Silvapages
Total War and its Effects
- Total war is the practice of war where nearly all the resources
of a society are employed to defeat an opponent. This also means
that any resources used by the enemy are also legitimate targets of
war. As a result, factories, pipelines, railroads, bridges, etc.
become legitimate targets in war.
- This does not mean that all is permitted, however. For
instance, the deliberate targeting of civilians, religious
buildings, hospitals, POW camps, etc. are all still illegal under
the law of war. Mistreatment of surrendered soldiers who qualify as
Prisoners of War is still a war crime. Spies and other illegal
combatants still may be denied POW protections and may even be
executed. The deliberate targeting of chaplains and medics was still
strictly forbidden though such soldiers were routinely killed by
random battlefield conditions or by simple mistake.
- Total war does mean the near-total mobilization of the
population. All are expected to do their part to help with the 'war
effort.' Children collected war materials, civilians were subjected
to rationing of most goods, nearly all were expected to buy
government issued bonds to fund the war. In Germany women became
the backbone of agriculture. The US would not draft farmers as a
rule and this freed up women to help out primarily through clerical
work and commonly in munitions industries that were viewed as
temporary "war jobs" that would not deny a returning servicemen his
job once the war ended. Workers killed by enemy attack at their
factory jobs were considered legitimate deaths as the workers could
stay away from the factory since the factory was the target, not the
worker.
- The entire economy in Total War is subject to the needs of the
government. Consumer goods are hardest hit by Total War. For
instance, in the US no automobiles were built in 1943 and 1944 as
those factories were needed to build tanks and other military
vehicles. Refrigerators and other appliances were either not built,
or severely restricted. Silk stockings were simply unavailable and
the nylon-stocking replacements were in very short supply. Intake
of meat and other expensive food items were strictly rationed.
Rubber was to be turned over to the governments as a rule and speed
limits were placed on automobiles to encourage the use of public
transportation in order to save on rubber tires. Clothing was also
strictly rationed as material had to be saved for military purposes.
In Britain, bananas and oranges were nearly unheard of by 1942 as
they were unnecessary items that took valuable space on the hard
pressed merchant ships.
- Perhaps the biggest impact of Total War is on civilians. With
food, transportation, factories and even vehicles legitimate targets
of Total War, cities therefore took a tremendous beating. Since
cities have so many war-related targets they were the targets of
repeated heavy bombings. Initially, both sided wanted to spare
civilians the terror of aerial bombing as targeting was greatly
narrowed and restricted to daylight attacks to reduce the chances of
missing targets. Hitler even court-martialed some bomber crew
members for accidentally bombing British civilian areas during the
Battle of Britain. However, the British retaliated with an air
attack on Berlin that hit civilian areas. After this attack the
gloves came off between Germany and Britain for the remainder of the
war as both sides targeted entire cities. Daylight attacks
were so dangerous for bomber crews that both side resorted to
notoriously inaccurate night attacks (the British only had a 60%
accuracy rate even though counting as a "hit" any bomb that struck
inside the city!) Germany came out the worse here as in cities such
as Hamburg and Berlin 90% of all homes had been destroyed or damaged
by the end of the war. The Unites States persisted throughout the
war in daytime attacks though suffering ferocious casualties in the
process. In return for such heavy losses, the Americans had only a
25% hit rate on their targets (though the US only counted bombs
which hit the particular factory, etc.) On the other hand, Germans
reported after the war that US attacks hurt German morale as it was
clear the Americans goal was a military target; British raids on
entire cities actually stiffened German morale.
- In the Pacific, the Japanese attitudes on Total War were
magnified by their racial theories which excused nearly any
barbarism against their enemies. Japan refused to follow the Geneva
Conventions on War. Japan practiced chemical and biological warfare
against the Chinese and routinely abused or murdered enemy soldiers
who had surrendered. Those taken captive by the Japanese were
simply prisoners and were not treated as Prisoners of War. Japanese
treatment of Filipino civilians was brutal especially in Manila as
the Allies recaptured the city. Japanese soldiers almost never
surrendered, or if they did so it was to get closer to kill on last
American. Japanese routinely targeted chaplains and medics (medics
in the Pacific did not wear their Red Cross emblems as Japanese
snipers would single them out). It was very common for Japanese
soldiers to mutilate dead Americans. Japanese soldiers also would
use civilians for cover against the Americans as they would hole up
in caves alongside women and children and fire on US troops. On
Okinawa one third of the civilian population died in the fighting as
they were kept close to Japanese soldiers even in combat zones.
Many a US soldier learned to be heard-hearted about firing into a
cave filled with civilians if they refused to come out. Sometimes
Japanese or Okinawan civilians would kill themselves and their
entire families rather than be captured by the Americans. As a
result, the war became brutal on a level that shocked US troops who
came from the "civilized" fighting in Europe.
- US bombing attacks on Japanese cities also showed the horrific
nature of Total War. Repeated US attacks on Japanese factories
failed to acheive significant effect. The high altitude attacks
using high explosives did not work well against paper and wood
building contruction. In addition, the Japanese had learned from
the Germans not to concentrate on large factories which were
vulnerable to attack. Therefore, the Japanese created many small
factories scattered throughout civilian area. Such a targeting
pattern would easily frustrate US bombing attacks. However,
particularly after the bitter fighting on Okinawa, the US gave the
go ahead to use fire-bomb raids on Japanese cities. Such incendiary
attacks are very hard on civilians as fires can get out of control
quickly and ignite much of a city. In Germany 40,000 died in
Hamburg and another 80,000 died at Dresden in fire bomb raids. The
American did not participate in the firebombing at those two attacks
and many Army Air Corps commanders felt such attacks were barbaric.
However, such feelings had declined in the Pacific after Iwo Jima
and especially Okinawa. Firebombing Japan also finally made
military sense: the Japanese had made whole sections of their cities
military targets by scattering factories in civilian areas and then
surrounding them with wood and paper structures. General Curtis
LeMay's first firebombing raid on Tokyo in May 1945 was a resounding
military success: 1600 factories had been destroyed. Years of high
explosive attacks had not done as much damage as had a single fire
raid. The attacks were repeated over the next six seeks on the rest
of the major Japanese cities. By June, most of Japan's industrial
capacity had been ruined. However, the dictates of Total War had a
huge price for civilians: perhaps 200,000 died in the Tokyo fire
raid along with 25 square miles of destroyed city. Civilian
losses were far less in succeeding raids but mainly due to the fact
that much of the Japanese population had simply headed for the hills
for safety. By late June 1945, only Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Niigata and
Kyoto were untouched by allied bombers--and only because they had
been ordered off-limits by military planners.
- In the German-Russian war of 1941 to 1945 Total War reached
perhaps it ugliest. The Soviets had never ratified the Geneva
Conventions on War. This set the tone for the war much as had
Japanese refusal set the tone for the Pacific War. The Soviets
practiced Scorched Earth as they retreated in the face of German
attack. Later, when the Russians advanced, the Germans did the
same. The region was utterly destroyed by the end of the war.
Russia's refusal to follow the rules of international behavior gave
a green light to barbarians on the German side who quickly enacted
criminal treatment even of civilians. Hardest hit were the Poles
who saw 20% of their entire population die during WWII including
nearly all Polish Jews in the Holocaust. Mass murder of Jew, Pole,
Russian and Ukrainian became commonplace by German SS units. Stalin
felt that any USSR citizen who lived under German rule was
"infected" and deprived such people of rights of Soviet citizens for
life. Russians who surrendered were considered traitors to be
executed or worked to death in Stalin's Gulag. German prisoners
were never treated as Prisoners of War and nearly all of the were
worked to death in the Siberian Gulags (of the 500,000 Germans who
surrendered at Stalingrad, only 15,000 ever made it back to Germany
alive). Stalin also did the same with Japanese soldiers who
surrendered after Russia joined the war against Japan. Knowing that
Stalin did not treat German prisoners well and that Stalin
considered his surrendered soldiers to be traitors, the Germans
hardly cared for the Russian prisoners in their care and most died
in captivity. Notably, captured Soviet General Vlasov changed sides
and took along with him hundreds of thousands of Russians to fight
alongside the Germans against Stalin, though the Germans never let "Vlasov's
Army" fight against the Russian and used them in Western Europe. As
the victorious Russians moved toward Germany the nearly universal
rape of Germans by Russian soldiers began. In Germany itself,
virtually all German women were raped by Soviet soldiers. Stalin
referred to it as, "letting our boys have a little fun." In
addition, German ethnic minorities whom Hitler had sought to reunite
before the war were expelled in a massive case of Ethnic Cleansing.
The Volga Germans were either killed or forced to flee all the way
to Germany to be abused and raped all the way to Germany. The same
thing happened all over Russian-occupied Europe. In Poland two
million Germans were expelled or "forcibly repatriated" to use the
term of the day. In Czechoslovakia, it is estimated that 50,000
German civilians were murdered after liberation in an orgy of
violence that included drowning small children in mud puddles and
public gang-rapes of German women before their murder. German
sowing of crimes against Jews, Gypsies and Slavs had resulted in a
terrible reaping of a whirlwind of anti-German violence.
- Finally, after the war, the Allies, and especially the United
States, forced General Vlasov's Army to return to the Soviet Union
where nearly all of them died in Stalin's Gulag.
- Total War is an awful thing, however, the rules of war are still
necessary to alleviate the horror of war. Where the Geneva
conventions were followed, Total War was awful. Where they were not,
unspeakable barbarism developed.