Total War

Modern war is often called "total war." Total war is often thought to be new in this century, but in many ways it isn't. Ancient wars, for instance, were often total in the sense that the loser's cities and crops were destroyed, the men slaughtered, and the women and children taken captive.

But today's total war is so different from past wars that it is a new development. Before the mid-19th Century, armies were small, and most wars were fought on battlefields away from the civilian population. A country that went to war didn't put all its industry to work making war supplies and ammunition, as happens today. There was no such thing as bombing of cities, though cities were often besieged and even destroyed.

All this began to change with the Civil War. In that war, armies--and casualties--were huge by the standards of past wars. The railroad made troop movements easier and more rapid than they had ever been before. The telegraph made for fast communication. Even the weapons used were rifles that shot modern-style bullets, rather than muskets which shot lead balls as in earlier wars.

Most important, the Civil War saw the first use of a deliberate attack against the enemy's population rather than the enemy's army. For many people, this is what makes modern war different from past wars. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army believed that the best way to defeat the Confederacy was to destroy its economy and its "will to fight." His troops first occupied and destroyed Atlanta--then, as now, a major trade center. They then marched in a line fifty miles wide from Atlanta to the Georgia coast, burning crops, killing those who resisted them, and destroying property as they went. This "March to the Sea" split the Confederacy and ruined its economy, just as Sherman had predicted. It was a total war tactic.

Direct attacks against civilians are forbidden by the laws of war, but they are common in modern war. The British blockaded German shipping in World War I and caused great hardship and starvation among the civilian population. The Allies bombed German cities in World War II, and the Germans bombed Great Britain and many of the cities of Europe. All these are total war tactics.

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