Total war
Historians call the Second World War a total war. The label explains why the war reached so deeply into ordinary life and why it was so destructive. It also gives a way to compare the two World Wars with the many other conflicts fought in the twentieth century.
A war in which every participating country fully mobilizes its human, economic and military resources for the war effort.
Mobilizing human resources means drawing people into the armed forces and into war work. Mobilizing economic resources means directing industry, farming and trade towards what the war needs. Mobilizing military resources means committing the full strength of the army, navy and air force. In a total war, all three happen in every country involved. Both the First and Second World Wars meet this test.
A war in which at least one of the combatants does not fully mobilize its human, economic and military resources.
Examples of limited wars in the twentieth century include:
- the Korean War (1950–53)
- the Vietnam War (1954–75, with US ground combat from 1965 to 1973)
- the Falklands War (1982)
- the Gulf War (1990–91)
A war fought between two sides within one country.
The Spanish Civil War and the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s are both examples of devastating civil wars.
Students often assume a limited war must be short or small. The deciding factor is mobilization. The Vietnam War lasted from 1954 to 1975 and is still classed as limited, because at least one side did not throw its whole society into the fighting.
The categories describe different things, so they can overlap. Total and limited describe how far countries mobilize. Civil describes who is fighting whom. A civil war could, in principle, be fought in a total or a limited way.
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