"what has been preserved in print was but the tip of the iceberg of a largely spoken culture."
This was the exact conclusion I came to when researching the German use of "operativ"—it was so much a spoken culture that Freytag-Loringhoven felt compelled to explain the shift in the usage of the word "strategy" by the General Staff.
Interesting that in both cases, German officers were responding to Clausewitz' abstractions: by redefining them (in the case of Schwerpunkt) or by inventing a new term to replace one that he himself had redefined ("operativ" instead of "strategy").
"what has been preserved in print was but the tip of the iceberg of a largely spoken culture."
This was the exact conclusion I came to when researching the German use of "operativ"—it was so much a spoken culture that Freytag-Loringhoven felt compelled to explain the shift in the usage of the word "strategy" by the General Staff.
Interesting that in both cases, German officers were responding to Clausewitz' abstractions: by redefining them (in the case of Schwerpunkt) or by inventing a new term to replace one that he himself had redefined ("operativ" instead of "strategy").