Causes, Military Course and Consequences of World War I (continued)

While almost all nations involved expected a short, decisive war, World War I proved to be a lengthy and costly "total war" that required the commitment of all of the nation state's resources including money, labor, material and human life.

It transformed the industrialized economies of Europe from the production of peactime manufacturing and consumer products to military hardware--rifles, ammunition, artillary and shells, and new technological weapons including poison gas, tanks and war-fitted aeroplanes. Total war also transformed the "homefront" and the social and political life of European nations.

Women went to work in munitions factories for the duration of the war, mobilized resentment of the enemy through state-sponsored propaganda, (propaganda analyzed) and the centralized government began a process of regulation over the private economy and private life that continues to the present day. (Click here for more on propaganda posters of WWI).

Ruins at Ypres seen from the air
(photo courtesy of World War One Image Archive)