Total war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.
In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, there is less differentiation between combatants and civilians than in other conflicts, and sometimes no such differentiation at all, as nearly every human resource, civilians and soldiers alike, can be considered to be part of the belligerent effort.
Playing a major part in main conflicts from the French Revolutionary Wars to the World War II, the employment of total war was replaced in the modern era for cheaper, quicker and more effective policies including Guerrilla warfare and the adoption of weapons of mass destruction.
Read more about Total War: Etymology
Famous quotes containing the words total and/or war:
“For, the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation “alter” nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)