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 other choice than to try and wear the enemy down by ‘simply shooting down more of theirs then that they shoot of ours’. This strategy of attiration cost all the participating countries a lot of soldiers, and diminished the significance of the individual. This was also a cause of the centralization of power, because the decisive government was not in the warzone and therefore did not see the soldiers as human beings. It is more likely that they saw the soldiers as pawn that no real worth.
A similar phenomenon occurred in the involved countries politics. The governments seemed to recognize that the national interest was more important than the internal conflicts between different political parties. The emperor of Germany said: “I recognize parties no more. I recognize only Germans!” These different political parties did not criticize the authorities anymore, which allowed the participating countries’ governments make claims to authority that they could never have made in times of peace, and had drifts towards totalitarian political methods. The governments’ increasing power and influence led to the centralization of power.
In the beginning of the war, the governments did not see the need to think about their economic status. Most countries thought like the Chief of Staff Moltke of Germany. He said: “Don’t bother me with economics. I am busy conducting the war.” This was very unrealistic because By September 1914 all the countries soon realized that they did not have enough supplies, goods and soldiers to keep this strategy of attiration running. For example, The French factories needed to make 70,000 shells a day to keep up with the war’s demand, which was impossible in the current production rate. The government decided that there should be some radical change in the way they produced their war goods.. In almost all the participating countries an inside total war began. First of all, almost all the participating countries’ governments appointed an “ammunition tsar”. These men had basically all the control over the production of military goods and ammunition in a country, and it was their task to mobilize all economic resources. The centralized power grew even more because the executive authorities could now also expand their influence in areas that were formally known as private. This had a great influence in the civilians daily life. Every factory capable to produce ammunition and other military goods was transformed to a "war factory”, and produced only those goods. The factory young factory workers were removed from the producing job and they were sent to the front. Women took their places in the factories, and working hours were extended. The powerful governments raised taxes to finance the war, also a lot of countries put their civilians on rations. From this moment on the civilians now were an active part of the ware and were referred to as “the home front”. The military efforts now consisted out the fighting soldiers as well as a civilian sector. The countries needed the people’s support and therefore the governments subjected their people to thought control. In England, the Defense of the Realm Act gave the government right to do anything in order to find those opposed to war. All rights were suspended to the government. Newspapers and magazines throughout Europe were censored to so that they also promoted and support the war. This inside total war also triggered outside total war. When the civilians of a country become a part of the war effort of a country, they also become targets for that same country’s enemies. Hereby, the Allied as well as the German side undertook actions that we would now define as war crimes against humanity.
The first world war is a total war because of the impact it had on civilians daily life, and on the fact that basically entire countries revolved around war in political sense as well as economic sense. People were no longer seen as human beings; they were pawns in the governments’ game. A human life had lost its worth. Also, the war propaganda and illusions that the governments used to keep the civilians in support of the war lead to a fierce hatred between the countries involved. The hatred between the countries lead to the complication of the peace negotiations. This was a key fact for the start of the Second World War, for one of the main causes of that war was the fact that the Germans were unsatisfied with the outcome of the peace conferences of the First World War.