Perhaps the most useful section of the book is the last. Section Four, "The Experience of War," looks at four specific instances where Germany and America went to war against colonial populations or native Americans, and inquires as to what extent these limited conflicts were total war. In the process we see some of the difficulties in calling anything "total war." In all four instances, civilian populations are decimated, yet the conflict or action does not always rise to the level of total war in the mind of the author because some aspect of Chickering^Òs broader, expanding nature is missing. The American Indian fell victim not to total war, but to white cultural and economic forces (pp. 412-414). In the German wars of pacification in Southern Africa, the violence alone was insufficient to deem the conflicts "total." What distinguished these actions from total war was Germany^Òs less than total mobilization of national resources and its limited use of technologically superior weapons (pp. 430-435).
In contrast, the American suppression of the Philippine guerillas and the German punitive efforts following the Boxer Rebellion, while limited in scope, seem to display aspects of total war, even if neither possessed the expansive quality inherent in the concept. Although not "total," these conflicts at least served as military actions that anticipated total war in the future (pp. 455-56 and 474-475). Perhaps indicative of how hard it is to define total war, it is possible to take the analysis of each of these essays and apply it to the facts of the others, yielding a conclusion that the war was or was not total.