Total War, the Home Front, and America's Entry

The war's unexpectedly long duration forced every belligerent nation to reorganize its economy entirely around sustained war production, a phenomenon known as "total war." Germany's Hindenburg Program of 1916 imposed a radical intensification of munitions output backed by the Auxiliary Service Law, which mobilized civilian labor, while Britain created a Ministry of Munitions under David Lloyd George to resolve a severe shell shortage. Rationing, state control of prices and production, and the conversion of civilian industry to military output became widespread, and the shortage of male labor drew women into industry and agriculture in unprecedented numbers - British "munitionettes" alone numbered in the hundreds of thousands - a mobilization that reinforced the case for women's suffrage, granted in Britain in 1918, in Germany in 1918-1919, and in the United States in 1920. Colonial and dominion troops were mobilized on a similarly vast scale, including some 600,000 soldiers from France's African and Asian empire, over 1.3 million soldiers of the British Indian Army, and the Canadian Corps that distinguished itself at Vimy Ridge in April 1917.