
Total war is a type of
warfare that includes any and all (including
civilian-associated) resources and infrastructure as
legitimate military targets, mobilises all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over
non-combatant
Non-combatant is a term of art in the law of war and international humanitarian law to refer to civilians who are not taking a direct part in hostilities. People such as combat medics and military chaplains, who are members of the belligerent arm ...
needs.
The term has been defined as "A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the
territory
A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal.
In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...
or
combatant
Combatant is the legal status of a person entitled to directly participate in hostilities during an armed conflict, and may be intentionally targeted by an adverse party for their participation in the armed conflict. Combatants are not afforded i ...
s involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the
laws of war are disregarded."
In the mid-19th century, scholars identified what later became known as total war as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes due to the capacity of opposing sides to consider nearly every human, including non-combatants, as resources that are used in the
war effort.
Characteristics
Total war is a concept that has been extensively studied by scholars of conflict and war. One of the most notable contributions to this field of research is the work of Stig Förster, who has identified four dimensions of total war: total purposes, total methods, total mobilisation, and total control. Tiziano Peccia has built upon Förster's work by adding a fifth dimension of "total change." Peccia argues that total war not only has a profound impact on the outcome of the conflict but also produces significant changes in the political, cultural, economic, and social realms beyond the end of the conflict. As Peccia puts it, "total war is an earthquake that has the world as its epicenter."
The four dimensions of total war identified by Förster are:
1) Total purposes: The aim of continuous growth of the power of the parties involved and hegemonic visions.
2) Total methods: Similar and common methodologies among countries that intend to increase their spheres of influence.
3) Total mobilisation: Inclusion in the conflict of parties not traditionally involved, such as women and children or individuals who are not part of the armed bodies.
4) Total control: Multisectoral centralisation of the powers and orchestration of the activities of the countries in a small circle of dictators or oligarchs, with cross-functional control over education and culture, media/propaganda, economic, and political activities.
Peccia's contribution of "total change" adds to this framework by emphasising the long-term effects of total war on society.
5) Total change: This includes changes in social attitudes, cultural norms, and political structures, as well as economic and technological developments.
In Peccia's view, total war not only transforms the military and political landscape but also has far-reaching and long-time implications for society as a whole.
Actions that may characterise the post-19th century concept of total war include:
*
Strategic bombing, as during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, the
Korean War
The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...
, and the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
(Operations
Barrel Roll,
Rolling Thunder and
Linebacker II)
*
Blockade and
besieging of population centres, as with the
Allied blockade of Germany and the
Siege of Leningrad
The siege of Leningrad was a Siege, military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 t ...
during the
First and
Second
The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...
World Wars
*
Scorched earth
A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and i ...
policy, as with the
March to the Sea during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
and the Japanese "
Three Alls Policy" during the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
*
Commerce raiding,
tonnage war, and
unrestricted submarine warfare, as with
privateering, the German
U-boat
U-boats are Submarine#Military, naval submarines operated by Germany, including during the World War I, First and Second World Wars. The term is an Anglicization#Loanwords, anglicized form of the German word , a shortening of (), though the G ...
campaigns of the First and Second World Wars, and the United States
submarine campaign against Japan during World War II
*
Collective punishment, pacification operations, and
reprisals against populations deemed hostile, as with the execution and deportation of suspected
Communards following the fall of the 1871
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...
or the German reprisal policy targeting
resistance movements, insurgents, and
Untermenschen such as in France (e.g.
Maillé massacre) and
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
during World War II
*
Industrial warfare, as with all belligerents in their respective
home fronts during
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
and
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
* The use of
civilians and
prisoners of war as
forced labour for
military operations, as with Japan, USSR and Germany's massive use of forced labourers of other nations during World War II (see
Slavery in Japan and
forced labour under German rule during World War II
The use of Slavery, slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany () and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the Economics of fascism#Political economy of Nazi Germany, ...
)
* Giving
no quarter
No quarter, during War, military conflict or piracy, implies that combatants would not be taken Prisoner of war, prisoner, but executed. Since the Hague Convention of 1899, it is considered a war crime; it is also prohibited in customary interna ...
(i.e. take no prisoners), as with
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
's
Commando Order during World War II
Background
The phrase "total war" seemingly originated amongst French writers during World War I and French writer
Léon Daudet published a collection of essays called ''La Guerre Totale'' ("The total war") in 1918. The phrase was popularised by the 1935 publication of German general
Erich Ludendorff's World War I memoir, ''Der totale Krieg'' ("The total war"). Some authors extend the concept back as far as classic work of
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz ( , ; born Carl Philipp Gottlieb Clauswitz; 1 July 1780 – 16 November 1831) was a Kingdom of Prussia, Prussian general and Military theory, military theorist who stressed the "moral" (in modern terms meani ...
, ''
On War'', as "absoluter Krieg" (
absolute war), even though he did not use the term; others interpret Clausewitz differently.
Total war also describes the French "guerre à outrance" during the
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 Janua ...
.
In his 24 December 1864 letter to his
chief of staff
The title chief of staff (or head of staff) identifies the leader of a complex organization such as the armed forces, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a principal staff officer (PSO), who is the coordinator of the supportin ...
during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, Union general
William Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman ( ; February 8, 1820February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a General officer, general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865), earning recognit ...
wrote the Union was "not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies," defending
Sherman's March to the Sea, the operation that inflicted widespread destruction of infrastructure in Georgia.
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...
General
Curtis LeMay updated the concept for the
nuclear age. In 1949, he first proposed that a total war in the nuclear age would consist of delivering the entire
nuclear arsenal
Nine sovereign states are generally understood to possess nuclear weapons, though only eight formally acknowledge possessing them. United Nations Security Council#Permanent members, Five are considered to be nuclear-weapon states (NWS) unde ...
in a single overwhelming blow, going as far as "killing a nation".
History
Middle Ages
Written by academics at
Eastern Michigan University
Eastern Michigan University (EMU, EMich, Eastern Michigan or simply Eastern) is a public university, public research university in Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1849 as the Michigan State Normal School, it was the fourth normal ...
, the ''Cengage Advantage Books: World History'' textbook claims that while total war "is traditionally associated with the two global wars of the twentieth century... it would seem that instances of total war predate the twentieth century." They write:
18th and 19th centuries
Europe
In his book, ''The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know it'', David A Bell, a
French History professor at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
argues that the
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars () were a series of sweeping military conflicts resulting from the French Revolution that lasted from 1792 until 1802. They pitted French First Republic, France against Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain, Habsb ...
introduced to mainland Europe some of the first concepts of total war, such as mass conscription. He claims that the new republic found itself threatened by a powerful coalition of European nations and used the entire nation's resources in an unprecedented war effort that included
levée en masse (mass conscription). By 23 August 1793, the French front line forces grew to some 800,000 with a total of 1.5 million in all services—the first time an army in excess of a million had been mobilised in Western history:

During the
Russian campaign of 1812 the Russians retreated while destroying infrastructure and agriculture in order to effectively hamper the French and strip them of adequate supplies. In the campaign of 1813, Allied forces in the German theatre alone amounted to nearly one million whilst two years later in
the Hundred Days a French decree called for the total mobilisation of some 2.5 million men (though at most a fifth of this was managed by the time of the French defeat at
Waterloo). During the prolonged
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Kingdom of Portugal, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French ...
from 1808 to 1814 some 300,000 French troops were kept permanently occupied by, in addition to several hundred thousand Spanish, Portuguese and British regulars, an enormous and sustained guerrilla insurgency—ultimately French deaths would amount to 300,000 in the Peninsular War alone.
The Franco-Prussian War was fought in breach of the recently signed
Geneva Convention of 1864, when "European opinion increasingly expected that civilians and soldiers should be treated humanely in war".
North America
The
Sullivan Expedition of 1779 was an example of total warfare. As Native American and
Loyalist forces massacred American farmers, killed livestock and burned buildings in remote frontier areas, General
George Washington
George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...
sent General
John Sullivan with 4,000 troops to seek "the total destruction and devastation of their settlements" in upstate New York. There was only one small battle as the expedition devastated "14 towns and most flourishing crops of corn." The Native Americans escaped to Canada where the British fed them; they remained there after the war.
Sherman's March to the Sea in the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
—from 15 November 1864, through 21 December 1864—is sometimes considered to be an example of total war, for which Sherman used the term ''hard war''. Some historians challenge this designation, as Sherman's campaign assaulted primarily military targets and Sherman ordered his men to spare civilian homes.
20th century
World War I
=Air Warfare
=
Bombing civilians from the air was adopted as a strategy for the first time in World War I, and a leading advocate of this strategy was
Peter Strasser "Leader of Airships" (''Führer der Luftschiffe''; ''F.d.L.''). Strasser, who was chief commander of
German Imperial Navy Zeppelin
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155� ...
s during World War I, the main force operating German strategic bombing across Europe and the UK, saw bombing of civilians as well as military targets as an essential element of total war. He argued that causing civilian casualties and damaging domestic infrastructure served both as propaganda and as a means of diverting resources from the front line.
=Propaganda
=
One of the features of total war in
Britain was the use of government
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
posters to divert all attention to the war on the
home front. Posters were used to influence public opinion about what to eat and what occupations to take, and to change the attitude of support towards the war effort. Even
music hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was most popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850, through the World War I, Great War. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as Varie ...
s were used as propaganda, with propaganda songs aimed at recruitment.
After the failure of the
Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the large British offensive in March 1915, the British Commander-in-Chief
Field Marshal
Field marshal (or field-marshal, abbreviated as FM) is the most senior military rank, senior to the general officer ranks. Usually, it is the highest rank in an army (in countries without the rank of Generalissimo), and as such, few persons a ...
John French blamed the lack of progress on insufficient and poor-quality
artillery shells. This led to the
Shell Crisis of 1915 which brought down both the
Liberal government and
Premiership of
H. H. Asquith. He formed a new coalition government dominated by Liberals and appointed
David Lloyd George as
Minister of Munitions
The Minister of Munitions was a British government position created during the First World War to oversee and co-ordinate the production and distribution of munitions for the war effort. The position was created in response to the Shell Crisis o ...
. It was a recognition that the whole economy would have to be geared for war if the Allies were to prevail on the Western Front.
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, author, and political theorist.
Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of ...
, a supporter of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
, wrote that total war meant "total politics"—authoritarian domestic policies that imposed direct control of the press and economy. In Schmitt's view the total state, which directs fully the mobilisation of all social and economic resources to war, is antecedent to total war. Scholars consider that the seeds of this total state concept already existed in the German state of World War I, which exercised full control of the press and other aspects economic and social life as espoused in the statement of state ideology known as the "
Ideas of 1914".
=Rationing
=
As young men left the farms for the front, domestic food production in Britain and Germany fell. In Britain, the response was to import more food, which was done despite the German introduction of
unrestricted submarine warfare, and to introduce rationing. The Royal Navy's
blockade of German ports prevented Germany from importing food and hastened German capitulation by creating a food crisis in Germany.
Almost the whole of Europe and some of the European colonial empires mobilised soldiers. Rationing occurred on the home fronts.
Bulgaria
Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
went so far as to mobilise a quarter of its population, or 800,000 people, a greater share of its population than any other country during the war.
World War II
The
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
was the quintessential total war of modernity.
The level of national mobilisation of resources on all sides of the conflict, the
battlespace
Battlespace or battle-space is a term used to signify a military strategy which integrates multiple armed forces for the military theater (warfare), theatre of operations, including aerial warfare, air, information warfare, information, ground w ...
being contested, the scale of the
armies,
navies, and
air force
An air force in the broadest sense is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army aviati ...
s raised through
conscription
Conscription, also known as the draft in the United States and Israel, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it conti ...
, the active targeting of non-combatants (and non-combatant property), the general disregard for
collateral damage, and the unrestricted aims of the belligerents marked total war on an unprecedented and unsurpassed, multicontinental scale.
=Imperial Japan
=

During the first part of the
Shōwa era
The was a historical period of History of Japan, Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) from December 25, 1926, until Death and state funeral of Hirohito, his death on January 7, 1989. It was preceded by the T ...
, the government of
Imperial Japan
The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From Japan–Kor ...
launched a string of policies to promote a total war effort
against China and
occidental powers and increase industrial production. Among these were the
National Spiritual Mobilization Movement and the
Imperial Rule Assistance Association.
The
State General Mobilization Law had fifty clauses, which provided for government controls over civilian organisations (including
labour unions),
nationalisation of strategic industries, price controls and
rationing, and nationalised the
news media
The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public. These include News agency, news agencies, newspapers, news magazines, News broadcasting, news channels etc.
History
Some of the fir ...
. The laws gave the government the authority to use unlimited budgets to subsidise war production and to compensate manufacturers for losses caused by war-time mobilisation. Eighteen of the fifty articles outlined penalties for violators.
To improve its production, Imperial Japan used millions of
slave labourers and
pressed more than 18 million people in
East Asia
East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...
into forced labour.
=United Kingdom
=
Before the onset of the Second World War, Great Britain drew on its First World War experience to prepare legislation that would allow immediate mobilisation of the economy for war, should future hostilities break out. Rationing of most goods and services was introduced, not only for consumers but also for manufacturers. This meant that factories manufacturing products that were irrelevant to the war effort had more appropriate tasks imposed. All artificial light was subject to legal
blackouts.
Not only were men conscripted into the armed forces from the beginning of the war (something which had not happened until the middle of World War I), but women were also conscripted as
Land Girls to aid farmers and the
Bevin Boys were conscripted to work down the coal mines.
Enormous casualties were expected in bombing raids, so
children were evacuated from London and other cities en masse to the countryside for compulsory
billet
In European militaries, a billet is a living-quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. In American usage, it refers to a specific personnel position, assignment, or duty station to which a soldier can be assigned. Historically, a billet w ...
ing in households. In the long term this was one of the most profound and longer-lasting social consequences of the whole war for Britain.
[Brown, p. ix] This is because it mixed up children with adults of other classes. Not only did the middle and upper classes become familiar with the urban squalor suffered by working class children from the
slum
A slum is a highly populated Urban area, urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are p ...
s, but the children got a chance to see animals and the countryside, often for the first time, and experience rural life.
[
The use of statistical analysis, by a branch of science which has become known as Operational Research to influence military tactics, was a departure from anything previously attempted. It was a very powerful tool but it further dehumanised war particularly when it suggested strategies that were counter-intuitive. Examples, where statistical analysis directly influenced tactics include the work done by Patrick Blackett's team on the optimum size and speed of convoys and the introduction of bomber streams, by the ]Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...
to counter the night fighter defences of the Kammhuber Line.
=Nazi Germany
=
In 1935 General Ludendorff in the book ''Der Totale Krieg'' gave life to the term "Total War" in the German lexicon. However, being followers of the stab-in-the-back myth, military and Nazi leadership believed that Germany hadn't lost World War I on the battlefield but solely on the home front.
Therefore, Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
started the war under the concept which was later named blitzkrieg. Officially, it did not accept that it was in a total war until Joseph Goebbels' Sportpalast speech of 18 February 1943—in which the crowd was told "''Totaler Krieg – Kürzester Krieg''" ("Total War – Shortest War”.)
Goebbels and Hitler had spoken in March 1942 about Goebbels' idea to put the entire home front on a war footing. Hitler appeared to accept the concept, but took no action. Goebbels had the support of minister of armaments Albert Speer, economics minister Walther Funk and Robert Ley, head of the German Labour Front, and they pressed Hitler in October 1942 to take action, but Hitler, while outwardly agreeing, continued to dither. Finally, after the holidays in 1942, Hitler sent his powerful personal secretary, Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, and a war criminal. Bormann gained immense power by using his position as Hitler ...
, to discuss the question with Goebbels and Hans Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery. As a result, Bormann told Goebbels to go ahead and draw up a draft of the necessary decree, to be signed in January 1943. Hitler signed the decree on 13 January, almost a year after Goebbels first discussed the concept with him. The decree set up a steering committee consisting of Bormann, Lammers, and General Wilhelm Keitel to oversee the effort, with Goebbels and Speer as advisors; Goebbels had expected to be one of the triumvirate. Hitler remained aloof from the project, and it was Goebbels and Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician, aviator, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which gov ...
who gave the "total war" radio address from the Sportspalast the next month, on the 10th anniversary of the Nazi's "seizure of power".
The commitment to the doctrine of the short war was a continuing handicap for the Germans; neither plans nor state of mind were adjusted to the idea of a long war until the failure of the Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...
. A major strategic defeat in the Battle of Moscow forced Speer to nationalise German war production and eliminate the worst inefficiencies.
= Canada
=
In Canada early use of the term concerned whether or not the country was committing enough to mobilising its resources, rather than whether or not to target civilians of the enemy countries. During the early days of the Second World War, whether or not Canada was committed to a "total war effort" was point of partisan political debate between the governing Liberals and the opposition Conservatives. The Conservatives elected as their national leader Arthur Meighen, who had been the cabinet minister responsible for implementing conscription during the First World War, and advocated for conscription again. Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King argued that Canada could still be said to have a "total war effort" without conscription, and delivered nationally broadcast speeches to this effect 1942. Meighen failed to win his seat in by-election in 1942, and the issue subsided for a short time. But eventually, national conscription was introduced in Canada in 1944, as well as dramatically increased taxation, another symbol of the "total war effort".
=Soviet Union
=
The Soviet Union (USSR) was a command economy
A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, ...
which already had an economic and legal system allowing the economy and society to be redirected into fighting a total war. The transportation of factories and whole labour forces east of the Urals as the Germans advanced across the USSR in 1941 was an impressive feat of planning. Only those factories which were useful for war production were moved because of the total war commitment of the Soviet government.
The Eastern Front of the European Theatre of World War II
The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat during World War II, taking place from September 1939 to May 1945. The Allied powers (including the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and Franc ...
encompassed the conflict in central and eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...
from 22 June 1941, to 9 May 1945. It was the largest theatre of war in history in terms of numbers of soldiers, equipment and casualties and was notorious for its unprecedented ferocity, destruction, and immense loss of life (see World War II casualties). The fighting involved millions of German, Hungarian, Romanian and Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
troops along a broad front hundreds of kilometres long. It was by far the deadliest single theatre of World War II. Scholars now believe that at most 27 million Soviet citizens died during the war, including at least 8.7 million soldiers who fell in battle against Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
's armies or died in POW camps. Millions of civilians died from starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, de ...
, exposure, atrocities, and massacres. The Axis lost over 5 million soldiers in the east as well as many thousands of civilians.
During the Battle of Stalingrad, newly built T-34 tank
The T-34 is a Soviet medium tank from World War II. When introduced, its 76.2 mm (3 in) tank gun was more powerful than many of its contemporaries, and its 60-degree sloped armour provided good protection against Anti-tank warfare, ...
s were driven—unpainted because of a paint shortage—from the factory floor straight to the front. This came to symbolise the USSR's commitment to a policy of total war.
=United States
=
The United States underwent an unprecedented mobilisation of national resources for the Second World War, creating a military-industrial complex. Although the United States was not in existential danger, the national sense after Pearl Harbor was to use all the nation's resources to defeat Germany and Japan. Most non-essential activities were rationed, prohibited or restrained, and most of the fit unmarried young men were drafted. There was little urgency before 1940, when the collapse of France ended the Phoney War and revealed urgent needs. Nevertheless, President Franklin Roosevelt moved to first solidify public opinion before acting. In 1940 the first peacetime draft was instituted, along with Lend-Lease programs to aid the British, and covert aid was passed to the Chinese as well.
American public opinion
Public opinion, or popular opinion, is the collective opinion on a specific topic or voting intention relevant to society. It is the people's views on matters affecting them.
In the 21st century, public opinion is widely thought to be heavily ...
was still opposed to involvement in the problems of Europe and Asia, however. In 1941, the Soviet Union became the latest nation to be invaded, and the U.S. gave its aid as well. American ships began defending aid convoys to the Allied nations against submarine attacks, and a total trade embargo against the Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From Japan–Kor ...
was instituted to deny its military the raw materials its factories and military forces required to continue its offensive actions in China.
In late 1941, Japan's Army
An army, ground force or land force is an armed force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or country. It may also include aviation assets by ...
-dominated government decided to seize by military force the strategic resources of South-East Asia and Indonesia since the Western powers would not give Japan these goods by trade. Planning for this action included surprise attacks on American and British forces in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and the U.S. naval base and warships at Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reci ...
. In response to these attacks, the UK and U.S. declared war the next day. Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
declared war on the U.S. a few days later, along with Fascist Italy
Fascist Italy () is a term which is used in historiography to describe the Kingdom of Italy between 1922 and 1943, when Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. Th ...
; the U.S. found itself fully involved in a second world war
A world war is an international War, conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World War I ...
.
As the United States began to gear up for a major war, information and propaganda efforts were set in motion. Civilians (including children) were encouraged to take part in fat, grease, and scrap metal collection drives. Many factories making non-essential goods retooled for war production. Levels of industrial productivity previously unheard of were attained during the war; multi-thousand-ton convoy ships were routinely built in a month and a half, and tanks poured out of the former automobile factories. Within a few years of the U.S. entry into the Second World War, nearly every man without children fit for service, between 18 and 30, was conscripted into the military "for the duration" of the conflict, and unprecedented numbers of women took up jobs previously held by them. Strict systems of rationing of consumer staples were introduced to redirect productive capacity to war needs.
Previously untouched sections of the nation mobilised for the war effort. Academics became technocrats; home-makers became bomb-makers (massive numbers of women worked in industry during the war); union leaders and businessmen became commanders in the massive armies of production. The great scientific communities of the United States were mobilised as never before, and mathematicians, doctors, engineers, and chemists turned their minds to the problems ahead of them.
By the war's end, a multitude of advances had been made in medicine, physics, engineering, and the other sciences. This included the efforts of the theoretical physicists working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on the Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada.
From 1942 to 1946, the ...
, which led to the Trinity nuclear test and thus brought about the Atomic Age.
In the war, the United States lost 407,316 military personnel, but had managed to avoid the extensive level of damage to civilian and industrial infrastructure that other participants suffered. The U.S. emerged as one of the two superpower
Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to Sphere of influence, exert influence and Power projection, project power on a global scale. This is done through the comb ...
s after the war.
=Unconditional surrender
=
After the United States entered World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...
declared at Casablanca conference
The Casablanca Conference (codenamed SYMBOL) or Anfa Conference was held in Casablanca, French Morocco, from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allies of World War II, Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War II. The main disc ...
to the other Allies and the press that unconditional surrender was the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Prior to this declaration, the individual regimes of the Axis Powers could have negotiated an armistice
An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from t ...
similar to that at the end of World War I and then a conditional surrender when they perceived that the war was lost.
The unconditional surrender of the major Axis powers caused a legal problem at the post-war Nuremberg Trials, because the trials appeared to be in conflict with Articles 63 and 64 of the Geneva Convention of 1929. Usually if such trials are held, they would be held under the auspices of the defeated power's own legal system as happened with some of the minor Axis powers, for example in the post World War II Romanian People's Tribunals. To circumvent this, the Allies argued that the major war criminals were captured after the end of the war, so they were not prisoners of war and the Geneva Conventions did not cover them. Further, the collapse of the Axis regimes created a legal condition of total defeat ('' debellatio'') so the provisions of the 1907 Hague Convention over military occupation were not applicable.
Post-World War II
Since the end of World War II, no industrial nation has fought such a large, decisive war. This is likely due to the availability of nuclear weapons, whose destructive power and quick deployment render a full mobilisation of a country's resources such as in World War II logistically impractical and strategically irrelevant.
By the end of the 1950s, the ideological stand-off of the Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
between the Western world
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and state (polity), states in Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also const ...
and the Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
had resulted in thousands of nuclear weapons being aimed by each side at the other. Strategically, the equal balance of destructive power possessed by each side manifests in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which determines that a nuclear attack by one superpower would result in a nuclear counter-strike by the other. This would result in hundreds of millions of deaths in a world where, in words widely attributed to Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...
, "The living will envy the dead".
During the Cold War, the two superpower
Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to Sphere of influence, exert influence and Power projection, project power on a global scale. This is done through the comb ...
s sought to avoid open conflict between their respective forces, as both sides recognised that such a clash could very easily escalate, and quickly involve nuclear weapons. Instead, the superpowers fought each other through their involvement in proxy wars
In political science, a proxy war is an armed conflict where at least one of the belligerents is directed or supported by an external third-party power. In the term ''proxy war'', a belligerent with external support is the ''proxy''; both bel ...
, military buildups, and diplomatic standoffs.
In the case of proxy wars, each superpower supported its respective allies in conflicts with forces aligned with the other superpower, such as in the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Other conflicts
The following post-World War II conflicts have been characterized as "total war":
* 1948 Arab–Israeli War (1948–1949)
* Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)
* Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...
(2022–present)
* Gaza war (2023–present)
See also
* Black-and-white dualism
* Cannon fodder
* Carthaginian peace
* Conventional warfare
Conventional warfare is a form of warfare conducted by using conventional weapons and battlefield tactics between two or more sovereign state, states in open confrontation. The forces on each side are well-defined and fight by using weapons that ...
* Economic warfare
* Psychology of genocide
* Roerich Pact
* The bomber will always get through
* War economy
* War of annihilation
References
Bibliography
* Barnhart, Michael A. ''Japan prepares for total war: The search for economic security, 1919–1941'' (Cornell UP, 2013).
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* Black, Jeremy. ''The age of total war, 1860–1945'' (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010).
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* Craig, Campbell. ''Glimmer of a new Leviathan: Total war in the realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz'' (Columbia University Press, 2004), Intellectual history.
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* Förster, Stig, and Jorg Nagler. ''On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871'' (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
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* Hoffman, Christopher S. ''Major General William T. Sherman's total war in the Savannah and Carolina campaigns'' (US Army Command and General Staff College, School for Advanced Military Studies Fort Leavenworth, 2018
online
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* Royster, Charles. ''The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans'' (1993)
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** Walters, John Bennett. ''Merchant of terror: General Sherman and total war'' (1973); adds nothing new says John F. Marszalek, ''Journal of American History'' (Dec. 1974), pp. 784–785.
External links
*
A collection of papers relating to the Sullivan Expedition
* Daniel Marc Segesser
Controversy: Total War
in
{{DEFAULTSORT:Total War
Wars by type
Warfare by type
Military doctrines
Economic warfare
Military economics
Military science