MODERN TOTAL WAR
(War in the industrial age)

Table of Contents =
Opening definitions
Origins
World War One
World War Two
Cold War
New World Order
Illustrations and maps

In the modern age, the definitions of war and revolution have become much alike because war and revolution have become much alike [TXT]

One very telling feature of the merging of war and revolution is the 20th-century transformation of stated or claimed war aims from geo-militaristic goals to contemporary political-revolutionary goals =
*1917my:Petrograd Soviet [ID]
*1918ja:USA President Wilson's "Fourteen Points" [ID]
*--Increasingly over the next century, such sweeping political revolutionary goals were adopted by belligerents at war

What is "total war" or war in the "age of industrialism"[ID] or war in the "third phase of European and World Revolution" [ID]?

• The nature of armies = Everyone is potentially a combatant
• The distinction between "soldier" and "civilian" is minimized
• Soldier and civilian are conflated with one another as "enemy" or "ally"
• The nature of "war front" changes
• "War front" and "home front" become barely distinguishable
• Astonishing "advancements" are made in the technical, mechanical, industrial quality of weapons and other devices [SAC LOOP on battlefield for EG~]
• Also astonishing "advancements" in battlefield outcomes
• National resources are subjected to total mobilization at the hands of expanded executive authority ("the state")
• The distinction between war and peace is minimized
• Nation-states entered an epoch of permanent war footing
• The rise of "military industrial complexes" [ W#1 | W#2 ]
• The great German military leader (Prussian, of Polish descent) Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) came to maturity in the era of the Napoleon wars
• In Clausewitz's famous (but never finished) book On War, he said war was diplomacy by other means
• This implied that war served the diplomatic interests of the nation
• His fuller meaning actually implied the reverse, as it became clear in the WW1 and post-WW1 era, a century after his time, a time in which his concept of total war could finally be realized =
• By the 20th century, international and domestic politics now became war by other means. EG="war on poverty", "war on drugs"
  • Military and police virtues crowded out civilian virtues
  • Modern total war meant that military objectives were also total, as in the notion of "clash of civilizations" [EG]

  Centuries prior to the 20th were demonstrably more "peaceful". Pitirim Sorokin, in vol. 3 of Social and Cultural Dynamics, came up with these statistics that show how remarkably "peaceful" the 19th century was =

  *1701:1815; War casualties (killed, accidents, disease) = 8,829,000
  *1815:1914; War casualties (killed, accidents, disease) = 2,217,000

  Sorokin sought to create an index of bellicosity for each century. He measured number of wars, duration, size of armies, numbers killed and wounded, number of countries involved, and percent of population in uniform. He set the 15th century at the index number "100". Compared with that index, the 20th century UP TO WW2 (i.e., from 1900 to 1938) = "3000". In other words, the first third of the 20th century was 30 times more bellicose than the whole of the 15th century

  Here is Sorokin's figures for average yearly death toll from war over the past several centuries =

  1600-1699 =   33,000
  1700-1799 =   52,000
  1800-1899 =   55,000
  1900-1936 = 700,000 | NB! 20th-c. figures covered only 1st 1/3 of the 20th century, before WW2

  

  Origins of "total war"

  1. 1500+: Imperialist or colonial conquest beyond Europe
  2. *1900s: The myth of "the peaceful 19th century" in Europe
  • 1812: Napoleon in Russia [ID]
  • 1871: Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune
  3. Rise of militant “isms”
  • Social Darwinism = "The struggle for survival" and "Survival of the fittest"
  • Marxism and “class struggle”
  • Nation-state militarism (international war)
  • Revolutionary liberalism and socialism ("internal war")
  4. 1862+: USA Civil War = The coming of industrialized warfare
  • Here's how an eyewitness, a denizen of Vicksburg (a Confederate stronghold on the banks of the Mississippi River) described the Union, or "Federals", naval bombardment of the civilian population there =
  The Federals fought the garrison in part, but the city mainly. Even the fire on the lines was not confined to them in its effects, for hardly any part of the city was outside the range of the enemy's artillery from any direction except the south. Shot from opposite quarters might have collided above the city. But the city was a target in itself, and was hit every time. Just across the Mississippi, a few days after the lines were closed, seven-, eleven-, and thirteen-inch mortars were put in position and trained directly on the homes of the people [...]. Twenty-four hours of each day these preachers of the Union made their touching remarks to the town. All night long their deadly hail of iron dropped through roofs and tore up the deserted and denuded streets. It was a feature of their practice that early in the night their favors would be addressed to one part of the city, and afterward changed so as to reach the cases of persons in other parts who had gone to bed in fancied security. Those Who could forget the deadly design and properties of these missiles might admire every night the trail which they made across the western heavens; rising steadily and shiningly in great parabolic curves, descending with ever-increasing swiftness, and falling with deafening shriek and explosion; hurling in many a radius their ponderous fragments. It is believed by the expert that a mortar shell is the most demoralizing agency of war. [...] For forty days and nights, without interval, the women and children of Vicksburg took calmly and bravely the iron storm [...]. They wreaked their worst and utmost on the town, bringing out the most vicious of all war's aspects. [...] An account says that on June 22d [1862] 150,000 shells fell inside of the city; but this was probably an exaggeration. [...] Nothing was spared by the shells [Source | More about Vicksburg]
  • Here’s how an eyewitness of the Battle of Fredericksburg described the aftermath of intensive artillery bombardment of the city =
  When night descended, the flames of burning houses still lit up the landscape, and though the continuous roar of the batteries was hushed, a sullen gun at intervals resembled the horse growl of a wild animal who retires with reluctance from his prey. The result of this bombardment was cruel, and the scenes which followed it sufficient to excite the sensibilities of the most hard-hearted. Men, women, and children had been driven from the town; and hundreds of ladies and children were seen wandering homeless and without shelter over the frozen highway, with bare feet and thin clothing, knowing not where to find a place of refuge. Delicately nurtured girls, upon whose frail forms no rain had ever beat, and whom no wind had visited too roughly, walked hurriedly, with unsteady feet, over the various roads, seeking some friendly roof to cover them. Whole families sought sheds by the wayside, or made temporary shelters of fence-rails and straw, knowing not whither to fly. Such were the cruel results of the cannonade. Night had settled down; the shattered houses were visible only when the flames of the burning buildings soared up suddenly as they caught some new object... [Source]
  1. Idealization or normalization of violence and acts of terrorism
  • Bakunin = “Destructive urge is, after all, a creative urge"
  • Freud
  • SRs Boevaia organizatsiia
  • 1908: Georges Sorel
  • Norman Angell and others gave warning [ID]
  • While yet others praised the heroic virtues of war
  • The Second International tried, but failed, to buck the tide [ID]
  2. Dress rehearsals for WW1

  

  World War One
  Imperialist practice comes home

  *1912:1913; Balkan Wars [MAP] = The imperialist style turned back upon Europe itself
  *1914+: World War One [MAP of Eastern Front] = The fall of the four big European empires, Russia, Austria, Germany and Ottoman Turkey
  *1917de:"Peace" [a bellicose truce] on the Eastern Front, followed soon by Allied intervention in the Russian Revolutionary Civil War
  *1918no:One year later, Armistice on the Western Front
  *1919ja+: Treaties signed at Paris Peace Conference (especially the Versailles Treaty settled on Germany) assured future conflicts

  The WW1 LOOP on "battlefield" up to the collapse of the Russian Empire

  

  World War Two
  or
  Total War, round two

  *1938:Austrian Anschluss and the Munich Accord followed by "Hitler-Stalin pact" [MAP]. Who would succeed in turning Hitler the other way?
  *1939se:1945au; (lasting nearly 5 years) World War Two opened with Hitler Germany and USSR plus Lithuania dividing Poland between them
  *--Four phases (plus a "sub-phase" perhaps best given independent status as "the fifth phase") =

  1. 1940my:je; (battle on the ground essentially over in 6 weeks) Hitler vs. Western Europe (1st brief Western Front) [MAP]
  2. 1941je:1945my; (lasting nearly 4 years) Hitler vs. USSR | Stalingrad.| Kursk
  3. 1941de:1945au; (over 3 1/2 years) The Pacific War [with its origins a century earlier (ID) | MAP]
  4. 1944je:1945my; Second brief 11-month Western Front, this time far more successful for the Allies
  5. 1941au:1943; Notice the neglected 2-year sub-phase in northern Africa
  • This phase or sub-phase broke out just days after Hitler invaded the USSR at the beginning of the second phase of WW2
  • In truth, this is best thought of as a genuine fifth phase of WW2, "the AfroAsian" [ID] phase

  The WW2 14-hop battlefield LOOP through each of the four phases

  

  Cold War [LOOP on Cold War launches SAC account]

  

  "New-World (Dis)Order" [SAC on "New World Order"]

  

  MAPS

  *1912:1913; Balkan wars
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

  *1914:1918; WW1 Eastern Front
  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  *1939se01:European states
  

   

   

   

   

  *1939:1945:European Theatre
  

   

   

   

   

  *1930s:1945au; The Pacific War