Industrial Warfare: Circa 1770–1990s

Abstract

AbstractIndustrial Warfare started with the beginning of industrialisation in Western Europe in the 1770s and reached its apogee during the Second World War. The increase in the scope, intensity and lethality of war between 1770 and 1945 can be discerned with the concept of Total War. Total War is somewhat akin to Carl von Clausewitz’s abstract concept Absolute War. Clausewitz’ Absolute War is a logical abstraction, a mental construct against which all the real wars (in the present and future) can be measured. General Erich Ludendorff in 1935 in a pamphlet titled Der totale Krieg used the term Total War. He argued for ‘the annihilation of the enemy army and of the enemy nation’ (Quoted from Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present, Cambridge University Press, 2010: 138).