Description
The phrase ‘Total War’ can be traced back to the 1936 publication of General Ludendorff’s Der Totale Krieg. The concept, however, reaches back as far as Clausewitz’s classic work Vom Kriege, in which he used the words ‘absoluter Krieg’. Clausewitz described a form of war which differed to a great extent from earlier wars. In an absolute war a nation was completely and in all its aspects involved in the war, which aimed at the complete destruction of the enemy with all possible means. Such a war could only end, according to Clausewitz, after one of the belligerents had been completely destroyed. In the historical literature the two World Wars in the Twentieth Century are often described as total wars in terms of the intensity of the struggles, the scope of the conflicts, the nature of the goals, and the extent to which civilians were involved. However, also earlier wars in the late nineteenth century showed features of this all-embracing form of warfare. Military historian Jeremy Black nonetheless argues that 1860-1945 period was markedly different from the warfare that characterized earlier periods; and that it is very different from the situation that has evolved ever since| Period | 09 Nov 2018 → 31 Jan 2019 |
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| Degree of Recognition | National |