The First Total War

Societies implacably mobilized against each other, in conflicts ending only in unconditional surrender; large-scale conscript armies, whose titanic clashes provoke mass slaughter; the enemy utterly dehumanized, with executions of prisoners and unspeakable atrocities against civilians; territories precariously controlled by occupying armies, whose power and authority are systematically eroded by guerrilla groups; and war and military martyrdom represented as the highest of human endeavours.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, David A. Bell suggests in The First Total War, these features of modern war were not born in the World Wars of the twentieth century. Rather, their origin lies in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts of 1792-1815, which gave birth to what Carl Schmitt later described as the norm of "absolute enmity". Bell claims that it was this moment - which consecrated Europe's largest empire since the Middle Ages, and its greatest conqueror since Charlemagne - that shaped the modern understanding and practice of "total" warfare, carrying it across the murderous battlefields of the twentieth century.

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