Question

Help Please and Thank You!!

World War I was a mechanized war. Each nation utilized new technology to improve their success on the battlefield, and centered the nation’s industrial economies on developing weaponry for battle. This concept of “total war” impacted the entire nation, not just the soldiers on the battlefield.

Conduct research about one of the new types of warfare. Discuss how it was made and how it affected the enemy.

Answer 1

The earliest modern example of total war was the American Civil War. Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were convinced that, if the North was to be victorious, the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage war had to be definitively crushed. They, therefore, believed that to break the backbone of the South, the North had to employ scorched earth tactics, or as Sherman called it, "Hard War". Sherman's advance through Georgia and the Carolinas was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure.[2] However, in contrast to later conflicts, the damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to property destruction. In Georgia alone, Sherman claimed he and his men had caused $100,000,000 in damages[citation needed].

Answer 2

did this help?

Answer 3

... You're joking right? You just posted a Wikipedia article and not even that, you posted it on the wrong war.

She's asking about World War I, not the Civil War.

Answer 4

Flight warfare started actually being used in World War I, nations began utilizing planes as weapons, using them to drop bombs on the enemies. When you're dropping bombs from the sky, you're not using pinpoint precision meaning it's very likely civilians could become casualties. The idea that civilians could be totally slaughtered during war was relatively new to this time period, ever since the West basically attempted to write down official rules to conducting war, and one of them was that civilians shouldn't be hurt.

Tank warfare was also introduced in World War I, greatly increasing casualties on both sides... another type of warfare used in WWI was so disastrous that it was banned immediately after, this type being chemical warfare. Both sides saw the horrible effects of the various types of gases, such as phosphine, and banned it from war after WWI.

Answer 5

Veritas is on point with his answer. Jojo did give you some good info on Total War, btw ;-). Total War (where everything and everyone in a nation\country focuses their energies on winning the war) was not a common thing prior to WWI, and has not been a common thing since WWII, for the simple fact that they are expensive both in manpower and material... (Just ask the Russians from WWII. Also, one could argue that Total War is now archaic due to nuclear weapons).

You might also want to consider the fact that WWI is the first major conflict to see machine guns on the battlefield. This weapon forced the armies involved to change century old tactics (like walking out into an open field to face the enemy) in order to reduce casualties caused by this new weapon.