Emnet tar for seg endringer i konfliktmønstre innenfor det europeiske statssystemet fra det gamle regimets begrensede kabinettskriger til det 20. århundrets altomfattende oppgjør mellom uforenlige samfunnssystemer. Tilnærmingen til temaet tar utgangspunkt i påstanden om at det var demokratiseringen i kjølvannet av den franske revolusjonen som drev frem totaliseringen av krigen. Undervisningen vil forsøke å modifisere denne grunntesen ved å trekke inn teknologiske, økonomiske, ideologiske og andre forklaringer. Den vil konsentrere seg om karakteristiske trekk ved krigføring, militær tenkning, folkerett og krigsplaner under de forskjellige stadiene i utviklingen - fra kabinettskrigen, gjennom folkekrigen til den industrialiserte folkekrigen. For det 20. århundrets vedkommende vil ikke minst sammenhengen mellom den totale krigen og de to totalitære samfunnsformasjonene nazismen og kommunismen bli drøftet. Pensum er særlig hentet fra bidragene til en ti år lang serie med internasjonale konferanser om den totale krigens historie.
Grunnpensum
Rolf Hobson: Krig og strategisk tenkning i Europa 1500-1945. Samfunnsendring – statssystem – militærteori (Oslo 2005): kapitlene IV (”Demokratisering, folkekrig og restaurasjon, 1790-1850”), V (”Industrialisert folkekekrig, internasjonalt anarki og den lange freden, 1850-1914 ”) og VI (”Den totale krigen”, 1914-1945), s. 131-329 (200 sider)
* Roger Chickering: ”Total War. The Use and Abuse of a Concept”, i Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): Anticipating Total War. The German and American Experiences, 1871-1914 (Cambridge 1999), s.13-28 (15 sider)
* Talbot Imlay: "Total War", i Journal of Strategic Studies 30 (3/2007), s.547-70.
Det gamle regimets og revolusjonens krigføring
Jeremy Black: European Warfare, 1660-1815 (London 1994): kapitlene 3 (“Decisiveness”) og 7 (“Warfare in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Context 1792-1815”), s.67-86, 168-209 (60 sider)
Industrialiseringens betydning for internasjonal politik og krigføring på 1800-tallet
William H. McNeill: The pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago 1982): kapitlene 7 (“The Initial Industrialization of War, 1840-84”) og 8 (“Intensified Military-Industrial Interaction, 1884-1914”), s.223-307 (85 sider)
* Paul M. Kennedy: “Mahan versus Mackinder: Two Interpretations of British Sea Power”, in d.s.: Strategy and Diplomacy 1870-1945 (London 1983), s.41-86 (45 sider)
* Avner Offer: The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford 1989): kapitlene 16 (“Naval Mercantilism”) og 19 (”Morality and Admiralty: ’Jacky’ Fisher, Economic Warfare and International Law”), s.233-43, 270-84 (25 sider)
1800-tallets kriger
Mark E. Neely Jr.: „Was the Civil War a Total War?“, i Stig Förster & Jörg Nagler (red.): On the Road to Total War. The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (Cambridge 1997), s.29-52 (24 sider)
Robert Tombs: “The Wars against Paris”, i Stig Förster & Jörg Nagler (red.): On the Road to Total War. The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (Cambridge 1997), s.541-64 (24 sider)
Stéphan Audoin-Rouzeau: “French Public Opinion in 1870-71 and the Emergence of Total War”, i Stig Förster & Jörg Nagler (red.): On the Road to Total War. The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (Cambridge 1997), s.393-413 (20 sider)
* Dennis E. Showalter: “Total War for Limited Objectives: An Interpretation of German Grand Strategy”, in Paul M. Kennedy (red.): Grand Strategies in War and Peace (New Haven 1991), s.105-23 (19 sider)
* Stig Förster: “Facing ‘People’s War’: Moltke the Elder and Germany’s Military Options after 1871, i Journal of Strategic Studies 10 (1987), s.209-30 (22 sider)
Første verdenskrig
Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau & Annette Becker: 1914-1918: Understanding the Great War (New York 2002): del I (“Violence”), s.24-104 (80 sider)
Dennis E. Showalter: ”Mass Warfare and the Impact of Technology”, i Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): Great War, Total War. Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Cambridge 2000), s.73-93 (20 sider)
Rolf-Dieter Müller: “Total War as a Result of New Weapons? The Use of Chemical Agents in World War I”, i Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): Great War, Total War. Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Cambridge 2000), s.95-112 (18 sider)
John Horne & Alan Kramer: “War Between Soldiers and Enemy Civilians, 1914-1915”, i Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): Great War, Total War. Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Cambridge 2000), s.153-68 (25 sider)
Richard Bessel: “Mobilizing German Society for War”, in Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): Great War, Total War. Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Cambridge 2000), s.437-52 (15 sider)
* Omer Bartov: “The European Imagination in the Age of Total War”, i d.s.: Murder in Our Midst. The Holocaust, Industrial Killing and Representation (Oxford 1997), s.33-50 (18 sider)
Mellomkrigstiden, 1919-1939
Roger Chickering: “Sore Loser: Ludendorff’s Total War”, i Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): The Shadows of Total War. Europe, East Asia and the United States, 1919-1939 (Cambridge 2003), s.151-78 (27 sider)
Wilhelm Deist: “Blitzkrieg or Total War? War Preparations in Nazi Germany, i Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): The Shadows of Total War. Europe, East Asia and the United States, 1919-1939 (Cambridge 2003), s.271-84 (14 sider)
Hans-Heinrich Nolte: “Stalinism as Total Social War”, i Roger Chickering & Stig Förster (red.): The Shadows of Total War. Europe, East Asia and the United States, 1919-1939 (Cambridge 2003), s.295-312 (18 sider)
Richard Overy: The Dictators. Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia (London 2004): kapitel 11 (“Military Superpowers”), s.441-82 (40 sider)
Annen verdenskrig
Mark Mazower: Dark Continent. Europe’s Twentieth Century (London 1999): kapittel 5 (“Hitler’s New Order”), s.141-84 (44 sider)
Jill Stephenson: “The home front in ‘total war’: women in Germany and Britain in the Second World War”, i Roger Chickering, Stig Förster & Bernd Greiner (red.): A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction (Cambridge 2004), s.207-32 (25 sider)
John Barber: “Women in the Soviet War Effort”, i Roger Chickering, Stig Förster & Bernd Greiner (red.): A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction (Cambridge 2004), s.233-44 (12 sider)
Mark Harrison: “The USSR and total war. Why didn’t the Soviet economy collapse in 1942?”, i Roger Chickering, Stig Förster & Bernd Greiner (red.): A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction (Cambridge 2004), s.137-56 (20 sider)
Stephen Broadberry & Peter Howlett: “Blood, sweat, and tears: British mobilization for World War II”, i Roger Chickering, Stig Förster & Bernd Greiner (red.): A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction (Cambridge 2004), s.157-77 (20 sider)
Richard Overy: “Allied Bombing and the Destruction of German Cities” i Roger Chickering, Stig Förster & Bernd Greiner (red.): A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction (Cambridge 2004), s.277-96 (20 sider)
* Omer Bartov: “From Blitzkrieg to total war: controversial links between image and reality”, in Ian Kershaw & Moshe Lewin (red.): Stalinism and Nazism. Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge 1997), s.158-84 (26 sider)
Stig Förster & Myriam Gessler: “The ultimate horror: reflections on total war and genocide”, i Roger Chickering, Stig Förster & Bernd Greiner (red.): A World at Total War. Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction (Cambridge 2004), s.53-70 (18 sider)
* Robert Gellately: “The Third Reich, the Holocaust, and Visions of Serial Genocide”, in Robert Gellately & Ben Kiernan (red.): The Specter of genocide. Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge 2003), s.241-63 (23 sider)