Total war

Total war is warfare that 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. The American-English Dictionary defines total war as "war that 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."

In the mid-19th century, scholars identified "total war" as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, to an extent inapplicable to less total conflicts, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes and even sometimes vanishes entirely as opposing sides can consider nearly every human resource, even that of non-combatants, as part of the war effort.

Actions that may characterize the post-19th century concept of total war include:

One can trace back the phrase to the publication in 1935 of the World War I memoir of German General Erich Ludendorff, Der totale Krieg ("The total war"). Some authors extend the concept back as far as classic work of Carl von Clausewitz, On War, as "absoluter Krieg"; however, different authors interpret the relevant passages in diverging ways. Total war also describes the French "guerre à outrance" during the Franco-Prussian War.

During the American Civil War, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman stated that to win and end the war with fewest possible casualties, he must wage "hard war" (a synonym for total war) against not only enemy combatants but also enemy civilians on the home front who engaged in arms and food production for the war effort of the Confederacy. By destroying infrastructure vital to the Confederate war effort and striking a serious blow at civilian morale, he thought that it would seriously impair the ability of the Confederacy to continue resistance and thus would turn its populace against their leadership. In his letter to his Chief of Staff, Union General Henry Halleck on 24 December 1864 described that the Union was "not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies," defending Sherman's March to the Sea, the operation that inflicted widespread destruction of infrastructure in Georgia.

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