Clausewitz and the First World War

English-language authors have blamed Clausewitz twice over for his part in the First World War. Liddell Hart attributed to him a doctrine of “absolute war,” embraced by European general staffs and emulated by the British. More recent scholars have seen the war as lacking a political rationale and so contradicting what is today the best-known of the nostrums of On War. But that was not the case before 1914, when Clausewitz’s text was interpreted in different but equally valid lights. This article analyses how On War was read by the principal belligerents both during the war and in its immediate aftermath.