10 World War II in Europe, I
The structure and course of total
warIntroduction: total war
The actuality or the threat of war was by far the most important influence on international
relations in the twentieth century. Its outcomes reshaped societies and enforced regime
changes, added and deleted states to and from the geopolitical map, and accelerated the
long process of global decolonization. Warfare, its memories, legends and consequences
of all kinds, virtually defined the European experience in the century. Two total wars
dominated the first fifty years, while the threat of a potentially total nuclear war overhung,
even dominated, all but ten of the second.
World War II brought casualty figures to new heights. If one includes the Sino-
Japanese War that opened in earnest in 1937, the total death toll in the war was of the
order of 53.5 million. That figure is of course suspect in detail, but it is reliable as to order
of magnitude. Whereas in 1914–1 8 some 65 million men were mobilized for military
duty, in 1939–45 the comparable figure was 105 million, a fraction of which were women.
Also, unusually in modern times, the civilian death toll exceeded the military, and by a
wide margin (perhaps 36.5 million to 17 million) (see Table 10.1) There were three
principal reasons why this was so. First, the growing maturity of air power guaranteed
that civilians would be targets, both inadvertently as collateral damage and intention-
ally as required by the new doctrine of seeking victory, or at least to coerce, by strategic
air power. Second, everywhere, even eventually in Germany following the defeat at
Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–3, the war was explained and conducted as a ‘people’s
war’: everybody was at war. Since economic blockade and aerial bombing placed
civilians on the front line, the vital legal distinction between combatants and non-
combatants was eroded almost into oblivion. However, the third reason for the appalling
civilian death toll resides in the realm of the ideological dimension to national culture.
Nazi Germany set out to wage a war of annihilation against its Slav neighbours to the
east and against the whole Jewish population of Europe. Naturally, that intention could
be pursued only in stages, as opportunities permitted. In 1939, most of Europe’s Jews