914-18, resources, leadership and money: the first total war

Abstract

During the Great War of 1914-18 a radical change in the way governments conduct war took place. The scope and scale of the conflict overflowed all belligerents and imposed on them, in the first place, the mobilization of absolutely all of the nations’ resources and, when this revealed insufficient, the implementation of efficiency in all spheres of war management and direction. This paper studies, on the first place, the impact of technological advances on an operational conduct of war reminiscent of early xix century warfare, and tries to answer the real reasons behind the stalemate known as Trench Warfare. The next step is to study how the belligerents’ governments wrested control of military affairs from lofty military cupolas, as a first step to impose a coherent military policy on the nations. The paper ends studying the role of the economy as an enabler for a more efficient management and required condition to saddling finances and industry into the war effort.