Class notes
Total War in Europe
- Course
- World War 2 (HIST420)
- Institution
- University Of The Fraser Valley (UFV)
The logistics of a total war in Europe on both sides of the warfront
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Total War in EuropeThe War of Resources and the Effort to Destroy Them
● Total War
○ In total war it becomes about who you can kill
○ Attack anything and everything (Selection and Maintenance of the Aim)
○ Industrialization and mobilization of resources
○ Blur of war front and homefront (Blockades)
○ World War II is a more mobile war in that it is large geographically
○ Goal: Breaking the morale/ will of the community (nation-state)
● Raw materials were highly important
● Women work in the factories would seem like the likely thing but they were actually
working in agriculture
● What is Total War?
○ Why does this happen?
○ Is it a modern phenomenon?
○ How is a total war manifested in the fighting?
○ What is the cost?
● Total War: Usually Associated with WW1 and WWII
○ Horrible loss of life is not unique in war: the Mongols killed millions in their 200
years of dominance- sought to depopulate China; might have killed up to 60
million
○ The inhabitants of Easter Island exterminated themselves over resources in the
18th Century
○ But… historically frictions that limit war (social, political, technological etc.) were
dominant: subsistence economies, limited warrior classes using edged weapons
○ No one wants total war: too much risk… but war can expand
● Nations in Arms
○ Gunpowder weapons made battles costly to both sides, even the winners, but the
political and industrial developments of the 19th Century created a nasty
combination of both the readiness of the masses to participate in war
(conscription as a civic duty or legal compulsion) and the economic/industrial
means to supply them
○ People read “to fight for their countries”
○ Add the internal combustion engine and now the masses can move and bring
war to the enemy’s home front
○ Started in WW1; much worse in WWII
○ Who is a legitimate target? Everyone?
● Mobilization of Resources
○ Having the public will and means to make war “total” still demands that one do
it-limitations (frictions) are always present
, ○ Germany and Japan started WWII with large stocks of weapons; Germany loathe
to fight total war; ironically, Japan fought it to gain the resources it lacked to
sustain war
○ Democracies seemed to do well; Russia, however, was the best and most
efficient. Germany and Japan the worst although German production did
increase: 1942, Albert Speer
○ See Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6xLMUifbxQ (Tank
production segment starts 26 minutes into the video)
○ Human Resources: 100 million (?) mobilized for the war; but hundreds of millions
on the homefront; all participants, all targets
○ Who will fight and who will work? Socio-political…
● Mobilizing Women to Fight and Work
○ Need for combatants took many men out of the workplace
○ Women? A good measure of total war and the frictions that limited their use
○ Why would women not be used? Be used?
○ Almost all states did not use women for combat; some anti-aircraft functions-not
shooting/killing!
○ Russia an exception-women performed all military functions in combat;
communist pragmatic egalitarianism: work and fight
○ Work: all states allowed women tp work although Germany seemed hesitant:
“Kinder, Kuche, Kirche” (Children, Church, Kitchen) was the Nazi mantra. But
more German women were working than British women
● Forced or Slave Labor
○ To avoid stressing the homefront, Germany hoped to exploit the resources of
occupied and “collaborative” states; 20% of Germany’s GDP came from outside
of Germany; eg. France provided food and other resources while it went without
○ Foreign workers (“voluntary” or conscripted)
○ POWs and Concentration camp inmates used as labor
○ Over the course of the war 12 million (7 million in 1944 alone)
○ Russia “militarized labor”; failure to perform was treason
● Legislated Service or the Free Market
○ Britain immediately passed the National Service Act (Sept 3, 1939)
○ All men 18-41
○ 1941, Women included
○ Labor was conscripted
○ The US relied on a government-business alliance to enhance war production: it
worked. Few designs but many producers: eg, Sherman tanks and Liberty ships
● Fighting Total War: Germany’s Total War Strategy
○ Avoir it at home: exploit the conquered lands
○ Quick European victory would have rendered the need for extensive naval
operation unnecessary: failure of Battle of Britain; hard Russian resistance and
the US entry into the war demanded an attritional strategy
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