Total War

10 Key excerpts on "Total War"

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  Warfare in the Twentieth Century

  Theory and Practice

  • Colin McInnes, G. D. Sheffield, Colin McInnes, G. D. Sheffield(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1

  Total War

  Ian F. W. Beckett

  The historiography of Total War

  In the last twenty years, historians have come increasingly to recognize the often pivotal role played by war and conflict in historical developments. In the process, the interpretation and understanding of the impact of war upon states, societies and individuals have been transformed. In particular, the concept of ‘Total War’, as applied to the two world wars of the twentieth century, has become a familiar one and a matter for modern historiographical debate. Generally, the term ‘Total War’ is used by historians not only to describe the nature of the world wars but also to differentiate such wars from other conflicts. The study of Total War within the context of war studies or studies of war and society is largely a product of the 1960s, but the term itself is older. Ludendorff appears to have used the term first in his memoirs, published in 1919, but it was also employed in a ritualistic fashion during the Second World War. Josef Goebbels, for example, threatened the Western Allies with ‘Total War’ in a celebrated speech in February 1943 and was himself appointed Reich Plenipotentiary for the Mobilization of Total War in July 1944; Winston Churchill also used the phrase in an address to the United States Congress in May 1943. Now, the term has become almost synonymous with the concept of war as a catalyst of far-reaching social change, and it is in precisely that sense that Total War is a subject of continuing historical debate.

  The American scholar, J. U. Nef, whose War and Human Progress was published in 1950,1 may stand perhaps as representative of an earlier period of historiography, when war was regarded as having a purely negative impact, in so far as it was at all relevant to historical development. However, there were other scholars in the 1950s whose work was suggestive of the future approach to the question of war and social change. Richard Titmuss made a connection in 1950 between the two in his volume, Problems of Social Policy, for the British official history of the Second World War2 while Stanislas Andrzejewski offered the ‘military participation ratio’ in 1954,3 which postulated a firm correlation between the extent of wartime participation by society in the war effort and the amount of subsequent levelling of social inequalities. The English historian, G. N. Clark, also produced during the 1950s a pioneering study of war and society in the seventeenth century,4 but the real broadening of historical perspectives with regard to what became known as war studies came in the following decade. A comparison of Michael Howard’s classic military history of the Franco-Prussian War, published in 1961,5 with his War in European History 6

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  World War I

  A Short History

  • Tammy M. Proctor(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  The Total War (1935). Ludendorff, of Tannenberg fame, described World War I in hindsight, but it is important to remember that the concept of Total War he explained was designed for future use. Looking back, after almost two decades, on Germany’s defeat in World War I, Ludendorff argued that Clausewitz’s ideas about war were outdated and obsolete. Instead, World War I had started a process that would culminate in a successful war of the future, namely one in which a nation’s military would wage war on the total society of its opponent. Total War relied on annihilation and extermination of the enemy population for total victory to be achieved. Every citizen of the enemy nation was a target in this conception of war, and every resource that could be mobilized for the war effort should be activated. Therefore, in Ludendorff’s description, Total War meant turning all the nation’s peoples, industries, political mechanisms, armed forces, and land into a huge military camp. Only when that process had been completed would the mass national effort be launched against every man, woman, and child in the enemy nation.

  Ludendorff’s term “Total War” became the focus of scholarly debate in the period after World War II, a conflict that seemed to fit Ludendorff’s discussion. Historians in this debate defined Total War in a variety of ways as they worked with the concept. First, Total War could mean state control of society for the purpose of waging war, and often total mobilization of humans and resources becomes a stated goal. Second, Total War could describe a state’s war aims, which might range from unconditional surrender to total destruction of an enemy. Finally, Total War sometimes is used to outline a state’s principles of war, typically violations of shared conventions of what is considered a “just” or “moral” war. Taken together, these features of Total War suggest a conflict that breaks the boundaries of past behavior and that encompasses the majority of people in a state. In other words, Total War refers to a “radicalization of warfare” and a “complete mobilization” of resources.

  Was World War I such a war? Did the nation‐states of 1914 to 1918 effectively mobilize all their people and resources then pursue policies and strategies that ruthlessly targeted enemy populations? The answer is a qualified one. States employed strategies of Total War throughout the period from 1914 to 1918 and indeed in the conflicts that followed, but a truly Total War remained an impossibility for most of the nations. To truly mobilize all people and resources required a measure of organization and funding that was difficult to attain. The rest of the chapter will look at the ways in which war assumed the trappings of a total mobilization of people and resources, a “Total War” mentality, while also outlining the obstacles and limitations of this concept.

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  The Literature of Absolute War

  Transnationalism and World War II

  • Nil Santiáñez(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Generally speaking, “Total War” designates, in the works of Daudet and Ludendorff, the mobilization of entire societies, which are set in motion so as to participate, one way or another, in the war effort. They conceive of Total War as the involvement of all adult citizens, social organizations, institutions, the cultural field, the economic system, and political life in the war; the government is in charge of orchestrating this total mobiliza- tion – a notion that would be defined by Ernst Ju ¨nger in a seminal essay published in  titled “Die totale Mobilmachung” (Total Mobilization). In the same way that absolute enmity is a key element in the configuration of absolute war, total mobilization plays a defining role in Total War. In his essay, Ju ¨nger points out that the times are long gone in which it sufficed to muster a ,-man army under professional leadership to  Introduction: Concepts wage war. What Ju ¨nger calls “partial mobilization” belongs to the essence of monarchy.  Throughout the nineteenth century the “spirit of progress” penetrated the “genius of war” (, –). Monarchy “oversteps its bounds” as soon as it has to include the forces of democracy in preparing for war (–). This is something that Clausewitz had clearly argued in Vom Kriege: after the French Revolution, wars will not be fought for the crown, but for the nation; they will be the affair of all the citizens of a country – a fact that would radically transform the way of waging war.  Ju ¨nger echoes this idea and concludes that “the image of war as armed conflict merges into the more extended image of a gigantic labor process” (). Thus, in addition to the armies that clash on the battlefield, there are the “modern armies of commerce and transport, foodstuffs, the man- ufacture of armaments – the army of labor in general” ().

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  Palgrave Advances in Modern Military History

  • Matthew Hughes, W. Philpott(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Beyond the theoretical, the nature and practical implications of the new form of totalitarian war for armed forces and the societies from which they are sprung has been the focus of much scholarship. Nevertheless, the intense scrutiny of industrial-age warfare has generated more heat than light. The most thorough academic investigation of the phenomenon to date - a series of conferences organized under the auspices of the German Historical Institute in Washington DC, and subsequently published under the editorship of Roger Chickering and Stig Fi:irster 6 - noted during the course of their investigations: Participants found it hard to agree on the dimensions of Total War, the origins of the phenomenon, the conflicts that might lay claim to the label, and whether Total War ever fully materialised. In fact, doubts have lingered over whether the concept of Total War has occasioned more confusion than insight and ought to be abandoned. 7 This plaint reinforces the paradigm that historical concepts are better defined and judged by their range and complexity than their simplicity. In part, the difficulty lies in the great range of phenomena encompassed by nineteenth- and twentieth-century war, especially the blurring of the distinction between armed forces and societies, fighting and home fronts. The solution, Chickering and Forster have posited, taking their cue from Keith Neilson, lies in 'total history': that the history of war should be written by more than specialist military historians. 8 the elements of Total War Any attempt to define and assess Total War as a concept has to reconcile a philosophical conception with actual practice. Before the 'Total War' of the twentieth century there was 'absolute war', Clausewitz's conception of the supreme form which war would take if unrestrained by his famous 'frictions':

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  The New Economic Warfare

  • Antonín Basch(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  HAPTER II WAR ECONOMY

  Economic Impact of Total War

  T HE economic impact of Total War between great nations with a developed national economy is of such proportions and intensity as to interfere with all items of economic life. For it transforms peace economy into war economy, of which the one prevailing purpose is support of actual military warfare. Economic forces and adjustments have steadily assumed a more important role in the great wars of the twentieth century. The nature of modern Total War has minimized the distinction between the fighting forces and civilian population.1

  The single task of the war economy takes both a constructive and a destructive form. It involves, on the constructive side, supplying the fighting forces with the maximum of goods and services in the shortest possible time. In this effort it must, to the fullest possible degree, preserve justice in the distribution of sacrifices and avoid economic dislocation and disruptions which may impede the post-war reconstruction. In its destructive phase—which is economic warfare proper—it must weaken and damage as much as possible the potential and active economic strength of the enemy. It is obvious then that economic considerations such as the profit motive, competition, market price laws, and private economic sovereignty must be subordinated to the nation’s primary aim.

  1 “Whether fighting, working, or contributing capital, everyone has to bring forward every bit of reserve to help the nation toward victory.” Carl Joachim Friedrich, “Totalitarian War,” in Plan Age (May 1940), p. 162.

  Within the limits set by the available human and material resources, the dimensions of the efforts and sacrifices which the nation must make are dictated by the intensity of the aggressor’s war effort. In this relationship the factors of time and of preparedness are of great importance. The essential structure of war economy is the same in totalitarian and in democratic countries, and inherent in all are certain common principles of function. In the modern war economy we must part with traditional monetary conceptions and consider the terms of real economy. Such procedure makes more clear the importance of the war economy’s structure and operation.

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  War Studies Reader

  From the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day and Beyond

  • Gary Sheffield(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  47 3 General William T. Sherman and Total War john bennett walters Within recent years the term ‘‘Total War” has been so definitely accepted as a part of the everyday vocabulary that there is danger of losing sight of the fact that the concept has not always prevailed in its twentieth-century form. In a measure, of course, all wars have involved more than the clash between armed forces, but with the development of the modern state war became an instrument of national policy waged by specially organized units, either recruits or mercenaries, according to more or less generally recognized rules. By the nineteenth century the laws of land warfare, established by long usage, had begun to take form as a definite body of international jurisprudence, violations of which were subject to diplomatic pro-test and to reprisal. Prominent among the problems which received cognizance in the course of this development were those dealing with the status and the rights of that part of the population of a bel-ligerent state who did not participate in the hostilities. Although effective sanction was not always present, it was generally under-stood that the noncombatant or civilian population should be free from all violence or constraint other than that required by military necessity. In the case of the American Civil War, for example, the Federal government officially recognized the distinction between combatants and noncombatants in the Confederacy by incorporat-ing in its famous “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field” (General Orders No. 100) specific provi-sions concerning the treatment of the civilian population in the zones

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  Hitler's Wehrmacht, 1935–1945

  • Rolf-Dieter Müller, Janice W. Ancker(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • The University Press of Kentucky

    (Publisher)

  6

  Total War and the War of Annihilation

  The Changed Image of War

  The First World War is commonly viewed as the earliest manifestation of Total War; the Second World War, as Total War at its peak. The term “Total War” refers to an all-out effort for the sake of war, that is, an entire society’s mobilization for war to the point of exhaustion. It means eliminating the boundaries of political war objectives, which carries the potential to destroy entire countries and populations. It means defining the war in ideological terms, dehumanizing the conduct of war, and using modern technology and science for military purposes.

  The conduct of Total War from 1914 to 1918 acknowledged certain boundaries and, to some extent, respected traditional conventions and issues. The populations of some major powers were so overextended by the war that their social and political structures became dysfunctional, revolution occurred, and they did not survive the war. After 1918, traumatized by the industrialized character of the war—with its mass battles of modern armies of millions—some countries searched for new restrictions on war in keeping with international law. Others searched for the means and strategies to prevent the escalation of a future war. In Germany, many experts were convinced that any future war would necessarily lead to Total War for Germany—that is, to a “fight for existence” as a people—for which they had to prepare themselves intensively. Hitler and his regime drew a large portion of their political ideology from this belief.

  The Second World War did not begin as a Total War, although the entire world had expected it to. Only under the pressure of defeats and serious threats did the modern industrial societies turn to the tasks of equipping themselves for war, militarizing their civilian societies to the necessary degree, and preparing them for possible sacrifices. Contrary to earlier assumptions, the democracies proved they were not at all inferior to the totalitarian dictatorships. Moreover, they were in a better position to channel their energies toward the war and, once the battles were over, to quickly direct these energies back onto civilian paths. This was due to their ability to respond positively to pressure from below, to give in to demands for the inclusion of the “masses,” and to respond to the postwar expectations of soldiers and citizens. For Stalin and Hitler, in contrast, the war was a means to strengthen their dictatorships and transform society for the purpose of creating and selecting a “new” kind of human being.

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  War and Society Volume 1

  A Yearbook of Military History

  • Brian Bond, Ian Roy(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Total War in the Twentieth Century: Participation and Consensus in the Second World War Michael Howard

  In 1925 the University of London sponsored a series of lectures by distinguished civil and military leaders with the title The Study of War for Statesmen and Citizens. 1 This course was designed to bring home to the general public the extent to which war had become a matter, not simply for military specialists, but for society as a whole. The experience of what was still known as The Great War had shown that in the twentieth century wars had to be fought with the full resources of the entire community. Even in the midst of the profoundest peace societies thus had to be conscious of the possible demands which a future war might make on those resources and be prepared to meet them. The emphasis therefore was on the measures which the community might have to adopt, the sacrifices it might have to make, the dangers it might have to undergo, if war were ever to occur again. But as yet there was no serious academic study of the way in which society itself would be transformed, and indeed had been transformed, by the demands of Total War. The material for such a study had existed, at least for Great Britain, in the remarkable collection of documents collected and housed by Miss Caroline Playne in the University of London Library, which provided the basis for her own pioneer studies.2 For other nations monographs of uneven quality had been produced under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.3 But none of this was yet made the basis for any sustained or coherent scholarly examination.

  The Second World War awoke a new interest in the relationship between war and social change. Not only did it accelerate, within all the societies involved, the processes of change catalysed by the Great War, but it brought social involvement in belligerent activity to a new level of intensity by eliminating the distinction between ‘front line’ and ‘base’. This distinction had characterised not only the 1914-18 war but the great majority of wars in Europe since the seventeenth century. During the First World War heavy and prolonged pressures had been brought on civilian populations to find vast and continuous resources of men and material for the Front – a word which itself became heavy with sombre meaning – and these pressures were in themselves highly catalytic of social change.4 But the pressures arising from a situation in which the Front was everywhere , whether because of air bombardment as in Britain, Germany and Japan, or because of invasion and occupation as in continental Europe and the Soviet Union, were of a different order of magnitude altogether. It has taken us a generation to get these pressures into perspective and perhaps we have not done so yet. Certainly the experience made it difficult for anyone involved in them to maintain the serene assumption of the Enlightenment that war had not been a major factor in social development but a barbarous aberration which man had outgrown. It also made it difficult to believe, however wrongly and pessimistically, that it would not in some form or another continue to be so.5

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  Innocent Civilians

  The Morality of Killing in War

  • C. McKeogh(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  7 Involvement and Total War And if you don’t care who you kill, why should you care who you save? John Le Carre 1 With the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1792–1815, Europe was plunged into the era of Total War. These wars between France under Napoleon and a series of European coalitions were a marked break from the limited wars between small armies of professional sol- diers that had been characteristic of the eighteenth century. There was a broadening of war in all its elements: the combatants, the tar- gets, the victims, the weapons, the aims and the battle plans. Small armies of volunteers gave way to mass armies of conscripts; techno- logical advances yielded more efficient weapons which the industrial revolution supplied in vast quantities; and nationalism produced an ideological fervour not seen in Europe since the wars of religion. It was a shortage of troops to fight the Revolution’s enemies that led Robespierre, on 20 February 1793, to introduce mass compulsory conscription. The levée en masse was born as all able-bodied males between 18 and 40 years old were declared eligible for military service. That war was to be total in national effort and popular participation was clear from the law passed by the French National Convention on 23 August 1793: The young shall fight; married men shall forge weapons and trans- port supplies; women will make tents and clothes and will serve in the hospitals; the children will make up old linen into lint; the 123 old men will have themselves carried into the public square to rouse the courage of the fighting men, to preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic. 2 Using the mass army made available to him by Robespierre’s innova- tion, Napoleon became the master of the strategy of annihilation, exploiting to the full the superior numbers, mobility and patriotic fervour of his forces. 3 The aim of Napoleonic warfare became the total annihilation of the enemy.

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  War in Europe

  1450 to the Present

  • Jeremy Black(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER SIX The Challenges of Total War and Ideology, 1900–50 No matter how accustomed we were to the cannonade’s rumble, a storm like this rattled our brains, burrowed into our skulls, pressed down upon our chests with a pervasive anguish … more cannon shots were fired in one night than in a whole campaign of Napoleon’s. CORPORAL LOUIS BARTHAS, NIGHT OF 31 OCTOBER–1 NOVEMBER 1916 ABOUT ANGLO–FRENCH BOMBARDMENT ON THE SOMME. 1 The world wars, in both their course and their consequences, led to a massive strengthening of the practical and ideological dimensions of state military systems. There was a fundamental extension of the power of states, an unprecedented mobilization of national resources and the development and application of the all-encompassing idea of the Home Front. Focused on present needs and on future challenges, these processes also entailed a presentation of the past. Alongside the cult of the nation in history, the concept of military history as inevitably leading towards Total War was pushed hard. Nationalism and Total War were seen as mutually supporting. The change in this period in the international situation within Europe, and in Europe’s place in the world, were both readily apparent. Each issue involved a great power, which underlined the extent to which European military history always involved an interaction with non-European powers, however difficult the definition of Europe might be. The First World War (1914–18) began with the European powers in control, not only of their own continent but also, through formal or informal empire, of much of the world. Russia was one of these major powers. In contrast, by the end of the war in 1918, Russia had ceased to be a major power, had lost much territory and was moving into a traumatic civil war; while the United States, neutral in 1914 and until 1917, was a key member of the victorious coalition. Indeed, a key reason for the German determination to attack on

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