Total War

The weird thing about WW1 is that it turned into total war, and that it somehow caused everyone to commit more atrocities against civilians than most soldiers had in wars prior to this one. The reason for this is uncertain to me, but I think it's because of the increased sense of nationalism in this war as well as the level to which the soldiers are disgruntled. World War 1 is generally, at least the land war, portrayed as having been extremely empty for soldiers, extremely deadly, and extremely destructive of their minds, and this is especially interesting because of the reading I'm doing for Literature of WW1, so far All Quiet on the Western Front and Mrs. Dalloway. The war broke the minds of soldiers with constant barrages of artillery fire as well as with the horrors of trench warfare, and I think the cruelty to civilians was a result.