Total War On The Home Front Dbq Essay

World War I had a definite impact on the European home front; the war was called total war for a reason. The term total war has many meanings when concerned with WWI, but it could also be talking about the fact that the civilians were directly impacted and involved in the war. The home front was impacted during WWI because women were having to replace the men in jobs, everyone was romanticizing the war at first then were struck by reality, and the people were having to ration food. As men began to be drafted into the war and being pulled out of their factory jobs, someone had to step up to take over those roles. That someone was women; women during the war were essential to the economy for they took over all the jobs previously help by men. Document 1 states the statistics of employed
Stefan Zweig begins document 2 with the “parades in the streets” and “faces lighting up at the cheering.” Being an Austrian writer Zweig should have a separate point of view than British philosopher Bertrand Russell; however, Russell also begins Document 3 with “cheering crowds” and “men and women being delighted at the prospect of war.” Both writers express the extreme parading of crowds with the start of war. This might accentuate the idea of nationalism civilians felt at the home front during the war. Each nation’s people had high hopes for their country and praised the starte of war to bring change, power and victory to their country. This soon faded with the news of the war, the news of the amount of deaths and stalemates during the war; back at the home front “gone was the patriotic noise in the streets” (Document 7). Rosa Luxemburg describes the “cities [were] piles of ruins - villages [became] cemeteries” (Document 7). The sense of pride was gone and trying to get through the war was the only thing citizens could do for there was “misery and despair everywhere” (Document