and come out a master in napoleonic tactics.
What I got was some sort of autistic, mathematical analysis on the characteristics of an army and the semantics of strategy/tactics.

>>2965258
I have never realy seen any tactical stuff in books liek this. Sun-c havent said a word about tactics.

>>2965273
Well, I expected it to be like a historical analysis, much more straightforward than it actually was (although, in some respects Clausewitz is straightforward, specifically in regard to asymmetrical warfare)

>>2965258
You're right, the book is very hard to read. I should have included that as a reason why you need to read another book and apply his concepts to the situations. Doing that helps with both understanding the book and concepts.

>>2965288
This. He understood the political nature of warfare and how it applied to guerrilla fighting. Some say he predicted Mao.

>>2966207
Actually, I was implying the opposite, from what I remember he placed a lot of emphasis on numerical superiority.

>>2965165
All your request are belong to >>>/r/

>>2965197
I've read On Clauswitz (Hugh Smith) and parts of On War in preparation for a paper on deep operations (my first time writing on military strategy and for a professor who specialized in the concept).

According to Hugh Smith, the first and last chapters are all you really need to read.

>>2965086
>I'm surprised I don't see Carl Von Clausewuiz posted here more.

/his is lazy and not willing to read so not a surprise

>>2965165
https://www.clausewitz.com/mobile/whichtrans.htm

>>2965086
One of the hardest parts of reading this book and gaining useful informations is that I don't have anything to command to practice. War videogames are rock-paper-scissors balanced and wargames have their deals

>>2967428
thanks

>>2965197
>>2965258
>>2967447
it's largely unnecessary to read on war nowadays because the common notion of contemporary conventional war is already clausewitzian. so a lot of what he's saying will seem obvious to us, but the pedantry was necessary to someone hearing them for the first time. understanding it is a matter of reading around it in terms of historical context, if you're interested in the philosophy of war in itself as opposed to just military strategy.

for example war as a tool of the state needed to be preceded by the rise of the modern nation-state. the military as subordinate to politics needed as its prerequisite the notion of the soldier as civil servant within a standing army as distinct from an entrenched "warrior class" with its own ends. likewise it was distinct from a levy or "citizen's army" where troops are raised for war and disbanded afterwards, which leads to the "use it or lose it" logic where a war might end up being waged just to maintain war-making capability, or to obtain war-making capability in the first place.

contrast this with the aztec flower wars where their "wars" were highly ritualized displays with goals internal to themselves. their goal wasn't to disable the enemy's capacity to wage war, but to gain captives for human sacrifice. certain forms of "jihad" also fall into this purview, where the "war" is an amalgamation of decentralized "lone wolf" attacks dominated by a logic of spiritual apotheosis.

on war is truly a meme book because you're literally supposed to get bored if you didn't come out of the 16th century.

>>2966283
That was a product of his time, but he recognized that decisive victories were not the final word which certainly set him apart.