This chapter focuses specifically on how the works of the major strategists and theorists of war since the late nineteenth century contributed to the treatment and meaning of victory. Starting with a discussion of how ideas about total war influenced the development of victory, the chapter examines the impact of revolutionary ideologies and thinking about armored, maritime, air-power, and nuclear weapons on victory. Thus, the chapter describes how the ideas of critical strategists and theorists of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries proceeded from classical conceptions to influence the development of the modern theory and practice of victory in war. In a practical sense, these theorists have the closest analytic connection to how modern scholars and policymakers think about victory.

The transition, from the classical to the modern understanding of victory, is an intermittent and often erratic process as two core elements of how individuals thought about victory evolved during the twentieth century. The first core element is the rapid pace of technological progress that heavily influenced modern thinking on victory in the context of offensive operations and total war. Military technology is viewed increasingly as the core element for achieving increasingly higher levels of victory when the state uses progressively more destructive land-based, maritime, and air-power elements of military force to conduct total war. Technology, it seems, contributes to military capabilities that increase the scale of destruction culminating with the advent of nuclear weapons that eventually rendered strategic victory in total war both unachievable and impractical.