"If one weighs his influence and his emphasis, one might describe him historically as the Mahdi of mass and mutual massacre. For he was the source of the doctrine of "absolute war", the fight to a finish theory which, beginning with the argument that "war is only a continuation of state policy by other means", ended by making policy the slave of strategy."
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B. H. Liddell Hart, The Ghost of Napoleon (1933), p. 120
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz
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Carl von Clausewitz
1780 – 1831
preußischer General und Militärtheoretiker
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