Don't believe Encyclopedia Britanica when it comes to the invention of the concept of "Total War." It wasn't Erich Ludendorf who came up with the idea. William Tecuseh Sherman wrote a thesis on the concept in the 1850s and applied it to Georgia in 1864/5. The idea of utterly destroying an enemy's means to resist is entirely an American one. In an existential conflict it may be valid, but not in the "limited wars" we have embarked upon since 1945. The problem is that Sherman gave the American strategic planners a hammer and they have pounded with it every time.