Apr 26, 2020, 10:03 PM
Total war includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs.
(stage one – mobilized total war)
Total war is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes, sometimes even vanishing entirely, due to the capacity of opposing sides to consider nearly every human resource, even that of non-combatants, to be a part of the war effort.
(stage two – unrestricted total war)
In the mid-19th century, scholars identified total war as a separate class of warfare.