![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
For this article's
WP:Short description, I gave Including civilians as warfare matériel"
. This was
rejected by
Beyond My Ken with the comment "Sorry, the new description does not capture even a small part of the essence of total war", who then replaced the SD with Warfare in which the entire resources of a nation are involved, including the civilian population and mass conscription.
What the two have in common is civilians are involved. So we're agreed on that; the difference is how they are involved.
According to the article lede, civilians as targets are a feature of the subject. This is missing from the latest SD, and present in the first. Being incomplete and much longer (which per SD guidelines should be as short as possible), I see the second version markedly inferior to the first.
Remember that the point of the SD is not to define the subject, but to distinguish it from similar subjects, such as found in mobile searches and "See also" sections.
1:Including civilians as warfare matériel
2:Warfare in which the entire resources of a nation are involved, including the civilian population and mass conscription.
!vote and comment, or new suggestions? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 04:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Total war, military conflict in which the contenders are willing to make any sacrifice in lives and other resources to obtain a complete victory, as distinguished from limited war. Britannica
Total warfare 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. Oxford reference
Total war, by the standard definition, is a conflict from which nothing and no one is exempt: “a war to which all resources and the whole population are committed."
"Hard war" redirects to this page, but no mention is made in the article and no distinction is made between the two phrases. Imagine Reason ( talk) 18:53, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
Like most articles, this one could use a lede image -- something to quickly indicate to the reader that they have the right article (or to quickly indicate they don't if they had the wrong idea about the title).
I
added one for the mushroom cloud over Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, but this was
reverted by
Beyond My Ken with the comment A-bombs are not emplematic of total war
. Obviously, I think the a-bomb, as extreme in war effort expended to develop, and most extreme in targeting non-combatants, thus better fulfilling our definition of warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war...
than anything else I can think of.
Comments? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 16:29, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
properly represents the subject matter. Again, the purpose of the lede image to assure the reader, getting them pointed in the right direction. It cannot somehow perfectly define the subject; that can only be done in the text.
The article completely lacks the discussion of the moral and legal status of total war. Not trying to push any opinion by myself, but there must be a lot of discussion about the tension between the total war and the idea that the sole legitimate objective of the war effort is to eliminate military strength of the enemy. Or the relationship between the just war and the total war. Ceplm ( talk) 09:39, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
I am not a fan of this page's use of Sherman's campaign as examples of total war. There is a pretty significant difference between Sherman's March to the Sea and total war. Sherman targeted military objectives—farms, railroads, factories, and suchlike—but did not indiscriminately burn everything in his path. These were targeted with the precise purpose of stripping Robert E. Lee's troops of resources and were not done to punish noncombatants in the South.
The idea of his campaign as total war originated after World War II, and modern historians have fought back against this perception for the aforementioned reasons. Mark E. Neely explains it well in the cited source.
In other moods and in different circumstances, Sherman could sound as mild as Robert E. Lee. "War," the alleged inventor of total war wrote on April 19, 1863, "at best is barbarism, but to involve all-children, women, old and helpless-is more than can be justified." And he went on to caution against seizing so many stores that family necessities were endangered. Later in the summer of 1863 when General Sherman sent a cavalry expedition toward Memphis from Mississippi, General Grant instructed him to "impress upon the men the importance of going through the State-in an orderly manner, abstaining from taking anything not absolutely necessary for their subsistence while travelling. They should try to create as favorable an impression as possible upon the people." These may seem hopeless orders to give General Sherman, but his enthusiastic reply was this: "It will give me excessive pleasure to instruct the Cavalry as you direct, for the Policy you point out meets every wish of my heart."
Pretty much every historian arguing that it's total war is before 1965 and did so in the wake of WWII, when scholarship had a motive to make sense of the war. We should be careful citing this as an example of total war because it can play into the Lost Cause myth that Sherman caused "untold suffering" upon the South, when he was just cold and calculated. Think about agreed upon examples of total war—the Nazis in Russia for example—and compare Sherman's campaign; the analogy falls flat on its face. The term "total war" did not even exist in Sherman's time; applying modern terms to historical events, especially when such an example is not fitting, is bad historiography.
An exception would be something like Caesar's Gallic campaign, which was indisputably total war; some even argue it was genocide. If we are to have Sherman as an example in the list at the top of the page, we should really append the fact that it's disagreed with by modern historians and do so with every mention of Sherman. Delukiel ( talk) 15:24, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
The essential aspect of any definition of total war asserts that it breaks down the distinction between soldiers and civilians, combatants and noncombatants, and this no one in the Civil War did systematically, including William T. Sherman. He and his fellow generals waged war the same way most Victorian gentlemen did, and other Victorian gentlemen in the world knew it. That is one reason why British, French, and Prussian observers failed to comment on any startling developments seen in the American war: there was little new to report.
The first application of the idea to the Civil War came, then, in Confederate propaganda. Though it may not be a sectional interpretation now, it was an entirely sectional idea in the beginning. Its origins give perhaps the best clue to the usefulness of the idea in describing the Civil War. Total war may describe certain isolated and uncharacteristic aspects of the Civil War but is at most a partial view. The point is not merely semantic. The use of the idea of total war prevents historians from understanding the era properly
In 1863 Quantrill's band rode into Kansas to the hated Yankee settlement of Lawrence and murdered almost every adult male they found there, more than 150 in all. A year later Bloody Bill Anderson's gang took twenty-four · unarmed Union soldiers from a train, shot them in the head, then turned on a posse of pursuing militia and slaughtered 127 of them including the wounded and captured. In April 1864 the Missourian John S. Marmaduke, a Confederate general (and later governor of Missouri), led an attack on Union supply wagons at Poison Springs, Arkansas, killing in cold blood almost as many black soldiers as Nathan Bedford Forrest's troops did at almost the same time in the more famous Fort Pillow massacre in Tennessee.
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present. |
For this article's
WP:Short description, I gave Including civilians as warfare matériel"
. This was
rejected by
Beyond My Ken with the comment "Sorry, the new description does not capture even a small part of the essence of total war", who then replaced the SD with Warfare in which the entire resources of a nation are involved, including the civilian population and mass conscription.
What the two have in common is civilians are involved. So we're agreed on that; the difference is how they are involved.
According to the article lede, civilians as targets are a feature of the subject. This is missing from the latest SD, and present in the first. Being incomplete and much longer (which per SD guidelines should be as short as possible), I see the second version markedly inferior to the first.
Remember that the point of the SD is not to define the subject, but to distinguish it from similar subjects, such as found in mobile searches and "See also" sections.
1:Including civilians as warfare matériel
2:Warfare in which the entire resources of a nation are involved, including the civilian population and mass conscription.
!vote and comment, or new suggestions? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 04:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Total war, military conflict in which the contenders are willing to make any sacrifice in lives and other resources to obtain a complete victory, as distinguished from limited war. Britannica
Total warfare 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. Oxford reference
Total war, by the standard definition, is a conflict from which nothing and no one is exempt: “a war to which all resources and the whole population are committed."
"Hard war" redirects to this page, but no mention is made in the article and no distinction is made between the two phrases. Imagine Reason ( talk) 18:53, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
Like most articles, this one could use a lede image -- something to quickly indicate to the reader that they have the right article (or to quickly indicate they don't if they had the wrong idea about the title).
I
added one for the mushroom cloud over Atomic bombing of Nagasaki, but this was
reverted by
Beyond My Ken with the comment A-bombs are not emplematic of total war
. Obviously, I think the a-bomb, as extreme in war effort expended to develop, and most extreme in targeting non-combatants, thus better fulfilling our definition of warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war...
than anything else I can think of.
Comments? -- A D Monroe III( talk) 16:29, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
properly represents the subject matter. Again, the purpose of the lede image to assure the reader, getting them pointed in the right direction. It cannot somehow perfectly define the subject; that can only be done in the text.
The article completely lacks the discussion of the moral and legal status of total war. Not trying to push any opinion by myself, but there must be a lot of discussion about the tension between the total war and the idea that the sole legitimate objective of the war effort is to eliminate military strength of the enemy. Or the relationship between the just war and the total war. Ceplm ( talk) 09:39, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
I am not a fan of this page's use of Sherman's campaign as examples of total war. There is a pretty significant difference between Sherman's March to the Sea and total war. Sherman targeted military objectives—farms, railroads, factories, and suchlike—but did not indiscriminately burn everything in his path. These were targeted with the precise purpose of stripping Robert E. Lee's troops of resources and were not done to punish noncombatants in the South.
The idea of his campaign as total war originated after World War II, and modern historians have fought back against this perception for the aforementioned reasons. Mark E. Neely explains it well in the cited source.
In other moods and in different circumstances, Sherman could sound as mild as Robert E. Lee. "War," the alleged inventor of total war wrote on April 19, 1863, "at best is barbarism, but to involve all-children, women, old and helpless-is more than can be justified." And he went on to caution against seizing so many stores that family necessities were endangered. Later in the summer of 1863 when General Sherman sent a cavalry expedition toward Memphis from Mississippi, General Grant instructed him to "impress upon the men the importance of going through the State-in an orderly manner, abstaining from taking anything not absolutely necessary for their subsistence while travelling. They should try to create as favorable an impression as possible upon the people." These may seem hopeless orders to give General Sherman, but his enthusiastic reply was this: "It will give me excessive pleasure to instruct the Cavalry as you direct, for the Policy you point out meets every wish of my heart."
Pretty much every historian arguing that it's total war is before 1965 and did so in the wake of WWII, when scholarship had a motive to make sense of the war. We should be careful citing this as an example of total war because it can play into the Lost Cause myth that Sherman caused "untold suffering" upon the South, when he was just cold and calculated. Think about agreed upon examples of total war—the Nazis in Russia for example—and compare Sherman's campaign; the analogy falls flat on its face. The term "total war" did not even exist in Sherman's time; applying modern terms to historical events, especially when such an example is not fitting, is bad historiography.
An exception would be something like Caesar's Gallic campaign, which was indisputably total war; some even argue it was genocide. If we are to have Sherman as an example in the list at the top of the page, we should really append the fact that it's disagreed with by modern historians and do so with every mention of Sherman. Delukiel ( talk) 15:24, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
The essential aspect of any definition of total war asserts that it breaks down the distinction between soldiers and civilians, combatants and noncombatants, and this no one in the Civil War did systematically, including William T. Sherman. He and his fellow generals waged war the same way most Victorian gentlemen did, and other Victorian gentlemen in the world knew it. That is one reason why British, French, and Prussian observers failed to comment on any startling developments seen in the American war: there was little new to report.
The first application of the idea to the Civil War came, then, in Confederate propaganda. Though it may not be a sectional interpretation now, it was an entirely sectional idea in the beginning. Its origins give perhaps the best clue to the usefulness of the idea in describing the Civil War. Total war may describe certain isolated and uncharacteristic aspects of the Civil War but is at most a partial view. The point is not merely semantic. The use of the idea of total war prevents historians from understanding the era properly
In 1863 Quantrill's band rode into Kansas to the hated Yankee settlement of Lawrence and murdered almost every adult male they found there, more than 150 in all. A year later Bloody Bill Anderson's gang took twenty-four · unarmed Union soldiers from a train, shot them in the head, then turned on a posse of pursuing militia and slaughtered 127 of them including the wounded and captured. In April 1864 the Missourian John S. Marmaduke, a Confederate general (and later governor of Missouri), led an attack on Union supply wagons at Poison Springs, Arkansas, killing in cold blood almost as many black soldiers as Nathan Bedford Forrest's troops did at almost the same time in the more famous Fort Pillow massacre in Tennessee.