Editorial – The Last Total War

In 2025, we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Second World War – the last ‘total war.’ As a country, we are fortunate that we have not seen any further ‘total wars’ since 1945, but this does not preclude them occurring in the future. ‘Total war’, as a concept, arose at the end of the First World War.¹ In 1918, Leon Daudet released his book La Guerre Totale (The Total War).² Daudet describes ‘total war’ as ‘the extension of the struggle, in its acute phases as well as its chronic phases, to the political, economic, commercial, industrial, intellectual, legal, and financial realms’.³ General Eric Ludendorff further popularised the term in his 1935 polemic, Der Totale Krieg (Total War), where he proposed that the distinctions between all elements of society must be removed in war mobilisation and the country should be led by a military dictator.⁴ Major General J.F.C. Fuller’s commentary on the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in The First of the League Wars (1936) introduced the similar concept of ‘totalitarian war’, which aligned with Ludendorff’s ‘total war’ tenets.⁵

Stig Förster defines the ideal of ‘total war’ as containing four elements in combination: total mobilisation, total war aims, total methods, and total control.⁶ Total mobilisation includes the maximal ideological and industrial mobilisation of a state’s resources, including military, civilian and industrial capacity, to wage war against an opponent. ⁷ The increasing destructive power from military technological advances, coupled with an industrialised economy and capacity for large scale production, were also seen as factors.⁸ As exemplified in the Second World War, unconstrained war aims, including the requirement for unconditional capitulation and the destruction of the opposing state, provided mass mobilisation with total purpose.⁹ The scope of war aims also changed, moving away from economic and territorial gains towards overall victory.¹⁰ The use of any methods or means necessary to achieve total war dissolved the distinction between civilians and combatants, regardless of their legal status.¹¹ The impacts on military and civilians on all sides, often perpetrated because of perceived threats to a state’s existence, were an important factor in the assessment of total methods.¹² The total control of a state’s resources usually required different and greater subordination of citizens to the state, often under a military dictatorship, to achieve these mobilisation and war aims.¹³ As military health practitioners, we need to remain aware what the likely impacts such a war would have on the military and broader society.

Our fourth issue of 2025 contains a range of articles on diverse topics spanning teleradiology, operational infectious disease, medical readiness, mental and spiritual health, and veterans’ health. We continue to attract a good range of articles, including from overseas, as is demonstrated in this issue. Other military and veterans’ health articles, however, are always very welcome, and we would encourage all our readers to consider writing on their areas of military or veterans’ health interest. We would particularly welcome papers based on presentations given at the Adelaide 2025 AMMA conference but welcome any articles across the broader spectrum of military health.

Dr Andy Robertson, CSC, PSM
Commodore, RAN
Editor-in-Chief