Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918

by Edited by Roger Chickering , Stig Förster

• ISBN13: 9780521773522
• ISBN10: 0521773520
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The First World War was the first large-scale industrialized military conflict in the world’s history, and it gave birth to the concept of total war. The essays in this volume analyse the experience of the war in light of this concept’s implications, in particular the systematic erosion of distinctions between the military and civilian spheres. With an emphasis on developments in Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States, leading scholars from Europe and North America locate the First World War along a trajectory that began in the wars of the middle of the nineteenth century and culminated in worldwide conflict in the middle of the twentieth. The essays explore the efforts of soldiers and statesmen, industrialists and financiers, professionals and civilian activists to adjust to the titanic, pervasive pressures that the military stalemate on the western front imposed on belligerent and neutral societies.

Author Biography

Roger Chickering is a professor of history in the Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University Stig Forster is a professor of history at the University of Bern, Switzerland

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Contributors	xi
Introduction	1	(18)
Stig Forster
PART ONE BASIC REFLECTIONS
From Cabinet War to Total War: The Perspective of Military Doctrine	19	(16)
Hew Strachan
World War I and the Theory of Total War: Reflections on the British and German Cases	35	(22)
Roger Chickering
PART TWO THE CHANGING REALITIES OF WARFARE
World War I and the Revolution in Logistics	57	(16)
Martin van Creveld
Mass Warfare and the Impact of Technology	73	(22)
Dennis E. Showalter
Total War as a Result of New Weapons? The Use of Chemical Agents in World War I	95	(18)
Rolf-Dieter Muller
Planning Total War? Falkenhayn and the Battle of Verdun, 1916	113	(20)
Holger Afflerbach
``The Most Extensive Experiment that the Imagination Can Conceive'': War, Emotional Stress, and German Medicine, 1914-1918	133	(20)
Wolfgang U. Eckart
PART THREE WAR AGAINST NONCOMBATANTS
War Between Soldiers and Enemy Civilians, 1914-1915	153	(16)
John Horne
Alan Kramer
The Blockade of Germany and the Strategy of Starvation, 1914-1918: An Agency Perspective	169	(20)
Avner Offer
Total Rhetoric, Limited War: Germany's U-Boat Campaign, 1917-1918	189	(18)
Holger H. Herwig
The First Air War Against Noncombatants: Strategic Bombing of German Cities in World War I	207	(20)
Christian Geinitz
Bullying the Neutrals: The Case of the Netherlands	227	(20)
Marc Frey
PART FOUR POLITICIANS, SOLDIERS, AND THE PROBLEM OF UNLIMITED WARFARE
Poincare, Clemenceau, and the Quest for Total Victory	247	(18)
John F. V. Keiger
Strategy and Unlimited Warfare in Germany: Moltke, Falkenhayn, and Ludendorff	265	(16)
Wilhelm Deist
The Strategy of Unlimited Warfare? Kitchener, Robertson, and Haig	281	(16)
David French
French Strategy on the Western Front, 1914-1918	297	(30)
David Stevenson
Strategy and Total War in the United States: Pershing and the American Military Tradition	327	(22)
Russell F. Weigley
PART FIVE MOBILIZING ECONOMIES AND FINANCE FOR WAR
War Aims, State Intervention, and Business Leadership in Germany: The Case of Hugo Stinnes	349	(20)
Gerald D. Feldman
Lloyd George and the Management of the British War Economy	369	(20)
Keith Grieves
Better Late than Never: The American Economic War Effort	389	(20)
Elisabeth Glaser
How (Not) to Pay for the War: Traditional Finance and ``Total''	409	(28)
War Niall Ferguson
PART SIX SOCIETIES MOBILIZED FOR WAR
Mobilizing German Society for War	437	(16)
Richard Bessel
Women's Wartime Services Under the Cross: Patriotic Communities in Germany	453	(32)
Jean H. Quataert
Pandora's Box: Propaganda and War Hysteria in the United States During World War I	485	(16)
Jorg Nagler
Painting and Music During and After the Great War: The Art of Total War	501	(18)
Arthur Marwick
Index	519