Delbrück, Hans (1848-1929), German professor, military historian, and publicist. Delbrück's scholarship on society, strategy, and tactics from antiquity to modern times transformed the history of war, influenced strategic thought and practice, and signified the rise of the independent, strategic intellectual as a feature of civil-military relations. Born into the educated middle class of mid-19th-century northern Germany, Delbrück served in the Franco-Prussian war, tutored members of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and began a university career in Berlin, where he lectured on the history of war and world history.
His History of the Art of War in the Framework of Political History (1900) underscored as never before the interrelation between armies in battle and the nature of policy and society in warring states. Delbrück's method embraced a minute study of certain pivotal battles by means of the Sachkritik, taking previous accounts of engagements and measuring these against the limits of geography and military craft of the time.
Based on the theory of the dual nature of war in Clausewitz's On War, Delbrück's analysis posited strategy in two basic forms: Niederwerfungsstrategie (strategy of annihilation) and Ermattungsstrategie (strategy of attrition). During WW I Delbrück, as editor of the influential Preussische Jahrbücher, dissented from what he regarded as the false pursuit of a German strategy of Ermattungsstrategie and argued instead for a more limited strategy of an annexationist peace, an idea that he advanced once more amid the post-1918 search for the causes of German defeat.
— Donald Abenheim
