On the Road to Total War is a collection of essays, originally presented at a conference of the same title, that attempts to trace the roots and development of total industrialized warfare (which terrorizes citizens and soldiers alike). Scholars from the United States, Germany, France, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Britain focus on both the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects and the impact on local society of the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification. Certain social forces, such as mass mobilization of people and resources and growing nationalism, led to this totalization of war in industrialized nations in the nineteenth century.

On the Road to Total War is a collection of essays that attempts to trace the roots and development of total industrialized warfare (which terrorizes citizens and soliders alike). International scholars focus on the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects and on the societal impacts of the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification. Mass mobilization of people and resources and growing nationalism led to this totalization of war in nineteenth-century industrialized nations.