Question: In what year was the author of "Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War" born?
Context: War is a state of armed conflict between societies.  It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces.  An absence of war is usually called "peace".  Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general.  Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties. Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War is a book by Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises first published in 1944 by Yale University Press.  It is one of the most influential writings in Libertarian social thought and critique of statist ideology and socialism, examining the rise of Nazism as an example.  The book treats Nazism as a species of orthodox socialist theory.  At the same time the book offers a critique of economic interventionism, industrial central planning, the welfare state and world government, denouncing the trends of the Western Allies towards the total state.  The book was made available online by the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 2004. The 1860s were an extremely different decade with numerous cultural, social, and political upheavals in Europe and America.  Revolutions were prevalent in Germany and the Ottoman Empire.  The abolition of slavery in America led to the breakdown of the Atlantic Slave Trade, which was already suffering from the abolition of slavery in most of Europe in the late 1820s and ’30s.  In America, civil war between the Confederacy of the South and the Northern states led to massive deaths and the destruction of cities such as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Richmond, Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia.  Sherman's March to the Sea was one of the first times America experienced total war, and advancements in military technology, such as iron and steel warships, and the development and initial deployment of early machine guns added to the destruction.  After the Civil War, turmoil continued in Reconstruction, with the rise of white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the issue of granting Civil Rights to freed blacks. World War II (often abbreviated to WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier.  It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis.  It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries.  In a state of total war, the major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Reparations were paid to Yugoslavia in the aftermath of World War II.  The State Reparations Commission of the Yugoslav Government estimated the total war damages inflicted upon Yugoslavia in World War II at approximately US$47 billion (1938 values: $1 = 44 Yugoslav dinars; Germany – 36 billion, Italy – 10 billion, Hungary – 542 million, Bulgaria – 650 million). The year 2015 saw releases of numerous video games, including new installments for some well-received franchises, such as "Anno", "Assassin's Creed", "", "Battlefield", "Call of Duty", "Disgaea", "Dirt", "Fallout", "Fatal Frame", "Five Nights at Freddy's, Forza Motorsport", "Guitar Hero", "Halo", "Heroes of Might and Magic", "Hotline Miami", "Just Cause", "King's Quest", "Kirby", "Magicka", "Mario Party", "Mario vs. Donkey Kong", "Metal Gear", "Minecraft", "Mortal Kombat", "Need for Speed", "OlliOlli", "Resident Evil", "Rock Band", "StarCraft", "", "Tales", "The Witcher", "Tomb Raider", "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six", "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater", "Total War," "Toy Soldiers", "Xenoblade Chronicles", "Yakuza" and "Yoshi".  In addition, it saw the release of many new intellectual properties, including "Dying Light", "Evolve", "Life Is Strange", "Bloodborne", "Until Dawn" and "Splatoon", and indie titles such as "Her Story", "Ori and the Blind Forest", "Rocket League", and "Undertale".  Many awards went to games such as "Bloodborne", "", "", "Fallout 4", "Rocket League", "Ori and the Blind Forest" and "Rise of the Tomb Raider". Michael Lenere Jones (born November 10, 1966) is a former American football player.  A native of Bridgeport, Connecticut, Jones was a three-sport star and high school all-American amassing several state championships for Warren Harding High School.  He attended the University of Michigan on a football and baseball scholarship.  While at Harding he played football, basketball and baseball winning 9 total state championships and was a high school All-American in all three sports.  He was a 4 time all state basketball, football and 2 time baseball player. Although the use of toxic chemicals as weapons dates back thousands of years, the first large scale use of chemical weapons was during World War I.  They were primarily used to demoralize, injure, and kill entrenched defenders, against whom the indiscriminate and generally very slow-moving or static nature of gas clouds would be most effective.  The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas, to lethal agents like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas.  This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century.  The killing capacity of gas was limited, with only about ninety thousand fatalities from a total of some 1.2 million casualties caused by gas attacks.  Gas was unlike most other weapons of the period because it was possible to develop effective countermeasures, such as gas masks.  In the later stages of the war, as the use of gas increased, its overall effectiveness diminished.  The widespread use of these agents of chemical warfare, and wartime advances in the composition of high explosives, gave rise to an occasionally expressed view of World War I as "the chemist's war" and also the era where "weapons of mass destruction" were created. Legion Arena is a real-time tactical role-playing video game by Slitherine Strategies that allows the player to play as several tribes during the rise of the Roman Empire.  The player can play as the Latin tribes, the Celts and the Romans.  It is published by Freeverse Software for Mac OS X and Strategy First for Windows.  "Legion Arena" includes many different units including war elephants and barbarians.  Though it seems to be very similar to "", there are many differences.  Though its graphics can't match "Rome: Total War"'s, the game has more realistic features.  For example, not all men of the same unit are dressed in the same attire.  Also, "Legion Arena" boasts more realistic tactics.  Light infantry fights best in the woods and on boggy ground, and an enemy can take advantage of this by either hitting the light infantry in the open or drawing cavalry or heavy infantry onto boggy ground or into a forest. Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises ( ; ] ; 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) was an Austrian-American theoretical Austrian School economist.  Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism.  He is best known for his work on praxeology, a study of human choice and action.
Answer: 1881