Total war - a war in which all participating countries use all available resources and methods to defeat the enemy [1] . Such wars have occurred on Earth since time immemorial, but by the end of the 19th century and later, with the advent of the Geneva Conventions concerning the conduct of war, they began to stand out in a separate category.
The name and main provisions of this concept are due to the German general Erich Ludendorff , who outlined it in his book in 1935 [1] [2] .
In general, the concept of total warfare, developed by German military theorists at the beginning of the 20th century , based in part on the experience of the Franco-Prussian war came down to the following. Modern warfare is not a war of armies, but of nations. Therefore, in order to win, it is necessary, on the one hand, to mobilize all the resources of “one’s” nation (for example, recruiting men from 16 to 60 years old for military service ), and on the other, to comprehensively influence a hostile nation (including methods such as propaganda , terror and etc.) in order to break her spirit and achieve that she demanded that her government end the resistance.
The idea of total war was the basis of the military doctrine of the German command, which practically applied the ideas of the concept in the development of plans for the offensive in World War II. In February 1943 , during World War II , the imperial Minister of Education and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels called for a total war in his famous speech .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 “Total War” // Military Encyclopedia / P. S. Grachev . - Moscow: Military Publishing House, 2004. - T. 8. - P. 105. - ISBN 5-203-01875-8 .
- ↑ Der totale Krieg. Ludendorffs Verlag, München 1935. In the Russian translation: Ludendorff. Total war. M., 1936.