Image from Cambridge University Press
The Shadows of Total War is the fourth volume in a series of five collating the proceedings of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C’s conferences on total war. This collection of 18 essays examines the concept through the interwar period, covering a spread of topics from military history as well as interdisciplinary perspectives. The strength of the volume is unequal, with the third and fourth parts, ‘Visions of the Next War’ and ‘Projections and Practice’, bearing out as much stronger and cohesive to the theme of total war. More so than in the first two parts of the volume, these later essays interrogate the social, philosophical, and policy implications of responding to the First World War as a total war and preparing – materially, ideologically, or both – for the next war as one of similar calibre.
Chickering’s essay on Ludendorff, for example, is an engaging appraisal of the general’s increasingly desperate attempts to rationalise the Germany’s 1918 defeat. Partly biographical and partly bibliographical in nature, it tracks his conviction in the “growing opposition between war and politics” and of “annihilation of the enemy” as a primary war aim; how his chauvinistic criticism of the home front was radicalised to include othering of groups such as the Jews and the Masons, and became part of the ideological milieu of the nationalist far right; and how, while a peripheral figure in discourse on the specific theme of total war, Ludendorff’s contributions to the literature are important in that they were ultimately not unique, signifying their broad acceptance in German military and political thinking by the 1930s. This essay successfully argues for the evolution of ideological drivers behind why the Second World War was the closest conflict to a ‘model’ or ‘ideal’ total war, using Ludendorff as a microcosm of both veteran and leadership experiences.
Similar successes are seen elsewhere. Baumann and Segesser’s evaluation of British and French officers’ journals illustrate how military leadership perceived mobilisation of material and moral resources, including how priorities differed between branches in the British armed forces and how the experience of the last war prepared France to fight another like it, rather than what the Second World War became. Stuchtey’s essay also engages well with the imperial angle of total mobilisation, including how in Britain, policy was dependent on and hampered by the disconnect between Whitehall and dominions such as Canada, who were exercising more nationalistic policies under increased separation from the Crown; territories that could swiftly become strategic liabilities, such as India; and Crown colonies such as Singapore, wherein indecisiveness from Whitehall and pressure from Australia led to uneven decisions on construction of the naval base.
Rohkrämer’s evaluation of author Ernst Jünger’s experience of the First World War, and the transformative way it affected his conception of heroism juxtaposed against the most brutal aspects of modernity, deconstructed a unique case study on the artistic and social fallout of the conflict, that ultimately – in some circles – fed in to worldviews more receptive of waging total war in future. However, the conclusion of this essay brings up a structural issue common to several of the pieces in this volume – namely, that it rushes to reassociate the essay’s theme with total war, rather than interweaving the interrogation throughout. While appreciating that conference papers adapted for publication may not bear the same initial structure as a paper originally in written format, some concluding paragraphs are jarring. Rohkrämer’s essay, for example, in the final sentence asserts that the ‘love’ for total war engendered by Jünger and other veterans’ response to their frontline experiences “contributed to the rise of National Socialism and to the unleashing of the next world war” (Chapter 9, Loc. 2421); however, arguing for said contribution wasn’t the thesis of the essay – the fact that total war became ‘loved’ by Jünger due to his response to modernity left the conclusion, while valid, seemingly hanging in mid-air.
The structure of the volume generally succeeds; however, I am an advocate of building historical narratives chronologically, rather than commencing with retrospectives of the era, as this volume does. It ultimately – and understandably – has no firm conclusion on the definition of ‘total war’ conceptually, nor on its significance as an analytical framework. However, the introduction itself acts as a very effective general primer. Commencing the volume with essays such as Chickering’s on Ludendorff would have presented some conceptual frameworks of the ‘total war’ theme earlier, creating a stronger thematic through-line, while moving the three retrospective essays to the end would have provided a sold terminus to a collection that, by the very nature of the nebulous concept it discusses, cannot attain a firm conclusion. Ultimately, further structural edits both to the content and organisation of Shadows of Total War would have lent greater weight and cohesion to a collection full of many very strong, intellectually stimulating essays.
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