This article will not aim at completeness and will have a special focus on the First World War. Rather, its object is to present an overview of the uses of total war in history and to give an idea of some of the positions taken in the context of the historiographical controversy. Such a definition should not be expected for some time to come and it is not the aim of this contribution to offer one. The answers as to whether the concept could be applied in these circumstances are diverse and no undisputed definition of “total war” has so far been reached. Examples of such an approach are the studies of McPherson, Neely and Trudeau on the American Civil War or of Bell and Guiomar on the French and Napoleonic Wars. This has sparked debate and led other researchers to wonder if the concept could also function as a useful tool of analysis for research on other wars. Although a “sense of discomfort” reigned at these conferences on how to use the concept as an academic tool and as to what degree it was used in the time period in question, the series produced extensive research on the issue.

Chickering and Förster offered a sustained discussion not only of the development of warfare between 18, but also of the understanding of total war and the ways in which the concept could be a useful tool for academic research. In a series of conferences between 19 (with a later spin-off on the age of revolution ). Furthermore, it has been used as an academic concept by researchers such as David Avrom Bell, Roger Chickering, Stig Förster, Jean-Yves Guiomar and Mark E. On the other hand, “total war” is a term that has been used in the past mostly by people to the far right of the political spectrum. These war games mainly focus on unrestrained warfare and combine turn-based strategy, resource management as well as tactics in real-time, simulating considerations and circumstances of operational warfare in different periods of time. The first of these was released in 2000 by Creative Assembly in Horsham (United Kingdom) and many have followed since. Searching for “total war” in the wideness of today’s internet will not at first yield academic definitions of the term, but will rather open up the world of computer strategy games. Total War: Game or Academic Concept? – An Introduction ↑

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