Total war is a term of the twentieth century that describes a war in which countries or nations mobilize and force to the limit all available resources, whether human, military, industrial, agricultural, natural, technological, scientific, or of any other kind, to totally destroy the ability of another country or nation to engage in a war. The practice of total warfare has been used for centuries, but it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that it was recognized as a different way of waging war.
A clear example of this represents the German effort during the First World War.
