The Eastern Front became a locus of total war because (1) Russia was not about to honor the Geneva convention, (2) Russia practiced a scorched earth policy in retreat under the initial attack, especially in the occupied countries of the Baltic States and Ukraine, and (3) the conflict was a death struggle of two opposed ideologies - Naziism and Bolshevism - with concomittant expectations that ideological partisans (Commissars and Waffen SS men) on both sides would be shot on the spot at capture as criminals against humanity.
It obviously does not make sense for Germany to purposefully destroy a country it is attempting to occupy and exploit economically, nor was this the German practice in the attack.
If Hitler really believed in total war, he would have put the German economy on a war footing long before 1944, which was the only year it actually ran as such.
ignores much of the actions the SS and others took in German occupied Europe.
Arresting and detaining or killing ideological dissidents against Naziism hardly seems like a practice of total war. This is much more closely related to Police State population control theories. Total war is the total mobilization of the population and resources of the country in a fight in which every person, animal, and building in the opponents territory becomes a fair target.