The Fog of Hindsight

: Why We Judge Generals (and Ourselves) Wrong

History is a graveyard of facts. Most people just walk past the tombstones, reading the dates and the names, nodding at the final score. Napoleon won here. Lee lost there. Simple.

But Carl von Clausewitz doesn’t let you get away with being simple.

In the fifth chapter of his second book on war, the Prussian general takes a scalpel to the way we look at the past. He calls it Kritik—Critical Analysis. It’s not about memorising dates or drawing lines on a map. It’s about the messy, blood-soaked business of understanding why things happened, and whether the men in charge actually knew what they were doing.

Most armchair generals look at a disaster and scream incompetence. They look at a victory and scream genius. Clausewitz looks at both and asks: "What did they know?"

The Anatomy of Criticism

Clausewitz isn’t interested in your opinion unless you’ve done the work. And the work is brutal. He breaks it down into three distinct intellectual labours, each heavier than the last.

First, you have the Discovery of Facts. This is the foundation. You have to strip away the myths, the propaganda, and the lies soldiers tell to save face. You need the truth of the ground. If you build your argument on a lie, the whole structure collapses.

Second, you must Trace Effects to Causes. This is the detective work. Why did the flank collapse? Was it the terrain? The morale? Or did the commander just lose his nerve? You have to link the blood on the grass to the order given in the tent.

Third, and this is where the knife goes in, is the Investigation of Means. This is criticism proper. You judge the commander. Did he use the right tool for the job? Given what he had—the tired men, the wet powder, the dying light—did he make the right call?

The Trap of the Result

Here is where Clausewitz gets cynical, and rightly so. He warns us against the most common sin in history: judging a decision by its outcome.

We love to do this. It’s easy. If a general takes a gamble and wins, he’s a hero. If he takes the exact same gamble and the wind changes, he’s a fool. Clausewitz calls this out for what it is: intellectual laziness.

A sound plan can fail because a courier took a bullet. A terrible plan can succeed because the enemy commander had a stomach ache. If you only look at the scoreboard, you learn nothing. You have to look at the process. You have to stand in the commander’s boots, in the mud, with the smoke in your eyes, and ask: "What could he actually see?"

This is the Fog of War. The critic sits in a warm room with a library of books and 20/20 hindsight. The commander stood in the chaos with partial intelligence and the weight of thousands of lives on his shoulders. To judge him fairly, you have to forget what you know. You have to limit your view to what he saw.

Theory is a Guide, Not a Cage

Clausewitz had no patience for the academics of his day who tried to turn war into algebra. He hated the jargon. He hated the systems that promised victory if you just followed the steps.

Theory, he argued, is meant to educate the mind, not shackle it. It’s a guide. It lights the path, but it doesn’t walk it for you. If you’re using technical terms to sound smart, you’re failing. True criticism, like true command, should be plain, logical, and rooted in reality.

The Verdict

So, what is the point of all this digging? Why bother dragging up the ghosts?

Because Critical Analysis is the bridge. It’s the only way to turn the raw, bloody data of the past into a lesson for the future. It stops us from worshipping luck and condemning bad luck. It forces us to be honest.

When we look back—whether at a war, a business failure, or a wreck of a personal decision—we have to resist the urge to just look at the result. We have to look at the means. We have to respect the fog.

History isn’t just a list of what happened. It’s a study of how we deal with the chaos. And if you’re going to judge the man in the arena, you’d better be willing to step into the mud with him.

So, if you are going to drag up the ghosts of the past to judge them, do it with honour. Forget the result, respect the fog, and remember: history isn’t just a list of what happened, it is a study of how men stood tall when they couldn’t see a damned thing.

Citations

Clausewitz, Carl von. On War. Book 2, Chapter 5.

Note: As this article is a synthesis of a primary text (Clausewitz) and your specific writing style notes, external web citations for statistics or news are not applicable.

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