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Ivan Stanislavovic Bloch (1836 - 1902) (aka Johann von Bloch, Jean de Bloch, Ivan Bliokh) was a Polish banker and railway financier who devoted his private life to the study of modern industrial warfare. He was intrigued by the devastating victory of Prussia/Germany over France in 1870, which suggested to him that the solution of diplomatic problems by warfare had become obsolete in Europe. He published his six volume master work, La Guerre Future, popularized in translation as Is War Now Impossible?, in Paris in 1898. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (500x616, 317 KB) Photograph of a pen&ink sketch of Mr. ...
1836 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...
Warsaw (Polish: Warszawa, see also other names, in full The Capital City of Warsaw, Polish: Miasto Stołeczne Warszawa) is the capital of Poland and its largest city. ...
1902 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...
1836 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...
1902 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...
For other uses, see Bank (disambiguation). ...
For other uses of War, see War (disambiguation). ...
The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918 The word Prussia (German: Preußen or Preussen, Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian: Prūsai, Latin: Borussia) has had various (often contradictory) meanings: The land of the Baltic Prussians (in what is now parts of southern Lithuania, the Kaliningrad exclave of...
1870 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...
The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ...
1898 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ...
Contribution to theory Bloch's detailed analysis of modern warfare, its tactical, strategic and political implications, was widely read in Europe. Bloch's main argument was that: Tactics is the collective name for methods of winning a small-scale conflict, performing an optimization, etc. ...
A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. ...
Politics is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings. ...
- New arms technology (e.g. smokeless gunpowder, improved rifle design, Maxims) had rendered maneuvers over open ground, such as bayonet and cavalry charges, obsolete. Bloch concluded that a war between the Great powers would be a war of entrenchment and that rapid attacks and decisive victories were likewise a thing of the past. He was able to calculate that entrenched men would enjoy a fourfold advantage over infantry advancing across open ground.
- Industrial societies would have to settle the resultant stalemate by committing armies numbering in the millions, as opposed to the tens of thousands of preceding wars. An enormous battlefront would develop. A war of this type could not be resolved quickly.
- The war would become a duel of industrial might, a matter of total economic attrition. Severe economic and social dislocations would result in the imminent risk of famine, disease, the "break-up of the whole social organization" and revolutions from below.
Gunpowder is a substance which burns very rapidly and is used as a propellant in firearms, specifically either black powder or smokeless powder. ...
A rifle is any long gun which has a rifled barrel. ...
An early Maxim gun in operation with the Royal Navy The Maxim gun was the first self-acting machine gun. ...
The US Marine Corps OKC-3S bayonet From right to left: a carbine, a straight infantry officer sabre, a short curved infantry sabre (briquet), two bayonets. ...
Italian cavalry officers practice their horsemanship in 1904 outside Rome. ...
In the context of international relations and diplomacy, power (sometimes clarified as international power, national power, or state power) is the ability of one state to influence or control other states. ...
Trench warfare is a form of war in which both opposing armies have static lines of fortifications dug into the ground, facing each other. ...
This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
Stalemate is a term that originated in chess. ...
A military front is an area in which an army or nation expects to do most of its fighting. ...
This page is a candidate to be moved to Wiktionary. ...
A famine is a phenomenon in which a large percentage of the population of a region or country are undernourished and death by starvation becomes increasingly common. ...
Look up Revolution in Wiktionary, the free dictionary This article is about revolution in the sense of a drastic change. ...
Influence Bloch attended the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899, possibly at the invitation of Tsar Nicholas II, and distributed copies of his work to delegates from the diplomatic missions of 26 states, to little avail. The British publicist WT Stead also worked to spread Bloch's insights. In each particular, Bloch's theoretical research was rejected or ignored. To the English readers of The Contemporary Review, Bloch wrote in 1901: The Hague Conventions were international treaties negotiated at the First and Second Peace Conferences at The Hague, Netherlands in 1899 and 1907, respectively, and were, along with the Geneva Conventions, among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the nascent body of international law. ...
1899 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ...
Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia Nicholas II of Russia ( 18 May 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last crowned Emperor of Russia. ...
- Having busied myself for over fourteen years with the study of war in all its phases and aspects, I am astonished to find that the remarkable evolution which is rapidly turning the sword into a ploughshare has passed almost unnoticed even by the professional watchmen who are paid to keep a sharp look-out. In my work on the war of the future I endeavoured to draw a picture of this interesting process. But writing for specialists, I was compelled to enter largely into details, the analysis of which ran into 3,084 pages. The facts which are there garnered together, and the consequences which flow from them, run too strongly counter to the vested interests of the most powerful class of the community to admit of their being immediately embodied in measures of reform. And this I foresaw from the first. What I could not foresee was the stubbornness which not only recoiled from taking action but set itself to twist and distort the facts. Patriotism is highly respectable, but it is dangerous to identify it with the interests of a class. The steadfastness with which the military caste clings to the memory of a state of things which has already passed away is pathetic and honourable. Unfortunately it is also costly and dangerous. Therefore I venture now to appeal to the British masses, whose vital interests are at stake and whose verdict must be final.
Europe's patriots were unmoved. French cavalry and British infantry commanders only learned Bloch's lessons by a process of trial and error once Bloch's impossible war, World War I had begun. The Russian and German monarchies proved equally incapable of assimilating Bloch's cautionary words concerning revolution, paying the price with summary execution and exile, respectively. Trial and error is a method for obtaining knowledge, both propositional knowledge and know-how. ...
World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas. ...
Revolutionaries at machine gun posts, Berlin, November 1918 The German Revolution is a series of events that occurred in 1918-1919, culminating in the overthrow of the Kaiser and the establishment of a democratic republic. ...
Bloch's foresight is somewhat qualified by what proved an underestimation of the tactical and strategic significance of indirect (eg, artillery) fire, and his incapacity to foresee the development of the armoured tank and military aircraft. Neither oversight was significant enough to undermine his broadest observations, however. Historically, artillery refers to any engine used for the discharge of projectiles during war. ...
Icarus and Daedalus Humanitys desire to fly probably dates back to the first time prehistoric man observed birds. ...
An International Museum of War and Peace was established at Lucerne, Switzerland, in Bloch's name in 1902. According to peacemuseums.org [1], it was destroyed in one of the subsequent world wars, despite Switzerland's neutrality. Location within Switzerland View of the city from Lake Lucerne Another view across Lake Lucerne The Lion Monument Lucerne (German: Luzern) is a city in Central Switzerland with a population of 60,274 (December 31, 2003), capital of the Canton of Lucerne. ...
Role in contemporary theory Bloch survived long enough after publishing his theory to turn his analytical talents to investigating the institutional barriers which prevented the theory's adoption by the military establishment. He appears to have concluded that the military had to be sidestepped, by a more direct appeal to voters.
Contemporary theory treats Bloch as the Clausewitz of the early 1900s. One recent review in the journal War in History [2] is especially interested to study the interaction between Bloch's theory and the military professionals of the time. In short, it finds that they tended to dismiss Bloch, on the basis that, while his 'maths' might be correct, his overall message ran the risk of being bad for morale. This inability for 'amateur' criticism to be assimilated by professionals is found to offer insight into 21st century military thought. Carl Phillip Gottlieb von Clausewitz (June 1, 1780 _ November 16, 1831) was a Prussian military thinker. ...
Morale is a term for the capacity of people to maintain belief in an institution or a goal. ...
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