Middle Ages Written by academics at
Eastern Michigan University, 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 during the
War in the Vendée, 1793|left|266x266px
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 argues that the
French Revolutionary Wars 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: 's retreat from Russia in 1812. Napoleon's
Grande Armée had lost about half a million men.|left 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 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 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—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.
South America Historian Milda Rivarola from
Harvard University states that the
Paraguayan War (from 1864 to 1870) was the first total war of the American continent, citing both Paraguay's vision of victory or utter defeat and mobilizing the whole of Paraguayan society, economy and territory.
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 Zeppelins 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 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 halls 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 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. 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, a supporter of
Nazi Germany, 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 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 was the quintessential total war of modernity. The level of national mobilisation of resources on all sides of the conflict, the
battlespace being contested, the scale of the
armies,
navies, and
air forces raised through
conscription, 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 '' Monument, promoting the unification of "the 8 corners of the world under one roof"|left During the first part of the
Shōwa era, the government of
Imperial Japan 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 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 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. {{Blockquote|...There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women and children. The fronts are everywhere to be seen. The trenches are dug in the towns and streets. Every village is fortified. Every road is barred. The front line runs through the factories. The workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage." 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
billeting in households. In the long term this was one of the most profound and longer-lasting social consequences of the whole war for Britain. 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
slums, but the children got a chance to see animals and the countryside, often for the first time, and experience rural life. Therefore,
Germany 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, 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 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
Operation Barbarossa. A major strategic defeat in the
Battle of Moscow led Speer to nationalise German war production.
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 , in which about 1 million civilians died The Soviet Union (USSR) was a
command economy 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 encompassed the conflict in
central and
eastern Europe 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 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's armies or died in
POW camps. Millions of civilians died from
starvation, 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 tanks 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 of the nation's resources to defeat Germany and Japan. Most non-essential activities were rationed, prohibited or restrained, and most 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 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 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-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. In response to these attacks, the UK and U.S. declared war the next day.
Nazi Germany declared war on the U.S. a few days later, along with
Fascist Italy; the U.S. found itself fully involved in a second
world war. 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, 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
superpowers after the war.
Unconditional surrender After the United States entered World War II,
Franklin D. Roosevelt declared at
Casablanca Conference 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 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 (Mariupol) after
Russian bombing during the
Russo-Ukrainian war 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 mobilization of a country's resources such as in World War II logistically impractical and strategically irrelevant.
Korean War Sahr Conway-Lanz, an expert on American diplomacy after World War II, has discussed the elasticity of American definitions of what constituted a "military target." He has stated that:During the [Korean War], American military and civilian officials stretched the term "military target," to include virtually all human-made structures, capitalizing on the vague distinction between the military and civilian segments of an enemy society. They came to apply the logic of total war to the destruction of the civil infrastructure of North Korea. Because almost any building could serve a military purpose, even if a minor one, nearly the entire physical infrastructure behind enemy lines was deemed a military target and open to attack. This expansive definition ... worked to obscure in American awareness the suffering of Korean civilians to which U.S. firepower was contributing.
Cold War By the end of the 1950s, the
ideological stand-off of the
Cold War between the
Western world and the
Soviet Union 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, "The living will envy the dead". During the Cold War, the two
superpowers sought to avoid open conflict between their respective forces, as both sides recognized 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, 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 and the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Nonetheless, there are cases of states enduring total war who were not nuclear powers nor closer allies, such as the 1980s Iraq-Iran conflict. ==Later and contemporary conflicts==