Total War I.

This is coolbert.

"Nation, Rise Up, and Let the Storm Break Loose" - - Joseph Goebbels.

[Once again, borrowing and quoting freely from the web site of Professor Holger H. Herwig Department of History University of Calgary.]

What is total war and how is it waged? In the past and in the present, and presumably in the future.

Certainly, without question, even the "experts" disagree about this concept!!

"The concept of 'total war' is a vexing one and continues to defy precise definition."

"Does it infer the 'total' application of all available armed force?"

[this presumably would include the massive use of nuclear weaponry in a global thermonuclear war!!]

"Does it translate into what John Keiger describes as the pursuit of 'total'
victory?"

[in classical terms, this would be the invasion of the enemy's homeland, the defeat of his military and the breaking of the will of the enemy populace to further resist!!]

"Reference guides offer little assistance."

"The Official Dictionary of Military Terms published by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C., under 'total war' reads: 'Not to be used.'"

"A private civilian reference guide, Edward Luttwak and Stuart Koehl, The Dictionary of Modern War, under 'total war' warns the reader: 'The term is propagandistic and literary. . . .'"

Even the different authorities have differing interpretations and concept regarding "total war", even the most profound observers on the subject, do they not??

"the generic definition offered by Carl von Clausewitz in Book Eight,
Chapter Two, of On War. There, he depicted 'absolute war' as a
'general point of reference,' as a 'state of absolute perfection';
in other words, as a theoretical 'standard' to 'judge all wars by.'
A nation or ruler seeking to approach this ideal-type method,
Clausewitz stated, needed to wage war "without respite
until the enemy succumbed," that is, with all available
forces and resources until one side dictated political terms to
the other. In real war, of course, the 'absolute' ideal was
tempered by 'extraneous matters' such as friction, inertia,
inconsistency, imprecision, and the "timidity of man."

[it would seem that World War Two was the type of war Clausewitz had in mind when he devised the concept of "absolute war". Invade Germany, defeat the German military, break the will of the German people to further resist, and dictate political terms to the Germans, without their input at all.]

"Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of Germany's High Sea Fleet,
in 1888-9 translated 'absolute war' simply into 'victory in the first great
naval battle' of a war."

[this is a very simplistic and parochial view of "absolute war"]

"And General Erich Ludendorff, who in 1935 wrote a bestseller entitled Total War, allowed that the very concept simply tended to confuse . . . ."

[seemingly this concept confuses the lay public and the professionals both!!]

Let us consider what Joseph Goebbels had to say about total war.

[I am extracting with permission from the web site of Professor Randall Bytwerk for the points as enunciated by Goebbels.]

This is in 1943. Goebbels made an important speech to Nazi party faithful at a staged event to whip up a frenzy among the German populace as to the seriousness of the war. This of course was just after the fall of Stalingrad and the destruction of the German 6th Army.

Goebbels includes the following among his statements regarding total war:

First: "are you willing to accept the heaviest personal burdens?"

Second: "standing behind the fighting army and to wage war with wild determination through all the turns of fate until victory is ours?"

Third: "Are you and the German people willing to work, if the Fuhrer orders, 10, 12 and if necessary 14 hours a day?"

Fourth: "do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?"

Fifth: "Are you absolutely and completely ready to follow him [Hitler] wherever he goes and do all that is necessary to bring the war to a victorious end?"

Sixth: "give your full strength to provide the Eastern Front with the men and munitions it needs to give Bolshevism the death blow?"

Seventh: "take a holy oath."

Eighth: "German women to put their full strength at work to support the war effort"

Ninth: "Do you approve, if necessary,the most radical measures against a small group of shirkers and black marketers?"

Tenth and lastly: "that the homeland should bear the heavy burdens of the war together, and that the burdens should be shared equally between high and low and rich and poor?"

Goebbels understands total war to be a harnessing of a nations industrial capacity to the fullest, waging war heedless of the consequences, using whatever means necessary, and a full and complete participation of the "masses" at all levels, without equivocation, and with punishment for those that will not accede to the governmental demands, all this without regard to burden, NO MATTER WHAT THE COST!! NOT only an physical commitment of the fullest measure, but a mental commitment without reserve as well!!

Such was the total war vision that Goebbels had in mind for the German people.

coolbert.