War effort

Although many societies were retroactively perceived to be engaged in a war effort, the concept was not generally used until the last decade of the 18th century, when the leaders of the French Revolution called for the levée en masse and a general mobilization of society to prevent monarchist forces from reclaiming control of the French government.

The modern concept of a state belonging to its "people" carried the concomitant assumption that war was everybody's business and everyone, combatant or not, was expected to contribute actively to winning it.

Crossover use of peacetime elements of society and economy for wartime uses became important because of the scarcity of manpower and the large size of armies and specialized materials used for war production (rubber, aluminum, steel, etc.).

The complex decisions involved in conversion to wartime use also necessitated organization and a bureaucracy; the term war effort was coined to describe these collective tasks.

Implicit in the concept of war effort was that the entire society was expected to contribute in some way; this served the double purpose of improving morale as well as resource conservation.