The concept of "total war" was coined by German General Eric Ludendorff in defeated Germany after the First World War. Ludendorff was convinced that his country's defeat in the long and bloody conflict of 1914 and 1918 was due to what he qualified as the "betrayal" of the "communists" and "Jews."
This theory defended the necessity, presented in a book published in 1935, that when an armed conflict puts the very survival of the State at stake, all resources of the nation, including politics and economics, must be subordinated to the military effort.
Essentially, "total war" represents a doctrine that would abolish the distinction between civilian and military resources, mobilizing the entire society for the conflict. The concept emerged as a response to the German defeat and as a critique of what Ludendorff considered internal forces that sabotaged his country's war effort.
