ABSTRACT
The economy of scarcity as such put pressure on the social consensus, but even more important for the breakdown of morale at home was the uneven impact on the various sectors of German society. Erich Ludendorff was never one to oppose mixing politics and the military or, more precisely, he insisted politics had to be subordinated at all times to the needs of the military. Germany's wartime leaders expected the war to eliminate domestic political division, and for a time their expectations were fulfilled. World War I was the first "total war" in which victory depended as much on a country's economic and social resources as on the military skills of its armies at the front. The act of terrorism stood at the beginning of a chain of events that would eventually lead to World War I, although initially few expected such an outcome.
