The new weapons and new methods of warfare that were developed during World War I dramatically affected the nature of the conflict. The technological advances in warfare favoured defense over offence. The improved rifles, hand grenades, machine guns, trench mortars and artillery shells, along with mines and barbed wire increased the priced of victory.26 All sides experimented with gas warfare, tanks, submarines, and airplanes. World War I marked the beginning of chemical warfare in which clouds of poisonous mustard gas contributed to the casualties of the war. Mustard agent was first introduced during the latter part of the First World War and caused lung and eye injuries to a very large number of soldiers. Tanks were also used for the first time in a new weapon in warfare, and were described by the soldiers as “invulnerable steel beasts” that represented “annihilation”.27 The submarine came into use for the first time on a large scale during World War I. At the beginning of the war, Britain and France established a total naval blockade to strangle to Axis Powers. Germany sped up production of submarines in an effort to control the bottom of the sea. These U-boats were valuable weapons for Germans. With it they launched unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking warships, merchant ships, and passenger liners, such as the Lusitania.28 World War I was also the first war in which airplanes and Zeppelins were used. During the war, the planes photographed enemy bases, shot at troops, dropped leaflets, and battled each other in the air. During the Second World War a new offensive form of air power called strategic bombing was launched. Airplanes were used to strike behind the enemy lines in order to cripple the home front.29 World War II, fought between 1939 and 1945, had several characteristics that distinguished it from World War I: the coordination of all services, armies, air forces, and navies in one common effort, the use of amphibious (combined land-sea operations) warfare, and the coordination of tanks and airplanes in initial attacks, a tactic the Germans called blitzkrieg, meaning "lightning war".30 This was the first fully mechanized war. The method in which World War I was fought was different from the previous wars because of the types of weapons used. Hand grenades, machine guns, poisonous mustard gas, tanks, submarines, and airplanes were introduced for the first time. During the Second World War strategic bombing was used, as well as the form of combat called blitzkrieg.

The new type of warfare launched in the twentieth century called total war had a great impact on the modern world. It plunged society into an age of uncertainty and pessimism. It also had a devastating psychological effect on the soldiers that survived the war and returned home. In addition, unlimited conflict created a social impact that was seen in the increased participation of women in the economy, and their newly gained right to vote. The “all-out” war involved as well the massive mobilization of the home front and the establishment of the first totalitarian society. The introduction of machine guns, poisonous gases, tanks, submarines, and airplanes made total war extremely deadly. Hopefully, the lessons learned from the past major wars will be applied by today’s society, and efforts will be made to avoid at all costs another total war. World War I and World War II should remain to be the Wars to End All Wars.

Total war marked the beginning of a revolution in thought and ideas, where turmoil, uncertainty, and pessimism replaced the cherished values and beliefs of peace, prosperity, and progress. Men and women in the West felt “increasingly adrift in a strange, uncertain and uncontrollable world.”5 In his essay “The Crisis of the Spirit” written in 1919, Paul Valéry, one of France’s most outstanding poets, wrote that Europe “doubted itself profound

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