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Total war is a type of warfare that includes any and all (including civilian-associated) resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilises all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combatant needs.
The term has been defined as "A 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."[1]
In the mid-19th century, scholars identified total war as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes due to the capacity of opposing sides to consider nearly every human, including non-combatants, as resources that are used in the war effort.[2]
- ^ "Total war". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
- ^ Gunn, Edward (Spring 2006). "The Moral Dilemma of Atomic Warfare". Aegis: The Otterbein College Humanities Journal: 67. NB Gunn cites this Wikipedia article as it was on 27 September 2005, but on only for the text of the song "The Thing-Ummy Bob".