Essays on Total War

A total war is characterized by the unrestricted use of weapons, unspecified combatants and gross disregard for any prevalent war laws. The onset, progress and termination of the Civil War in the US, however, took a different perspective despite the war being the bloodiest in the US history. Triggered by the formation of the Confederate States of America by the seceded seven slave states in the South, the war was substantially controlled and limited by the Lincolns administration and therefore did not achieve the status of a total war. Despite the bitterness amongst the Southerners, Lincoln sought to wage ...

Describe what led to the First World War.

As we know, mankind entered the 20th century on a wave of the unprecedented acceleration of socio-economic and, in particular, military and technological progress with accumulated over the previous century, acute and intractable geopolitical contradictions between the leading world powers. All of this led to revolutionary upheavals, and to the First World War, fundamentally changed the dynamics and nature of conflicts resolving between the great countries. The struggle for the redistribution and leadership in the world had never covered several continents at the same time, did not affect the interests of the majority of countries in the world, World ...

There are many events in modern history that altered the course of humanity forever. From the Golden Age to Prohibition, America went through many major changes throughout its journey through time. One of the most important events that brought about significant change to the country was the advent and participation in World War II. This was brought many developments that would allow militaries and navies to completely change their fighting tactics. There were new ways to destroy the enemy and showcase power to the rest of the world. This brought about the introduction of total war, which refers to ...

Introduction

In November 1960, the Republicans lost the presidential election, and a Democratic Party candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the president of the United States. A relatively young man (43 years), he represented a new generation of American politicians. Veterans of the war years, a generation embodied by Dwight Eisenhower, were to leave the politics in the US. In the Soviet Union, a “war generation” remained in power until the mid-1980s. In France, Germany, and other countries of the Western Europe the same generation continued to reign. The Kennedy team was to revise the postulates of the military-political line of ...

New imperialism occurred in the late nineteenth century primarily because industrialization had allowed the major powers to develop technologies and weaponry that could be used to further their superiority. At the Berlin Conference in 1884-1885, it was declared that occupation of a colony would determine recognition of a country’s claim there, and this introduced a scramble for territories, particularly in Africa. The justification for new imperialism was mainly based on humanitarianism; the powers believed that they had a responsibility to civilize the people in their colonies, particularly the African tribes. The consequence of new imperialism was the increase ...