2. Clausewitz's Development of the Unified Concept of a General Friction [Gesamtbegriff Finer Allgemeinen Friktion) (1996)

This chapter and next recapitulate current scholarship concerning Schamhorst, Clausewitz, and concept of general friction. While this recapitulation does not go appreciably beyond what can be found scattered throughout Peter Paret's Clausewitz and State and related works pertaining to origins, development, conceptualization, and theoretical aspects of this concept, it is important to pull main threads of story together in one place to provide a baseline understanding of Clausewitzian on which to build. Once again, Clausewitz's earliest known use of term occurred in a 29 September 1806 letter to his future wife. Written while in field with Prussian Prince August's grenadier battalion, Clausewitz invoked Friktion to voice his growing anxiety over resistance Schamhorst (1755-1813) was encountering to any all-out, bold, or well-conceived employment of Prussia's full military potential against French under Napoleon Bonaparte. (1) As Clausewitz observed to Marie von Briihl, Prussian army at that time had three commanders-in-chief and two chiefs of staff, a situation that provoked him to lament: How much must effectiveness of a gifted man [Schamhorst] be reduced when he is constantly confronted by obstacles of convenience and tradition, when he is paralyzed by constant with opinions of others. (2) In hindsight, Clausewitz's anxiety was warranted. Prussia's defeats at twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt destroyed Prussian army created by Frederick Great (1712-1786), and, after remnants were defeated at battle ofPriedland in June 1807, led to reduction to a mere satellite of French empire of independent state that Frederick had managed to thrust into first rank of European powers. (3) When Clausewitz first used Friktion in 1806 letter to Marie, he could only guess, despite his forebodings, how campaign would actually turn out. Thus, to read this first known reference to in its actual historical context, term was introduced to refer to powerful resistance to sound decisions and effective action that had developed within Prussian army itself before outcome of war was known. Over next 6 years Clausewitz expanded this original notion, incrementally identifying other sources of vast differences that he and Schamhorst saw between theory, plans, and intentions in war and war as it actually is (eigentliche Krieg). (4) By 1811, Clausewitz's summary lecture at Berlin war college on use of detachments mentioned two distinct sources of what he termed the of whole machinery: (1) the numerous chance events, which touch everything; (2) the numerous difficulties that inhibit accurate execution of precise plans that theory tends to formulate. (5) The second source, internal resistance to precise plans, recalls type offrictional impediment in Clausewitz's 1806 letter to Marie. The first, play of chance, represents a significant expansion of original notion through addition of a second major category of friction. By April of following year, shortly before Clausewitz resigned his Prussian commission to switch sides and oppose both his king (Frederick William ID) and me French in Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia, he had pushed concept even further. In an essay Clausewitz sent to Prussian crown prince (later Frederick William IV), whom he had been tutoring in addition to his duties on war academy faculty, Clausewitz listed eight major sources of tremendous friction that makes even simplest plans and actions so difficult to execute in war: 1. Insufficient knowledge of enemy 2. Rumors (information gained by remote observation or spies) 3. Uncertainty about one's own strength and position 4. The uncertainties that cause friendly troops to tend to exaggerate their own difficulties 5. …