WWHEN THE GERMANS INVADED BELGIUM IN AUGUST 1914, they and everyone else thought that the war would be short and relatively painless. On the western front in France and the eastern front in Russia, the belligerent armies bogged down in a new and extremely costly kind of war, termed total war by German general Erich Ludendorff. At the front, total war meant lengthy, deadly battles fought with all the destructive weapons a highly industrialized society could produce. At home, national economies were geared toward the war effort. The struggle expanded outside Europe, and the Middle East, Africa, East Asia, and the United States were all brought into the maelstrom of total war.