What is total war? discuss with reference to world war one and world war two

Essay by Aly_KHigh School, 11th gradeA, May 2005

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What is "Total War"? Discuss with reference to World War One and World War Two.

First of all, what is "Total War"? What do we mean by it and what answer do we expect from this question? Total War is the war that affects all of society- not just armed forces, and that uses all the resources available to be able to win it. It's "the mobilization of the whole society and its resources for the war effort."

In most of the countries the first Total War was the First World War. World War One started a completely new generation of wars. Before 1914 wars only affected the army and had no change on the lives of ordinary people. At earlier times small professional armies fought the wars, which means that all the men were especially trained for fighting. Well, those two wars- World War One and World War Two were different.

Everyone fought them and everyone provided as much help as possible, it didn't matter whether the person was skilled or unskilled, old or young, male or female. In this essay I will also investigate why were World War One and World War Two called Total Wars. The first thing that comes to mind is the scale of war. It was tremendous. I am going to start from speaking about World War One and then later on about World War Two.

World War One was a completely new style of wars, the changes were unbelievable, in fact the historians even see the World War One as "the dividing line between modern and contemporary history". The war didn't only change the style of fighting, but also the lifestyle of people and their views on wars. It involved almost the entire World, and not only the arguing countries were involved,