In engaging and vivid detail, Hew Strachan reveals the story behind the most important volume on war ever written, the book that has been blamed for the unprecedented death tolls in the first and second world wars. Carl von Clausewitz first published On War in Germany after the Napoleonic Wars, in which he had fought and experienced both victory and defeat firsthand. Immediately acclaimed as a classic, it is still required reading at military academies today. Its description of “total war” and its insistence on the inevitability of combat and death have been blamed for the massive destruction of two world wars.

Strachan’s accessible and readable book challenges the popular misconceptions that surround On War. He dispels the notion that for Clausewitz war begins with policy, asserting instead that war has its own dynamic and is at the centre of all military planning. Strachan returns to the very heart of On War to recover the arguments at its core and challenge the received wisdom about this cornerstone of military strategy.