Linde Smeets                                                                                                  IB European History year 2.

TOTAL WAR

Instead of relying on their military force, the participating countries of World War One relied on their economic ability to produce a continuous supply of goods for their armies to win the war. If one looks at the causes of this change, can one therefore conclude that the First World War was a total war? And if it were one, what were the effects of it on the people of the participating countries?

When one evaluates the First World War, one sees that a very unique factor of this war was that the people from the participating countries all seemed to be so enthusiastic about the upcoming war. They all wanted to be a part of it, and all the people were in complete support of their governments. The French writer Doregeles  wrote about his experiences in Paris. He wrote “...thousands of men eager to fight would jostle one another outside recruiting offices, waiting to join up.” And, “...sheafs of flags appeared at windows, and howling processions rolled out on the boulevards.”  The people hadn’t seen a war before and they were ignorant about its consequences. They basically had no idea of what war was really like and thought of it as one big adventure. Also the soldiers thought that they would go to the front for a few months. They even thought that they would be back at Christmas. According to Stefan Zweig the recruits shouted laughingly to their mothers in August of 1914 that “They’d be home at Christmas.” A lot of the soldiers thought that they would come back as war heroes. Stefan Zweig wrote “… What did the great mass know of war in 1914, after nearly half a century of peace? They did not know war; they had hardly given it a thought. It had become legendary, and distance had made it seem more romantic and heroic.” Every individual experienced some kind of exaltation of their ego. Since there were so many patriotic feelings in the countries, the differences within, like for example class or rank were totally ignored. Instead of being someone from high birth or a plain worker, people were fellow countrymen. Stefan Zweig wrote that “All differences of class rank and language were flooded over at that moment by the rushing feeling of fraternity.”

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When the First World War started, both sides realized that this was a modernized war, because of the new technologies and discoveries they had made in their weaponry. There were new kinds of bombs, gas, machineguns, tanks, artillery, airplanes, grenades, and barbed wire. To protect themselves from enemy fire, the soldiers from both sides started to dig a complicated trench system. Trench had warfare started, and the phenomenon of new warfare technology and trenches caused the Allies forces as well as Germany and its allies to soon found out that they were stalemate. Both sides had no ...

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