Total War

UNIT 28 TOTAL WAR

Structure
28.1 Introduction
28.2 The Concept of Total War and its Novelty
28.3 The Mobilization of Resources
28.4 Populations at War
28.5 Summary
28.6 Exercises

28.1 INTRODUCTION
The thirty-one years of conflict that began on 28 July 1914 and ended on 14 August
1945 is increasingly being seen by historians as the marker of a new phase in the
history of conflict. The noted Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm calls this phase the
age of total war, the period that saw ‘the great edifice of nineteenth-century civilization
crumpled’, whose witnesses ‘lived and thought in terms of world war, even when the
guns were silent and the bombs were not exploding’. There were indeed, two distinct
conflagrations, the first ending in November 1918 and known to Europeans of that
generation as the Great War, the second starting in September 1939 and ending in
1945, known as the Second World War. The interregnum, however, was marked by
tremendous domestic conflicts in the European nations, the Great Depression, the
emergence of Fascism and Nazism, and regional wars. These latter included the
Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931), the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935), the
Spanish Civil War (1936-39), and the German invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia
in 1938-39. The close linkages between domestic and international conflict during
this 31-year period make it appear as one seamless global crisis, with characteristics
deriving from the impact of competition between the great powers, capitalist
industrialization and the thwarted growth of popular democratic aspirations. It is
arguable that these elements have remained with us ever since, that humanity is still to
emerge from the reverberations of total war.
It is in this perspective that we seek to define its concept, the critical difference made
by the mobilization of resources and the role played by the great number of national
populations in the execution of total wars.

28.2 THE CONCEPT OF TOTAL WAR AND ITS

NOVELTY
What is total war? Warfare till the end of the 19th century was still conducted between
professional armies, and was relatively brief. Apart from the Crimean war of 1854-
56, there were no major wars between the great powers for a century (1815 till
1914). In contrast, the conflict that began in 1914 involved all the major powers,
and crucially, the entire resources of society and economy. Although it was the French
Revolution that created the first civilian army, it is only in the 20th century that the
outcomes of war were decided not just by military strength but by the staying power
of entire economies. War aims were not confined to militarily defeating rival armies,
but encompassed the economic and political destruction of entire countries. On the 15
Violence and one hand governments exhorted their citizens to participate in the war, and on the
Repression
other, belligerent states enlarged target areas to include industrial centres and civilian
populations, with the aim of destroying public morale. The most glaring example of
this was the use of atomic bombs by the USA on Japan in 1945. But it was evident
from the First World War, when German submarine (U-boat) warfare against
commercial allied shipping was clearly meant to cripple the economy and starve the
British population. The scheme nearly succeeded, for in April 1917 the British
government had only 6 weeks supply of food-grain left in the country. Total war
inaugurated civilian massacre as an instrument of military strategy. Nuclear weapons
were a logical extension of an already prevalent characteristic in modern warfare,
and their capacity for infinite destruction has added a new word to the vocabulary
of conflict, viz., exterminism.
The nineteenth century era of imperialism resulted in the fusion of geo-political and
economic goals. This period had made clear to statesmen and ruling elites that the
pursuit of empire was simultaneously the basis for and the means of global dominance
and the out-stripping of competitors. The tendency of capitalist imperialism to expand
over national boundaries, the pre-eminent position of Great Britain, the belated
unification of Germany and its emergence as a major industrial power in central
Europe and as Britain’s chief competitor, the colonial ambitions of Japanese industry
in alliance with an entrenched military caste – these were the strategic trends that
disturbed the reigning peace between the great powers while they engaged in colonial
conquest and dominion in Africa and Asia. Total war exemplified the dangerous
imperial drives of the dominant economies of the capitalist world, in an age when
democracy was still anathema to most ruling elites.
The concept of war changed dramatically between the French Revolution and the
world wars of the 20th century. The novelty lies in how modern wars are fought, to
what end, and how resources are mobilized by the belligerents. The outcome of
modern war is decided not just by the strength of the armed forces, but also by the
staying power of the economy. In addition, total war is war without limit that can
end only in the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the enemy. The aim is not just the defeat
of the rival army but the economic and political destruction of the rival country. The
targeting of civilians went side by side with citizen’s participation in the war. This
idea went back to the French Revolution when the first civilian army came into
operation. The mobilization of mass national feelings, the ‘strange democratization
of war’, gave birth to the new phenomenon of ‘people’s wars’.

28.3 THE MOBILIZATION OF RESOURCES

Once the process had been set in motion, it acquired a momentum of its own,
driven by political, psycho-social as well as institutional processes that appeared
unstoppable. Tsarist Russia’s involvement ended in revolution, and left a deep
impression. It was the trauma undergone by Russia in the First World War which
motivated the entire Soviet polity to mobilize its material preparedness for the
onslaught that was to come in the second. Students of Stalinist industrialization are
aware of the severe human cost of this preparation. The Great War, in Hobsbawm’s
words, ‘brutalized both warfare and politics, if one could be conducted without
counting the human or any other costs, why not the other?’ Although vast numbers
of survivors became pacifists, there were also those whose experiences of violence
and savagery drove them into the ranks of ultra-nationalist right-wing politics. The
German Freikorps were one example of this, and the German Workers Party of
16
Drexler, which was a precursor of Hitler’s National Socialists, another.
The phenomenon of total war was accompanied by the politics of totalitarianism Total War

(and we may not forget that authoritarian politics found resonances in the countries
of the liberal capitalist West as well). The Nazis forged an unchallenged control over
national resources, and even adapted the Soviet concept of economic planning, with
a Four Year Plan of their own. This was an ironic reversal of the situation in the
months following the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviks borrowed heavily
from the methods of the German war economy during the Great War. By 1938,
German re-armament consumed 52 per cent of government expenditure and 17 per
cent of GNP, more than the UK, France and the USA combined. Because of the
severe strain this put upon the economy, ‘there was a massive temptation on Hitler’s
part to resort to war in order to obviate such economic difficulties’. It is significant
that Germany’s conquest of Austria in 1938 resulted in the acquisition of $200 million
in gold and foreign exchange reserves.
Total war meant that the entire nation was mobilized for war, not merely the active
combatants. The outcome of the war reflected the capacity of the economy to produce
for it. This was the case with the First World War, wherein different sectors were
reorganized for the war effort, and belligerent governments took control of economic
life on an unprecedented scale, in order to secure regular supplies of munitions,
ordnance and manpower. To fulfil massive financial demands during the First World
War, governments increased the public debt, and printed more paper money. Britain
resorted to heavy borrowing on American markets, and high income taxes. Laissez
faire economic doctrine and democratic rights were soon eclipsed as military
commanders were given powers over civic administration, including food rationing.
Walther Rathenau set up special state corporations dealing in certain strategic
commodities, and under the so-called Hindenburg Programme, vital machinery was
transferred from less to more important industries. Certain factories were shut down.
Cartels emerged and the co-operation between state and big business in national
economic management was solidified. This set a precedent for the future, and
crystallized authoritarian trends in the polity. The French economy, which suffered
from the loss of significant economic zones to the Germans, was obliged to recuperate
its losses with heavy state inputs, leading to a massive development of heavy industry.
Historian James Joll remarks that it was the First World War that ‘really completed
the industrial revolution in France’. The numbers of workers in French military arsenals
grew from 50,000 to 1.6 million. Peasant constituted 41 per cent of conscripted
soldiers - women and children were left with major agricultural tasks.
Whereas the Russian incapacity to produce for war in 1914-1918 led to rout, a
quarter-century later, it was precisely the USSR’s gigantic resource base that once
mobilized, gave it the edge over Germany in the Second World War. Soviet five
year plans after 1937 were designed to build defensive capacity, and in the period
between September 1939 (when war broke out in Europe) and June 1941, (when
Hitler attacked the USSR), Soviet authorities evacuated entire industries eastwards,
to the Urals, Siberia, and Central Asia. 3500 new industrial units were built during
the war. Between 1942 and 45, production levels of Soviet armaments factories
had risen five or six times, and the USSR was producing (on annual average), 30,000
tanks and fighting vehicles, 40,000 aircraft, 120,000 artillery pieces, and 5 million
rifles - levels unthinkable in the first war. In 1942, 52 per cent of Soviet national
income was devoted to military spending.
International arms production statistics for the Second World War showed what
total war meant in an industrial age. Nearly 70,000 tanks were produced in 1944
alone by the USA, Britain, Germany and the USSR. The Allies produced 167,654
aircraft that year. These figures demonstrate the scale of economic mobilization. 17
Violence and Thus the American economy showed an approximate 50 per cent increase in physical
Repression
output as well as productive plant. Its annual growth rate was more than 15 per
cent, higher than at any stage in its history before or since. Defence related production
went from 2 per cent of total output in 1939 to 40 per cent in 1943.
Scientific resources were also mobilized by the belligerents in an unprecedented
manner. Constant improvements were made in communications, aeronautical
engineering, tank armour and design, rocketry, explosives and machine tools. The
most stark symbol of this destructive imagination at work is the development of the
atomic bomb, a weapon that was simultaneously being sought by the militaries of
Germany as well as the USA, and whose use signified the advent of massacre and
terror as instruments of military policy. Total war lent impetus to the search for
military applications of atomic theory, and each side feared the possibility of prior
achievements by the other. Britain, Canada and finally the USA put together an
international team of scientists, supported by the maximum official backing, to develop
an atomic weapon before Hitler could do so. The German effort fell short, not least
because of the exodus of brilliant scientists in the 1930’s fleeing from Nazi
persecution. They did however succeed in developing the first pilot-less aircraft and
rockets, which were used against Britain in 1944. After the war, some of the most
talented German scientists such as Werner von Braun were employed by the
American space and military programmes. The capacity to build weapons of mass
destruction had overspilled the boundaries of the nation-states system.

28.4 POPULATIONS AT WAR

Working people’s lives were deeply affected by phenomenon of total war and the
preparation for it. Total War led to manpower mobilization, the drafting of women
into the labour force, and as a by-product in Britain after the first war, women’s
suffrage and the full-scale development of mass politics. Britain introduced
compulsory military service in 1916, and women were required in increasing numbers
to work in offices and factories. The Nazi regime began to define the German
economy as a ‘war economy’ by the late 1930’s, with the aim of preparing for total
war. The Nazis’ militarist version of Keynesian state intervention drastically reduced
unemployment figures, and increased national production by 102 per cent by 1937.
In a secret Defence Law passed on May 21 1935, Hjalmar Schacht was appointed
the economic Plenipotentiary for the War Economy, whose job included camouflaging
violations of the Versailles Treaty. Business was subjected to heavy taxes, ‘special
contributions’ and compulsory membership of the Reich Economic Chamber. Heavy
industry, especially the armaments sector, made good profits. Wage bills declined
and strikes ceased.
But the crucial role of the working population and of the economic infrastructure
meant that non-combatants became targets of terror campaigns designed to
demoralize the entire civilian population. This strategic goal, combined with the
impersonality of technological warfare made genocide the brutal new fact of modern
warfare. Civilians now became direct targets. The obvious examples come from
World War II with the blitz, genocide, carpet bombing, the atom bomb, and mass
population transfers; but they had begun in the Great War of 1914-18. The Turkish
government’s massacre of some 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 (which also created
320,000 Armenian refugees), is the first modern attempt to eliminate an entire
population. The starvation blockade of the German nation by the Allies was another.
Mass demographic changes were due to the exodus of refugees or by compulsory
exchanges of populations. Thus during the First World War, 1.3 million Greeks
18 moved from Turkey to Greece, and 400,000 Turks moved in the other direction.
Up to 2 million Russians fled the ravages of the Russian civil war of 1918-20. The Total War

Great War and its aftermath produced between 4 to 5 million refugees.

Without a doubt, the Second World War was the greatest catastrophe in human
history. Estimates of human war losses vary between 40 to 55 million people, both
soldiers and non-combatants. 35 million were wounded and 3 million missing. The
USSR suffered the most in human terms - losing about 20 million lives. In February
1945, 50,000 German civilians were killed in the Anglo-American bombardment of
Dresden in one night alone. A single air raid on Tokyo in March 1945 resulted in
80,000 deaths and a quarter of the city destroyed. In terms of displacement, it has
been estimated that about 40 million people had been uprooted in Europe alone.
Mass transfers took place in territories across Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia
and the Balkans. The discovery that the Nazis had created camps for the
industrialization of murder that had killed up to 6 million European Jews, left a
permanent shadow over the human conscience. It gave an impetus to the creation of
Israel that attracted 1.2 million Jews fleeing from Europe and resulted in the forced
displacement of 1.3 million Palestinians. The Korean War, a direct outcome of the
Second World War, left 5 million refugees. The decolonization of India and Partition
left up to 2 million dead and 15 million displaced. The Second World War was the
epitome of total war.

28.5 SUMMARY
During the First World War, the trenches on the German-French military lines covered
a combined distance of 25,000 miles, three times the earth’s circumference. By
1916, soldiers had lost all hope of winning, and there were groups in the English
trenches that called themselves the Never-endians, who believed that the war would
never end. The Great War ended in 1918, but the rise of Fascism, the colonial wars
of the 1930s, the Spanish civil war, the Second World War, the Korean war, the
Vietnam war, wars over Palestine, wars in South Asia and Africa, the recent wars in
the Balkans and the Gulf, not to mention the insurgencies rampaging throughout the
globe, are evidence that the Never-endians were right. According to one estimate,
the past century experienced (conservatively) 250 wars and 110 million deaths related
to war and ethnic conflict. One estimate has placed the number of deaths due to
ethnic conflict in the last decade of the 20th century at 30 million. An increasing
proportion of these losses have taken place among civilians. During the course of
modern history, war has changed from being a strategic, military principle - the fare
of martial experts - to becoming part of the inmost fabric of civil society. It has
vacated its position at the nation-state’s outer periphery, where it supposedly
protected the nation against external foes, and has migrated inward, culminating in
perpetual civil war enacted to control, even eliminate the inner social enemy, or
‘other’. This process could not have occurred without the advent of the age of total
war in 1914.

28.6 EXERCISES
1) What is the concept of total war? Trace its roots historically.
2) How has the coming of total war led to large-scale changes in the making of
our society? Discuss Briefly.

19