Understanding Total War

Session 1: Total War

• Total war extends conflict to political, economic, commercial, industrial, intellectual, juridical, and financial domains, according to Léon Daudet (1918).
• It involves complete mobilization of a society's resources for the absolute destruction of the enemy, blurring combatant/non-combatant lines.
• David Bell identifies the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) as the first total wars.
• Jeremy Black's 5 criteria for total war are range of conflict, nature of goals, mobilization of resources, intensity of struggle, and brutality towards civilians.

I. World Wars Mobilizing Unprecedented Resources

• WWI initially focused on Europe but globalized due to colonization.
• Economies adapted to produce weapons, with collaboration between industrialists and scientists.
• Marie Curie introduced mobile radiological units during WWI.
• War financing involved new taxes, national and foreign (US) loans.
• The workforce was mobilized through foreign workers, colonial subjects, and women.
• WWII was a global war, starting in Asia, continuing in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and eventually the USSR and US.
• WWI involved 60-70 million soldiers, WWII 90-110 million.
  • The Eastern Front in WWII saw staggering losses of 7,000 deaths/day.
• Industry dedicated to the war effort, exemplified by the Victory Program in the US (launched Jan 1942).
  • The Victory Program enabled production of 275,000 aircraft, 6,340,000 light vehicles, 90,000 tanks, and 65 million tons of ships.
• Technology and science contributed to destruction, with the industrialization of conflict and new weapons development.
  • The Battle of Kursk (July 5 – August 23, 1943) was the largest tank battle in history.
    • The Battle of Kursk involved 13,000 tanks and 70,000 artillery pieces, marking the peak of industrial warfare.
• Example of technology: The Manhattan Project, led by Robert Oppenheimer, involved 130,000 people and cost two billion dollars.
• Mobilization encompassed the entire nation, with patriotic support, propaganda, dehumanization of the enemy, and deportation/internment of internal enemies.
• Debate existed among WWI specialists regarding soldiers' commitment, attributed to force, conformity, duty, or war realities.
• Stéphane Audouin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker argued soldiers "consented" to war out of patriotism and hatred, influenced by a "culture of war."
• Nationalist sentiment during WWI was reflected in the "nationalization of the masses."
  • Citizen soldiers and marginalization of internal enemies
• WWII: The German-Soviet front presented a racial/ideological enemy.
• Wehrmacht was glorified as the shield against "Judeo-Bolshevik barbarism."
• Actions included Nazi colonial warfare in Eastern Europe.
• Omer Bartov suggested German soldiers shared the regime's eschatological war vision.
• The USSR framed the war against Germany as the Great Patriotic War.
• In the 1930s, Japan became a militaristic, ultranationalist regime (Margolin).
• Kokutai (national policy) ideology influenced Japan = its destiny was to dominate the world, especially Asia.
• Ultranationalism permeated Japanese society, which resulted in only 1,000 Japanese soldiers surrendering out of 22,000 like during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
• "Crossing the threshold of violence" = changes in violence against soldiers, prisoners, and civilians.
• Changes happened after WW1 where Violence against the wounded increased; stretcher bearer truces disappeared.
• The hague convention of 1907 on prisoners of war was ignored
• Civilians were targeted during invasions, with thousands summarily executed, particularly in Belgium and northern France.
• Civilians were directly targeted by the bombing of cities (Reims, London, Paris, Cologne).
  • A million people died in Germany due to an Allied blockade.
• WWII saw 30 million soldiers dead: the Pacific Front had 6 million and the German-Soviet Front had 15 million military casualties.
• WWII daily losses, excluding Russia/USSR's 5,500 deaths, were generally lower than in WWI's 1,500 deaths.
• Violence against prisoners of war was unprecedented: 5 million Soviet soldiers imprisoned, 3 million died in captivity.
  • A quarter of soldiers captured by the Japanese perished, like at the Bangkok-Rangoon railroad construction site, where 1/4 of 60,000 Allied captives died.
• Unprecedented violence against civilians led to 40 million deaths.
• Intense violence occurred during invasion/retreat phases and periods of occupation.
• Violence against civilians escalated due to civil resistance.
  • German atrocities in the USSR led to repressive actions against 500,000 partisans by units like SS Dirlewanger.
• Nanking civilians were massacred; 20,000 were raped between Dec 1937-Feb 1938.
  • The Japanese army forced prostitution on 200,000-300,000 Asian "comfort women."
• Aerial bombardments were systematized in WWII, with 3 million tons of bombs dropped.
  • Asia saw less deadly attacks than German cities, such as the Hamburg strike resulting in 40,000 deaths.
  • The Apex was the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
• Mosse's thesis claims the continuation of aggressive war attitudes led to a brutalization of political life and indifference to life.
  • There were 324 political assassinations in German politics between the wars.
• Brutalization is a globalizing and seductive historical thesis.
  • It makes a connection from 1914 to 1945 = Thirty Years' War linking Brutalization in WW1, the result being totalitarian regimes and subsequently WWII.
• There was a "war culture".
• WW1 saw cruelty on the Eastern Front, which already desecrated bodily integrity, not exclusive to WW2.
• Critical analysis shows France, the UK, and the US did not see the same political brutalization in the interwar period as Germany.
• Most veterans returned to peaceful civilian life after 1918, with a powerful pacifist movement in France (Antoine Prost).
• Gerwarth argues that brutalization fails to fully explain "violent trajectories."

The First World War as a Catalyst

• The conflict unintentionally enabled social and national revolutions that reshaped Europe's political, social, and cultural agenda.
• It resulted in a trio of defeat, collapse of empires, and revolution.
• Total war saw a process of totalization between the first and second world wars.
• Post-1945, the nature of warfare changed dramatically.

Summary of The Age of Total War (Introduction) by Jeremy Black

• Introduction explores total war (1860-1945), challenging traditional views of warfare, strategy, and societal impact.
• Total war was not a World Wars phenomenon, but a long-term evolution impacted by technology, ideology, and politics.

Key Themes:

1. The Concept of Total War

• Black critiques the rigid definition of total war associated only with WWI and WWII.
• Wars from 1860 onward demonstrated total war elements like mass mobilization, industrial warfare, and civilian targeting.

2. Technology and Industrialization

• Industrialization transformed warfare.
• Railroads, mass weaponry production, and artillery/naval power increased war's destructive scale.
• 20th-century airpower blurred battlefield/civilian distinctions.

3. State Control and Mass Mobilization

• Governments increasingly organized economies/societies for war.

• Conscription, propaganda, and economic planning sustained war efforts.

• WWI and WWII nations restructuring economies/policies to sustain conflict.

4. The Impact on Civilians

• Total war erased military/civilian target distinctions.

5. The Political and Ideological Dimensions

• Nationalism, imperialism, and ideological extremism influenced wars.
• Conflicts became ideological, fought over regime survival.

6. The Evolution of Warfare from the 19th to the 20th Century

• Black traces war evolution from 19th-century conflicts to 20th-century global wars.
• The Cold War and modern conflicts show total war aspects.

Session 2: Collective Security and a New World Order

• The signing of a definitive cessation of fighting ≠ return to normal.

• Peace treaty negotiations took time.

• Not all soldiers were demobilized right away.

• A Long Post-War Transition

• What is the transition of war after the first world war, is it in Spring 1917? Treaty of Brest-Litovsk? August 8, 1918? "day of mourning for the German army"

• Fights did not stop in 1918 or 1919

  • Sack of Smyrna by the Turkish cavalry on September 9, 1922: 30,000 Greeks and Armenians were killed. See Ernest Hemingway “On the quay at Smyrna" (1925)

• ”This war is not the end but the beginning of violence. It is the forge in which the world will be hammered into new borders and new communities. New molds want to be filled with blood, and power will be wielded with a hard fist” Ernst Jünger

• Between 1917 and 1920, there were twenty-seven violent conflicts in Europe.

  • Civil wars Russia (1917-1923), Germany (1918-1919) and Ireland (1922-1923).
  • Border conflicts in Poland (1919-1921), Greece and Turkey (1919-1922).
  • Clashes between ethnic groups

• The long demobilisation

  • The complete demobilization of the French army after the First World War lasted around 18 months.
  • Ten years for most homes to be rebuilt in France.

• Traumatized veteran figure of post-war British literature and cultural demobilization was also very long.

• French historians set out to justify the war reparations.

• A major new international peace conference in paris included Thirty states, all continents represented, but no vanquished.

• Five peace treaties were given

  • The treaty of versailles with germany on 28 june 1919
  • The treaty of saint germain en laye with austria on september 10 1919
  • The treaty of neuilly on nov w bulgaria
  • The treaty of trianon in 1920 with hungary
  • The treaty of sevres with the ottoman empire in august 1920

• Conference participants and their objectives

  • Council of ten
    • this was the original top decision-making body at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, made up of the leaders and foreign ministers of the five major Allied powers
    • France (Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau & Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon) -Britain (Prime Minister David Lloyd George & Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour).
    • United States (President Woodrow Wilson & Secretary of State Robert Lansing)
    • Italy (Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando & Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino)
    • Japan (Ambassador Makino Nobuaki & diplomat Chinda Sutemi).
  • Council of four/Big three
  • Aim to secure world for democracy, but each power pursued different methods.
    • Clemenceau wanted to punish germany
    • Lloyd george was attentive to the balance of power in Europe
    • Wilson wanted to build a new international system

• A new map of europe

  • The transformation of an entire continent previously dominated by land empires into one composed of nation states - gerwarth.
  • Four empires that existed in 1914 dissapeared
    • The russian empire with th abdication of tsar nicholas II follwoing the feb 1917 revolution
    • The german empire came to an end w the abdication of kaiser wilhelm II on november 1918
    • The austro hungarian empire
    • The ottoman empire was abolished at the end of 1922

• Paris Peace Conference (1919) apply the principle of self-determination, meaning that nations (or ethnic groups) should have the right to govern themselves and have their own states

  • Diplomats and expert advisors (like geographers, historians, and ethnographers) were brought in to draw “rational” borders.
  • The idea was to base new borders on language spoken, natural geography (rivers, mountains), and ethnic composition of regions.
  • Emmanuel de Martonne was a French geographer who was influential in the process. He helped draft the borders of new states like Poland and Czechoslovakia and the “scientific peace."

• Despite the use of “scientific” criteria, many areas were too ethnically mixed to draw clean lines.

  • Example: Upper Silesia, a region claimed by both Poland and Germany.
    • The area was economically important (coal/industry).
    • Its population was a mix of Poles and Germans, so both nations claimed it.
    • This led to disputes and even local conflicts (including a plebiscite in 1921 to let the population choose, but that also caused violence).
  • Another example: Poland was reborn after WWI, but defining its borders.
    • was was chaotic and resulted in Poland ending up fighting wars with Russia (the Polish-Soviet War), Lithuania , and Ukraine.

• Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia emerged territorial beneficiaries of the postwar settlements.

  • the peace treaties failed to create new, homogeneous nationstates
    • there were miniature versions of multinational empires, where 30% of the population of Poland consisted of minorities.

• The origins of the League of Nations was the first international institution to set up a collective security system

  • Léon Bourgeois coined the term 'League of Nations ». Pour la Société des Nations, 1909.
  • US President Woodrow Wilson, said ‘14 points', a speech to the US Congress on 8 January 1918: “general association of nations”, that would offer “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.”
  • Covenant signed on 28 June 1919 which
    • Aimed "achieve international peace and security" by guaranteeing the equality of Nations & political independence and territorial integrity of all States.
    • Consisted of 42 founding members (1920) → 58 members (1934).
  • How could peace be achieved ? - Through the principle of collective security = security of each state is the concern of all others, requiring a collective response in the event of a threat.
    • There was to be No resorting to war: Seek arbitration through the League of Nations, moral, economic, financial, or military sanctions, requiring unanimous approval, and General disarmament.

• The LoN enabled several border conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe to be settled peacefully

• Resolved the Upper Silesia crisis in 1921 between Poland and Germany and the Corfu crisis in 1923 between Greece and Italy.

• Free cities under the control of the League of Nations

  • Self-governing entities under the "protection” or supervision of the League of Nations. (e.g., Danzig- mixed population (Germans and Poles)).

• Minority protection policy = safeguarding the rights of minorities in the newly created states.

• "Away with rifles, machine-guns, cannon! Make way for conciliation, for arbitration, for peace.” was the idea given by Aristide Briand.

• The Locarno Pact (1925) normalized Germany to its western borders was final which reassured France and Belgium, easing tensions.

  • A step towards reconciliation was made by recognizing Germany and admitting it to the League of Nations in 1926.

• The Briand-Kellogg Pact, signed in 1928 by 63 countries, attempted to outlaw war. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 raised hopes for self-determination across the non-European world, but these hopes were crushed when the European powers denied these demands. There was hypocrisy of the post-war peace process, also known as the ambivalent status of "mandate" for the former German colonies and for the Arab territories that the Ottoman Empire

• Anticolonial contestation = new ideologies, e.g. Pan-Africanism, and uprisings in february 1919.

• Anticolonial uprisings: Rif Republic led by Abdel el-Krim in Morocco (1921–26), the Syrian revolt (1925–28), and peasant uprisings in Indochina (1930–31):

  • British Empire's uprisings = Egypt, India, Iraq, and Burma.

• Covenant of the League did not include the principle of “racial equality" proposed by the Japanese nation.

• Two major consequences according to historian Naoko Shimazu in Japan

  • A belief that the Anglo-Saxon West had created an international system which was fundamentally ‘unfair' and 'unjust' at the Paris Peace Conference.
  • A symbolic importance as a means of justifying the increasingly 'independentforeign policy, like the Japancentric and pan-Asian- foreign policy, especially in the 1930s

• Borders of violence in europe

  • Germany - Diktat: Germany was forced to accept harsh terms and heavy war reparations in an unfair treaty/ Also, the "Stabbed in the back” conspiracy followed the events that led to Germany's defeat
  • Italy- "mutilated land” after being promised territory in the Treaty of London where they did not receive all the lands it expected, especially in the eastern Adriatic region

• After WWI, Hungary experienced severe political turmoil due to having to give up land to other nations, as well as dramatically reduced territories and harsh treaties and similar territorial losses and harsh treaties were imposed on Bulgaria and Austria, shrinking their borders and leaving behind deep resentment.

• Following the war, the Allied powers occupied parts of the Ottoman Empire: The Treaty of Sevres (1920) aimed to partition the Ottoman Empire.

• Kemalist Movement led by Mustafa Kemal: the turkish nationalist movement successfully resisted both Armenian and Greek forces and abolished the Ottoman Empire in November 1922.

• The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) established borders for modern Turkey, and shortly after, the Republic of Turkey was officially declared.

• Ethnic Homogeneity Project resulted in a compulsory population exchange where a significant impact impacted the demographic and cultural landscape of both countries.

• Russian Case

  • February/March 1917: the abdication of the Tsar ending centuries of Romanov rule, which resulted in a revolution.
  • The resulting Bolsheviks signed treaties ceding vast territories and soon facing strong opposition from all fronts and eventually leading to the official birth of the Soviet state.

• Europe's eastern frontiers were unstable and unsettled leading to a continuation of violence and turbulent change throughout the early 20th century

• THE REVISIONIST POWERS OF THE 1930s

  • Irredentism = political movement aimed at recovering "historic" territories
  • Germany refused to recognize its eastern borders and demanded the annexation of certain territories, like the Sudetenland
  • Hungary, also influenced by irredentist desires, also regained portions of Slovakia after several agreements

• The Failure of the League of Nations

• • Limited membership: The United States never joined, and the USSR was only admitted in 1934 -* Decisons required unanimity in the Council, making it difficult to take decisive action
• • Decisons usually sidelined the league and were taken behind close doors undermining its authority and demonstrating the Leagues powerlessness

• -Japan, Italy and Germany expanded aggressively violating the League's core principles

• The USSR initially sought cooperation with Western democracies but, as war loomed and as war loomed, Stalin shifted Soviet foreign policy, signing a pact with Nazi Germany to divide Eastern Europe.

• Lessons learned for a more secure world, Total Defeat and Long-Term Occupation of Axis power avoids a rushed peace and ensures total stability.

• Following WW2, Negotiated Peace Treaties and Conferences such as the San Francisco Conference brought countries together to create new frameworks, such as the UN and its roots

Designed to be more effective than the League of Nations, with

• General Assembly: Represents all member states
• Security Council: Five permanent members (USA, UK, USSR, China, France) With veto power to prevent deadlocks. Six elected members (two-year terms) The veto system insured that great powers could prevent actions against their interests, making the system more realistic and functional. Bretton Woods
• Bretton Woods Agreement (July 1944): signed by 44 countries to create a stable international monetary system The US dollar was linked to gold, becoming the global reserve currency and also involved the creation of organizations like the IMF and IBRD
• Deporting Entire Populations to Match New Borders
• Shifting Borders Post-WWII The USSR emerged as the main beneficiary of territorial settlements where Poland's borders were shifted westward While there were adjustments most borders remained unchanged, so entire populations were forcibly deported, resulting in mass expulsions and forced migrations, drastically reducing ethnic diversity and creating more homogenous nation-states War, violence, and massive social disolocation turned Versailles's dream of national homogeneity into realities The creation of Israel
• Zionism by Austro-Hungarian Theodor Herzl and the Balfour Declaration accelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine eventually leading to a partition plan for Palestine by the UN and the Proclamation of israel

Peace settlements in the mena after the first world war

• Collapse of the ottoman empire
• In 1915, British High Commissioner to Egypt Henry McMahon encouraged Arab revolts against Ottoman rule and promised Arab independence Territory shifted and there were many agreements such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement which saw Britain and France dividing up the middle east contradicting their earlier promises and formalising more Treaties like San Remo and Sèvres which formalized the dismantling of the Empire The League of Nations granted mandates to Britain and France, But, The mandates ignored Arab demands for self-determination, prioritizing British and French strategic interests, while artificial borders were imposed, disregarding ethnic and sectarian realities, fueling future conflicts. There was a Rise of nationalism through Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who secured Turkish sovereignty. Arab nationalist movements grew frustrated under European rule and formed Rebellions

Summary of The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End; 1917-1923 by Robert Gerwarth Robert Gerwarth argued that while World War I officially ended in 1918, the violence and instability it unleashed continued across Europe and beyond until at least 1923. Unlike the victorious Allies, the defeated Central Powers experienced political upheaval, revolution, and more

• Key Themes
• -The Ongoing Wars after 1918
• WWI did not bring peace, but sparked conflicts, ethnic conflicts, and civil wars
• -The Russian Revolution and Its Impact
• It sparked a Russian Civil War which spread fear of communism across Europe
• -The Paris Peace Conference and Unstable Borders
• It drew new maps and redrawing old borders from defeated nations leading to resentment
• -The Rise of Fascism and Nationalist Resentment
• Fueled by harsh treaties that led to territorial losses and creating a sense of betrayal especially regarding Germany and Italy

Session 3 - The Age of Ideologies and Totalitarianism

• Comparing totalitarianisms has been a longstanding taboo.

  • Ernst Nolte argued that Nazism was a reaction to Bolshevism.
  • Nolte also suggested the Gulag system served as a precedent for the Nazi genocide, causing great criticism.
  • As his critics accused Nolte, they thought that he was relativizing Nazi crimes defensive rather than ideological.
  • In the 1920s, "Totalitarian" came up as an Adjective, especially among Italian antifascists to describe Mussolini's regime
  • In the 1930s it evolved into a "Totalitarianism", and becoming a tool to criticize the shared authoritarian
  • In the 1950's it shifted again as to the term gained widespread use, especially in the Cold War context
    • At this stage it illustrated the dangers of totalitarian control and became a political weapon to discredit the USSR, equating
    • Stalinism with Nazism

• In the 1970's and 1980's scholars began questioning the validity of the totalitarianism framework and the concept was accused of trivializing the Holocaust placing Nazi Germany and the USSR in the same category

War as the matrix of totalitarianism War played a crucial role in paving the way for totalitarian regimes and the militarization of political parties, as well as being a breeding ground for future regimes Communism as a new framework and modified by new ideologies

Discipline and Suppression of Dissent occurred Under Leninism, the Communist Party was seen as the tight-knit vanguard of the revolution, composed of professional revolutionaries who worked in clandestine networks This gave way to revolutionary expansion and attempts to trigger global ambition of communism Fascism and nazism were, arguably, reactions to communism and the threat it posed in that time

Fascism mirrored communist methods to serve nationalist goals rather than class struggle and found its roots in existing ideological movements such as through nationalist ideology Colonial violence can also be argued as a source and influencer

• Features of totalitarianism includes -An official ideology and key characteristics -Primarcy of the ideology -Reqimes controlling the military -Tightly controlled societies though suppression and economic control

The concept of NEVER-TOTAL GRIP OF TOTALITARIAN REGIMES ON SOCIETY through many ways of resistance While they did exert control by force, there was a level of public consent or other factors that allowed control of the populace and there were many differences in regime violence Soviet state of mind was to start off with a global view before settling to be a focus on internal building

• For fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, war was seen not only as a means of national expansion but also as an essential expression of their will to power. Both regimes glorified conflict and aggression as fundamental to their ideological narratives.

• The endurance of communism - adapting to national contexts. -capacity for syncretism, blending Marxist ideology with elements of national identity greatness, allowing them to endure across different regions and adapt to local contexts.

• This adaptability is seen in regimes such as those in Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and Cambodia.

• Mao Zedong's Maoism : principles and strategies that could be applied to the Chinese context - to suit its conditions Key Features of Maoism:

• *The Central Role of the Peasantry

• *Maoism emphasized the concept of "permanent revolution

• *The Great Leap Forward was a key example of Mao's attempt to mobilize all of China to increase production in both agriculture and industry The spanish civil war: a european civil war?

• The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

• Reflected polarised tensions of WWII Defined by the ideological divide between fascim and christian democracy

• Consisted of republicans of left-wing coalition and nationalists supported by conservative right-wing factions, This lead to international solidarity and anti-fascist resistance through support and committees, as well as military intervention by foreign nations