total war

Calque of German totaler Krieg, coined by Erich Ludendorff.

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total war (countable and uncountable, plural total wars)

1. Warfare where all of a country's available resources, military as well as civilian, are employed.
   • 1962, Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution. 1789-1848, page 67:

     In the course of its crisis the young French Republic discovered or invented total war: the total mobilization of a nation's resources through conscription, rationing and a rigidly controlled war economy, and virtual abolition, at home or abroad, of the distinction between soldiers and civilians.