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 For all of our Clausewitz bibliographies, click here.
 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.
NOTE: This page focuses primarily (but not exclusively) on key documents that can be found on either Clausewitz.com or ClausewitzStudies.org, and it emphasizes documents in English. Much more detail can be found in our various language-  and subject-specific bibliographies. All of these are currently (c. NOV 2023) undergoing substantial updates.

ON-LINE TEXTS

1. Carl von Clausewitz, Hinterlassene 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. FULL ON-LINE VERSIONS OF VOM KRIEGE IN MODERN TEXT

There is an excellent (though technically very cumbersome) posting of the full German text of an 1834 edition of Vom Kriege (the first 3 volumes of Clausewitz's collected works, including the appendices) at the Deutsches Textarchiv. There are various settings to shows the text in various formats and in both modern type and in Fraktur

• Full text of Vom Kriege: ClausewitzStudies.org has a much more convenient HTML version of Vom Kriege (without the appendices—those are available elsewhere on the site. See items #6 and 7 below) arranged by books. Included is a single-file version (good for global searches). For a discussion/comparison of the various English translations available, click here.

• 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. A 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, Hinterlassene 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.)

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.

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