ABSTRACT
The subject of destruction was all-conquering to such an extent that it survived the experience of the war and retained its virility in the minds of the most senior military commanders. This is attested by the verdict of the German Crown Prince:
Military genius was conspicuously absent in all the three armies during the campaign culminating with the battle of the Marne. Neither the Germans nor the allies possessed a leader sufficiently gifted to effect the complete destruction of the enemy.s
However, notwithstanding the absence of 'military genius', both the Crown Prince and a critical soldier like Freytag-Loringhoven name Schlieffen as the person capable of implementing Clausewitz's idea of destruction, since he combined the essential qualities in his personality, and his concept of Cannae constituted the living evidence of it. 6
Historical research has also failed to grasp the distorting impact of Clausewitz's principle. Gordon Craig and Walter Goerlitz, adopted
uncritically the Epigon-Paragon myth, devised by addicts of the Clausewitzian theory after the war, and thus attribute the main cause of the German army's failure to personal incompetence. In doing so they confirm the soundness of the concept of destruction.?
