Editing Total war (section)

====World War I====
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2008-0084, Belgien, Flandern, Ruinen.jpg|thumb|Damage and destruction of civilian buildings in Belgium, 1914]]

=====Air Warfare=====
{{main|Air warfare in World War I}}
Bombing civilians from the air was adopted as a strategy for the first time in World War I, and a leading advocate of this strategy was [[Peter Strasser]] "Leader of Airships" (''Führer der Luftschiffe''; ''F.d.L.''). Strasser, who was chief commander of [[German Imperial Navy]] [[Zeppelin]]s during World War I, the main force operating German strategic bombing across Europe and the UK, saw bombing of civilians as well as military targets as an essential element of total war. He argued that causing civilian casualties and damaging domestic infrastructure served both as propaganda and as a means of diverting resources from the front line.

{{blockquote|We who strike the enemy where his heart beats have been slandered as 'baby killers' ... Nowadays, there is no such animal as a noncombatant. Modern warfare is total warfare.|Peter Strasser<ref>Lawson, Eric; Lawson, Jane (1996). The first air campaign, August 1914 – November 1918. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. pp. 79–80. {{ISBN|0-306-81213-4}}.</ref>}}

=====Propaganda=====
{{main|Propaganda in World War I}}
One of the features of total war in Britain was the use of government [[propaganda]] posters to divert all attention to the war on the [[home front]]. Posters were used to influence public opinion about what to eat and what occupations to take, and to change the attitude of support towards the war effort. Even [[music hall]]s were used as propaganda, with propaganda songs aimed at recruitment.<ref>{{Cite web |date=August 8, 2014 |title=World War One: Music hall entertainers with the 'X factor' |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-27508148 |access-date=September 7, 2023 |website=BBC News}}</ref>

After the failure of the [[Battle of Neuve Chapelle]], the large British offensive in March 1915, the British Commander-in-Chief [[Field Marshal]] John French blamed the lack of progress on insufficient and poor-quality [[Shell (projectile)|artillery shells]]. This led to the [[Shell Crisis of 1915]] which brought down both the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] government and [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Premiership]] of [[H. H. Asquith]]. He formed a new coalition government dominated by Liberals and appointed [[David Lloyd George]] as [[Minister of Munitions]]. It was a recognition that the whole economy would have to be geared for war if the Allies were to prevail on the Western Front.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Archives |first=The National |date=2015-03-05 |title=The National Archives - 'The tragedy of the shells' |url=https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/tragedy-shells-supplying-army-munitions-war-act-1915/ |access-date=2024-12-12 |website=The National Archives blog |language=en-GB}}</ref>

[[Carl Schmitt]], a supporter of [[Nazi Germany]], wrote that total war meant "total politics"—authoritarian domestic policies that imposed direct control of the press and economy. In Schmitt's view the total state, which directs fully the mobilisation of all social and economic resources to war, is antecedent to total war. Scholars consider that the seeds of this total state concept already existed in the German state of World War I, which exercised full control of the press and other aspects economic and social life as espoused in the statement of state ideology known as the "[[Fascism#World War I and its aftermath (1914–1929)|Ideas of 1914]]".<ref name=demm>{{cite journal|title=Propaganda and Caricature in the First World War|journal=Journal of Contemporary History|volume=28|pages=163–192|doi=10.1177/002200949302800109|year=1993|last1=Demm|first1=Eberhard|s2cid=159762267}}</ref>

=====Rationing=====
{{Main|Home front during World War I}}
As young men left the farms for the front, domestic food production in Britain and Germany fell. In Britain, the response was to import more food, which was done despite the German introduction of [[unrestricted submarine warfare]], and to introduce rationing. The Royal Navy's [[Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)|blockade of German ports]] prevented Germany from importing food and hastened German capitulation by creating a food crisis in Germany.<ref>Jürgen Kocka, ''Facing total war: German society, 1914–1918'' (1984).</ref>

Almost the whole of Europe and some of the European colonial empires mobilised soldiers. Rationing occurred on the home fronts. [[Bulgaria]] went so far as to mobilise a quarter of its population, or 800,000 people, a greater share of its population than any other country during the war.