A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937-1945

Description

This volume presents the results of a fifth and final conference on the history of total war. It is devoted to the Second World War, which many scholars regard as the paradigmatic instance of total war. In considering the validity of this proposition, the authors address a broad range of analytical problems that this vast conflict posed in the arenas of Europe and Asia. They analyze modes of combat, war aims, the mobilization of economies and societies, occupation regimes, the vulnerability of noncombatants, and the legal and moral issues raised by the industrialized warfare of the mid-twentieth century. The volume will be of interest to all students of war and society in the modern era.

Roger Chickering is Professor of History at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University. His publications include Imperial Germany and the Great War (1998) and Karl Lambrecht (1856-1915): A German Academic Life (1993). Stig Forster is Professor of History at the University of Bern. His publications include Der doppelte Militarismus: Die deutsche Heeresrustungspolitik zwischen Status-quo-Sicherung und Aggression, 1890-1913 (1985) and Die machtigen Diener der East India Company: Ursachen und Hintergrunde der britischen Expansionspolitik in Sudasien, 1793-1819 (1992). Bernd Greiner leads the 'Theory and History of Violence' unit at the Hamburger Institut fur Sozialforschung and is Professor of History at the University of Hamburg. His publications include Die Morgenthau-Legende. Zur Geschichte eines umstrittenen Plans (1995) and, with Heinz Bude, Westbindungen. Amerik in der Bundesrepublik (1999).

'Within the covers of this book is such a wealth of information that it makes it almost compulsory reading for any student of WW2.' Open History