A war of annihilation (German: Vernichtungskrieg) or war of extermination is a type of war in which the goal is the complete annihilation of a state or a people through genocide or through the destruction of their livelihood. The goal can be outward- or inward- directed. This is different other types of warfare, which feature more limited political goals, such as recognition of a legal status (such as in a war of independence), control of disputed territory (as in war of aggression or defensive war), or the total military defeat of an enemy state.
Features War of annihilation is a radical form of warfare in which "all psycho-physical limits" are abolished. Jan Philipp Reemtsma defines it as war, "which is led to, in the worst case, decimate or even destroy a population" The state organization of the enemy is to be destroyed. Another characteristic of a war of annihilation is its ideological character and the rejection of negotiations with the enemy. The legitimacy of the opponent is negated and the opponent is demoted to status of a “total enemy,” with whom there can be no negations. “Total victory” of one's own "Volk, Krieg und Politik” (people, war and politics) is the purpose and successful outcome (“triumph”) of a war annihilation. The canonical example of a war of annihilation is the war on the Eastern Front of World War II fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Development
Herero uprising
Social Democratic Party of Germany political communications had circulated the term Vernichtungskrieg in order to criticize the action against the insurgents during the Herero Wars. In January 1904, the Herero and Namaqua genocide began in the German colony German South West Africa. With a total of about 15,000 men under Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, this uprising was prostrated until August 1904. Most of the Herero fled to the almost waterless Omaheke, an offshoot of the Kalahari Desert. Von Trotha had them locked down and the refugees chased away from the few water spots there, so that thousands of Herero along with their families and cattle herds died of thirst. The hunted in the desert, let Trotha in the so-called Vernichtungsbefehl, "Annihilation Command":
The Herero are no longer German subjects. ... Within the German border, every Herero is shot with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, I take no more wives and no children, I drive them back to their people or let them be shot. Trotha's warfare aimed at the complete annihilation of the Herero ("I believe that the nation must be destroyed as such") and was supported in particular by Alfred von Schlieffen and Kaiser Wilhelm II. His approach is therefore considered to be the first genocide of the twentieth century. Trotha's action sparked outrage in Germany and abroad; at the instigation of chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, the Emperor lifted the order of annihilation two months after the events in the Omaheke. Trotha's policy remained largely unchanged until its revocation in November 1905.
Ludendorff's conception The war of annihilation was a further development of the concept of Total War, as the former imperial General Quartermaster Erich Ludendorff had designed. Thereafter, in a coming war, victory must be given unlimited priority over all other societal concerns: all resources would have to be harnessed, the will of the nation had to be made available before the outbreak of the hostilities are unified by propaganda and dictatorial violence, all available weapons would have to be used, and international law would be disregarded. Even in its objectives, total war is unlimited, as the experience of First World War was teaching:
They not only led the armed forces of the states involved in the war, who aspired to annihilate each other; the peoples themselves were put in the service of warfare; the war was also directed against them and pulled them into deepest passion ... Fighting against the enemy forces on huge fronts and wide seas, the struggle against the psyche and life force of the hostile peoples was joined with the purpose of depressing and paralyzing them. In this conceptual delimitation of the war, Ludendorff was able to draw from the German military-theoretical discourse, which had formed in the confrontation with the People's War, as well as the "Guerre à outrance", which had been invoked by the newly created Third French Republic in the fall and winter of 1870 against the Prussian-German invaders during the Franco-Prussian War. Ludendorff also dealt with Carl von Clausewitz and his 1832 posthumously published work On War, in which he distinguished between 'absolute' and 'limited' wars. But even for Clausewitz absolute war was subject to restrictions, such as the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, between military and civil or between public and private. Ludendorff claimed now that in total war it is no longer a "petty political purpose", not even "big ... national interests", but the sheer Lebenserhaltung (life-support) of the nation, its identity. This existential threat also justifies the annihilation of the enemy, at least moral, if not physical. Ludendorffs efforts to radicalize the war (for which he was responsible from 1916) met with social, political and military barriers. In the year 1935, his advice was then, as the historian Robert Foley writes, "on fertile ground"; the time seemed ripe for an even more radical delimitation of the war by the Nazis.
Nazi warfare
The best known example of a Vernichtungskrieg is the Eastern Front of World War II, which began on June 22, 1941, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The Free University of Berlin historian Ernst Nolte called this the "most egregious Versklavungs- und Vernichtungskrieg [war of enslavement and annihilation] known to modern history" and distinguished it from a "normal war", such as the Nazi regime conducted against France. According to Andreas Hillgruber, Hitler had four motives in launching Operation Barbarossa, namely
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