Absolute War Research Articles

The Literature of Absolute War: Transnationalism and World War II

The Literature of Absolute War: Transnationalism and World War II

Synthetic Dimensions of the Potential of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic

The article analyzes the specifics of synthetic measurements of state potential on the example of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR). The author of the study suggests that modeling the potential of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic will enable modern historiography of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1914–1923 to elucidate the morphology of state power by elucidating the nature of political power, the functioning of the state body, its strategic goals, etc. in its western Ukrainian segment. The main research models of Western scientists of the second half of the 20 – early 21th centuries are clarified on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the state’s potential, in particular in the field of international relations: Clifford Herman, Wilhelm Fucks, Ray Klein and Ahmet Davutoğlu. The potential of the WUPR is also considered on the basis of studying the models of gravity, stratification and escalation / de-escalation, which made it possible to clarify the WUPR’s place in the system of international relations and collective security of the early 20th century. It is established that the model of gravity in the case of Western Ukraine diplomacy, in particular during its emigration period, can only partially indicate a certain cultural and / or ideological influence on the balance of international relations, and the “gravitational field” of Western Ukraine was in postwar Europe. An important feature of the stratification model is the prestige of the WUPR in the international arena, which has become the only and common interest of the united Ukrainian People’s Republic. The model of escalation / de-escalation in the realities of Western Ukraine shows that this Ukrainian state and foreign policy activity in the coordinate system of contemporary international relations was located between two points – between absolute peace and absolute war – in the context of the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918–1919 for Eastern Galicia. According to the author, the most logical in relation to the imagined model of the potential of the WUPR was the escalation from the point of view of the stronger side (Poles), in particular in view of the escalation of armaments. It acted in conditions of asymmetric imbalance: the weaker side (Ukrainians) shifted the “difficulty” of escalation to ideological and moral-ideological problems.

Approximating absolute war: The transformation of Prusso-German force structure under Helmuth von Moltke the elder

The following essay will serve as a historical case study on sound theory as the basis of strategic decision making. The argument is that Helmuth von Moltke the elder undertook a systematic transformation of the Prussian force structure to make his wars approximate Carl von Clausewitz’s philosophical abstraction of absolute war. That is, he sought to reorganize the Great General Staff (GGS) to produce an instantaneous discharge of force, both immediate and decisive in its results. In doing so, he produced a military strategy to overcome the geopolitical perils inhering in the nascent Prusso-German state, resulting ultimately in the unification of Germany. We then briefly relate the deductive lessons on the relationship between strategic theory and practice evidenced by Moltke to the contemporary crisis of Anglo-American theory.

Operatic Encounters in a Time of War

Absolute war, total war, world revolution: the nature and scale of the global conflicts that took place around 1800 have been explored (and contested) both at the time and ever since, and recent scholarship has begun to resituate the literary, visual, and theatrical art of the period within this landscape of perpetual conflict. Opera historians, though, have until recently largely steered clear of the operatic mediation of war beyond its most local manifestations. My article returns to the subject of opera and war, to reflect on how an expanded understanding of wartime, in reaching beyond the actual war event (Favret, 2010. War at a Distance: Romanticism and the Making of Modern Wartime. Princeton: Princeton University Press), can provide new insights into the recent scholarly work on opera’s transnational mobility (and malleability), its articulation of modernity and its framing of cross-cultural encounters.

The American Government and “Total War” on COVID-19

In the Economic Impact Payment letter to American citizens in Spring 2020, President Donald Trump wrote that “we wage total war on this invisible enemy.” Trump likely did not intend to explicitly link this to the rich theory about “total war” in military history, but this article examines the American rhetoric surrounding the war on COVID-19 to see whether it corresponds to definitions of total war in military strategic thought. The Clausewitzian origins of the idea of “absolute war” and limited war will also be examined to ascertain their relevance as a framework for understanding the American approach to the conflict with the virus. A total war strategy would have implied either mobilizing the entire population into the health sector or imposing a total national lockdown. This article examines both the strategy outlined by Donald Trump and the reality of what was undertaken by the Federal Government. The military was involved in the war effort against the virus in the U.S., but only in a logistical and financial sense. A national lockdown was never intended due to its potential adverse effects on the economy, and in any case, the Federal Government did not have the authority to impose health policy on individual states and local authorities. The result was a variety of local responses to the crisis with little federal coordination, much like what occurred with the Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19. Despite its military and hyperbolic rhetoric, the Trump Administration did not choose a total war strategy. Instead, it decided to adopt a limited holding strategy that accepted human losses while protecting the economy and waiting for a Government-sponsored vaccine to save the day.

Three Platonic Themes in Clausewitz: A Forgotten Legacy

Notwithstanding the lack of explicit references to Plato’s works in Clausewitz’s writings, this article argues that the Prussian General may have been influenced by the Greek philosopher. First, Clausewitz's concept of “absolute war” has an ideality close to that of a Platonic form, and some of its elements are already present in the Republic. Second, there are strong analogies between Clausewitz’s trinitarian definition of war and the psychosocial features of Plato’s city. Lastly, the article draws a comparison between Clausewitz’s analysis of “martial genius” and Plato’s concept of thumos.

Humanitarian Terrorism as a Higher and Last Stage of Asymmetric War

The articles reviews the problem of humanitarian terrorism that is a terrorism of self-proclaimed humanitarian goals and self-inflicted constraints. This type of terrorism justifies itself by lofty aspirations and claims that its actions are targeted killings of guilty individuals only. This terrorism is the product of the Enlightenment, it emerged by the end of the 18th century and passed three stages in its development. The first stage is the classical terror of the Jacobins 1793–1794. The second one is Russian revolutionary terror of the end of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The third stage is the contemporary American warfare waged by the unmanned aerial vehicles, called drones. From the perspective of the contemporary just war theory, this terrorism is not only morally superior to the ordinary primitive terrorism of straightforward attacks on civilians (this terrorism may be no less fair in terms of self-imposed goals, but is doubtful in terms of means), but even contemporary war. Terrorists of this type kill the few but teach a lesson to many. But it must be clearly born in mind that humanitarian terrorism is not only the summit of just war but also the summit of absolute war. It is founded in personal and individual enmity, which makes the core of absolute enmity. Absolute enmity may at times be inevitable and even justified, but it blocks the road to peace. Revengeful spite, stemming from absolute enmity, is capable of creating its own phantoms of justice, propelling the war. The author concludes that the vicious circle is thus completed. The logic of just war drags in the direction humanitarian terrorism, humanitarian terrorism drags in the mire of absolute enmity. Absolute enmity proclaims just war.

The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader by Stephen G. Fritz

Reviewed by: The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader by Stephen G. Fritz Michael Geheran The First Soldier: Hitler as Military Leader. By Stephen G. Fritz. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. Pp. viii + 459. Cloth $30.00. ISBN 978-0300205985. There are entire libraries devoted to Hitler and World War II, and historians are right to ask why we need yet another book. Stephen Fritz, a leading scholar in the military history of the Third Reich, does not rely on new evidence or new approaches to answer old questions, rather he simply aims to dispel the persisting myth that Hitler's radicalism and erratic decision-making undermined the operational brilliance of his generals. In this engaging scholarly corrective to our understanding of Hitler's military leadership, Fritz synthesizes the voluminous scholarship in English- and German-language secondary sources and constructs a nuanced accounting of Hitler's role as Feldherr. After 1945, German generals engaged in a deliberate effort to deflect blame for Germany's disastrous defeat—the second in a generation—on Hitler, with memoirs by Manstein, Guderian, and others claiming they could have won the war on their own terms had not the "Bohemian Corporal" interfered at every critical turn. This well-worn narrative, of course, conveniently omits the fact that the German officer corps enthusiastically welcomed Hitler's rise to power, condoned and fueled a genocidal war, and slavishly obeyed his orders to the end. First Soldier zeroes in on these conflicts and suggests Hitler's military leadership was much less "irrational" and inept than the conventional portrait suggests, especially in the first two years of the conflict. If we believe Fritz, Hitler clearly understood—better than his generals—"the nature of his war, what it meant to accomplish, and by what means" (xiv). He had many strengths as a military leader: his openness to new ideas and operational daring, especially relating to mechanized warfare, made possible the German victory over France in 1940, when he rejected the General Staff's watered-down version of the Schlieffen Plan in favor of General Erich von Manstein's bold offensive through the Ardennes. In Russia a year later, he gave his generals considerable freedom of action while the campaign was going well and took their advice. When he intervened, it was not because he was a fanatic, but because he was indecisive and could not decide between conflicting courses of action proposed by his generals. Fritz reminds us that the German General Staff was not, as the myth would have it, pragmatic, highly professional, and operationally brilliant. The clique-ridden officer corps' decisions were often driven by force of personalities, political intrigue, and petty, internecine rivalries. [End Page 191] The book's twelve chapters cover, among other things, Hitler's reading of Clausewitz; the ideology of Lebensraum; the planning and execution of Operation Barbarossa; and how Hitler's military decisions determined the war's final outcome. Fritz situates Hitler's military leadership within the context of Clausewitz's concept of absolute war and argues that Hitler's experiences in the trenches of World War I ultimately shaped his vision for World War II. Germany's catastrophic defeat in 1918 brought Hitler to the realization that it simply lacked the resources necessary, on its own, to attain world-power status. Germany would have to acquire Lebensraum (living space) in order to compensate for its vulnerable geographic location and its inferiority in resources. World War II, then, would therefore be very different from World War I, a struggle for national existence that would allow for no compromise. Underpinning Hitler's strategic rationale, Fritz argues, was his fixation on Lebensraum—that space and resources were essential for Germany to attain world-power status. Placing the ideological nature of Hitler's military leadership within the Reich's larger plans to colonize the territory west of the Ural Mountains, he links Hitler's attack on Russia in 1941 with the belief that Germany had a closing window of opportunity to seize the resources ultimately to challenge the United States for global dominance and avoid a repetition of 1918. Many of Hitler's controversial military decisions, ranging from his "no retreat" order before Moscow...

Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792–1820The People’s Wars: Histories of Violence in the German Lands, 1820–1888

Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792–1820The People’s Wars: Histories of Violence in the German Lands, 1820–1888

Mark Hewitson. Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792–1820; Mark Hewitson. The People’s Wars: Histories of Violence in the German Lands, 1820–1888.

Mark Hewitson. Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792–1820; Mark Hewitson. The People’s Wars: Histories of Violence in the German Lands, 1820–1888.

An Introduction to Clausewitz

The article analyzes a series of topics from Carl von Clausewitz’s On War by approaching them as philosophical positions without questioning the critique of Clausewitz by military historians and strategists. Special attention is given to Clausewitz’s writing style. Drawing on the works of Edmund Husserl and José Ortega y Gasset, the author distinguishes two types of writing, which may be called “empty” and “vivid” understood in their ontological sense: empty writing presents the reader with the separate qualities of an object, while vivid writing points to the object in its authentic self-absence, in its distancing from all qualities and relations. Clausewitz constantly turns to vivid writing, and the article examines a profusion of examples. Discussing the scale of a victory, a topic raised by Clausewitz, the author emphasizes how much attention Clausewitz devotes to various kinds of asymmetries in warfare. For instance, even if both sides of a conflict are equally bloodied, the loss of the defeated party will always outweigh the gain of the victor. The author illustrates this thought with the example of the American Civil War. When it comes to the question of how combats are decided, the author criticizes ontological positions which favor events over objects and are unable to acknowledge that events are merely a specialized kind of object. A battle is an event, but it is first and foremost an object, which is not exhausted by its internal or external relations, and therefore deciding the outcome of combat does not depend on what transpires in the battle. In his final examination of Clausewitz’s theory of absolute war, the author gives an account of Col. John Boyd’s remarks on it. While the author is generally in agreement with the critique, he draws the conclusion that Clausewitz’s focus on the decisive battle paradoxically pushes the battle itself into the background in comparison to the consequences that follow from it.

Mark Hewitson, Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792–1820; Mark Hewitson, The People’s Wars: Histories of Violence in the German Lands, 1820–1888

Mark Hewitson, <i>Absolute War: Violence and Mass Warfare in the German Lands, 1792–1820</i>; Mark Hewitson, <i>The People’s Wars: Histories of Violence in the German Lands, 1820–1888</i>

The Clausewitzian fallacy of absolute war

ABSTRACTClausewitz was much preoccupied with the apparent contradiction between real and absolute war. Why did war in history so rarely exhibit the extremes of violence and energy implied in the pure concept of war? Clausewitz’s commentators have usually followed him in thinking that this was a genuine problem in need of a solution, but I want to question that view. I will argue that Clausewitz did not have a coherent philosophy of absolute war, and therefore the contradiction he posited between real and absolute war was equally meaningless – as, too, was his effort to resolve it by claiming that some real wars approached or even attained the absolute form of war. The real problem was not the opposition of real and absolute war, but the self-contradictory theory of absolute war.

Kempowski's War

This article reads Walter Kempowski's Das Echolot as an instance of war writing. By analyzing the connection between Kempowski's portrayal of war and the main formal devices and ethical dimensions of Das Echolot, this essay posits Kempowski's groundbreaking work as a response to the challenge to language and representation posed by the Second World War as it was fought on the Eastern Front—a battleground that saw the intertwining of absolute war and total war. Specifically, I attempt to demonstrate that Das Echolot is both a formal refraction of total war and an ethical reversal of absolute war. Kempowski's opus magnum formally internalizes the structure of total war in order to cancel out the deadly notion of the “other” implied in absolute war. Ultimately, this essay seeks to reveal the radicalism, originality, and historical importance of Kempowski's writing of war.

Complementarity in the Line of Fire: The Catalysing Effect of the International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan

if anything, the story of complementarity's catalysing effect has shown that this is not a world of endless 'complementaries' in which efforts for criminal, restorative, political and legal justice seamlessly 'complement' each other. This is a world of horrific constraint, in which the promotion of one value often compromises another. More precisely, the absolute war on impunity succeeds in achieving some justice, but also produces, shapes and legitimates injustices. This is not a moment for concluding. It is the moment for more questioning.

A randomized, controlled, double‐blind prospective trial with a Lipido‐Colloid Technology‐Nano‐OligoSaccharide Factor wound dressing in the local management of venous leg ulcers

Venous leg ulcers (VLUs) are the most prevalent chronic wounds in western countries with a heavy socioeconomic impact. Compression therapy is the etiologic treatment of VLU but until now no wound dressing has been shown to be more effective than another. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of a new dressing in the management of VLU. Adult patients presenting a noninfected VLU and receiving effective compression therapy were enrolled in this randomized, controlled, double-blind trial. The VLUs were assessed every 2 weeks for 8 weeks. The primary study outcome was the relative Wound Area Reduction (WAR, in %), and the secondary objectives were absolute WAR, healing rate, and percentage of wounds with >40% surface area reduction. One hundred eighty-seven patients were randomly allocated to treatment groups. Median WAR was 58.3% in the Lipido-Colloid Technology-Nano-OligoSaccharide Factor (TLC-NOSF) dressing group (test group) and 31.6% in the TLC dressing group (control group) (difference: -26.7%; 95% confidence interval: -38.3 to -15.1%; p = 0.002). All other efficacy outcomes were also significant in favor of the TLC-NOSF dressing group. Clinical outcomes for patients treated with the new dressing are superior to those patients treated with the TLC dressing (without NOSF compound), suggesting a strong promotion of the VLU healing process.

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (review)

Reviewed by: Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War David M. Glantz Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. By Chris Bellamy. London: Pan Macmillan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-333-78022-0. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Select bibliography. Notes and references. Index. Pp. xxxix, 813. £30.00. Chris Bellamy, in this substantive volume, has unleashed his considerable talents as a Soviet military analyst, skilled journalist, and accomplished historian to recount the often sordid but always complex and captivating history of the Soviet-German War (1941-1945), a war he aptly describes as the "most hideous land-air conflict in history." He has done so to good effect. After decades of post-war neglect caused by a near total absence of archival materials on the war, at least from the Soviet side, a state that permitted mystery and myth to dominate, this sad situation changed for the better when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Thereafter, thanks in part to the Russian Federation, which permitted the doors of its military archives to swing open, albeit slowly, and in part to a new generation of historians who were both willing and able to exploit these formerly forbidden sources, the world can finally ponder the war's immensity with some conviction that it is at long last perceiving its real causes, course, and consequences. In this respect, Bellamy's fresh single-volume history of the war is a welcome addition to other fine books written on the subject during the last ten years. Doing justice to his mentor, John Erickson, whose landmark trilogy on the Soviet High Command and wartime Red Army paved the way for historians in this field long ago, Bellamy has exploited a host of archival materials and combined them with materials from a multitude of sound books on all aspects of the war to produce an admirable synthesis describing what is known and pondering what is still unknown about the war. Most important, he has done so with the linguistic austerity and artistry of a jeweler's eye and a dry tongue-in-cheek humor that makes the book extremely readable for historian and layman alike. Bellamy's treatment of the war is conventional; a straightforward chronological narrative, primarily of the military course of the war but with necessary contextual excursions into the war's vital political, diplomatic, economic, and social dimensions. In short, his exposition displays those features that indeed made the Soviet-German War the "absolute war" he ascribes to it in the book's title. Embracing as it does most of the war's many "forgotten" facets, in every respect his narrative is fresh, comprehensive, and "cutting edge." Furthermore, his deft integration of non-military aspects of the war into an austere yet surprisingly complete narrative of the raw military struggle provides the reader with orderly understanding of what otherwise might be undue confusion. The only fault readers might find with this book is its concentration on the first two years of the war (June 1941-July 1943) at the expense of the war's final two years (August 1943- May 1945). Although this criticism is valid to some extent, the coverage in Bellamy's book is understandable, since analysis of the war based on the clarity offered by new sources has yet to extend fully to this [End Page 313] period. Indeed, this very state of archival research offers the author prospects for publication of a new edition several years hence. In the meantime, this book will likely remain one of the most comprehensive, readable, and thoroughly enjoyable books on this important subject. David M. Glantz Carlisle, Pennsylvania Copyright © 2009 The Society for Military History

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. By Chris Bellamy. New York: Random House, 2007. xxix, 813 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. $19.95, paper.

Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. By Chris Bellamy. New York: Random House, 2007. xxix, 813 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Figures. Tables. Maps. $19.95, paper.

Absolute war: Soviet Russia in the Second World War

Absolute war: Soviet Russia in the Second World War

Reading Clausewitz (review)

Reviewed by: Reading Clausewitz Stuart Kinross Reading Clausewitz. By Beatrice Heuser. London: Pimlico, 2002. ISBN 0-7126-6484-X. Select bibliography. Notes. Index. Pp. xii, 238. £12.50. The avowed purpose of Beatrice Heuser's book is to provide guidance for the reader who intends to tackle Carl von Clausewitz's On War, and also to describe the way in which his ideas have had an impact on the development of strategic theory. This is no easy task, particularly as Clausewitz died before he could revise On War to his satisfaction. Moreover, the complex and seemingly contradictory nature of Clausewitz's thought is best understood if one appreciates the milieu within which he lived, particularly the intellectual climate in which the Enlightenment gave way to the age of Romanticism. This context has been lost on many of Clausewitz's readers, and they have tended to see in selective elements of his work the confirmation of their own prejudices and concerns. As Heuser comments, many of Clausewitz's readers have looked for a telling quote when in fact he "mainly supplies philosophical reflections on the nature of war that are difficult to translate into simple, memorable prescriptions for action" (p. 12). Heuser has sensibly structured her book. First, she takes the reader through the writing of On War and its reception during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There then follow sound analyses of Clausewitz's most important ideas: the primacy of policy, the paradoxical trinity, genius, the center of gravity, friction, and the nature of defense and offense. Heuser then examines two of the most important strategic theorists of the twentieth century, Sir Julian Corbett and Mao Zedong, describing Clausewitz's impact on their thinking. Finally, there is an analysis of Clausewitz's thought as applied to nuclear strategy, the Cold War, and the strategic problems of the twenty-first century. One area in which Heuser's analysis falls short is in her interpretation of an earlier, "idealistic" Clausewitz writing about absolute war and a later, "realistic" Clausewitz writing about real war. In fact, Clausewitz's mature thought emphasized the absolute variant of war, which permits a rise to extremes in the abstract, to illustrate that war in reality has the opposite effect as it is the servant of policy. Real wars vary by degree, ranging in intensity from those of extermination to simple armed observation. Therefore, contrary to Heuser's view, the concepts of absolute war and real war are "mutually exclusive" (p. 43) in that one has no bounds while the other is constrained by political circumstance. The distinction between absolute war and real war should be clear but Heuser, like many before her, unnecessarily confuses the issue. This is unfortunate, particularly for the reader who is unfamiliar with Clausewitz. Overall, however, Beatrice Heuser has done a fine job in producing a concise, well-written book that should be read in conjunction with the work of other Clausewitzian scholars, notably Peter Paret, Christopher Bassford, Azar Gat, and Antulio Echevarria. In this way, Reading Clausewitz will help to further the reader's understanding of a very complex, but also very rewarding, subject. Stuart Kinross University of Aberdeen Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History