Institutions such as the [[United Nations]] were established to collectivize international affairs, with the explicit goal of preventing another outbreak of general war. The wars had also greatly changed the course of daily life. Technologies developed during wartime had a profound effect on peacetime life as well, such as by advances in [[jet aircraft]], [[penicillin]], [[nuclear power|nuclear energy]], and [[electronic computers]].<ref name="stories"/>
Institutions such as the [[United Nations]] were established to collectivize international affairs, with the explicit goal of preventing another outbreak of general war. The wars had also greatly changed the course of daily life. Technologies developed during wartime had a profound effect on peacetime life as well, such as by advances in [[jet aircraft]], [[penicillin]], [[nuclear power|nuclear energy]], and [[electronic computers]].<ref name="stories"/>
World War II was considered the most brutal conflict in human history. Throughout its length, the world's vast majority of nations took part and countless major key battles were fought in multiple theatres.
Aworld war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers.[1] Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World WarI (1914–1918) and World WarII (1939–1945), although historians have also described other global conflicts as world wars, such as the Cold War and the War on terror.
Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary cited the first known usage in the English language to a Scottish newspaper, The People's Journal, in 1848: "A war among the great powers is now necessarily a world-war." The term "world war" is used by Karl Marx and his associate, Friedrich Engels,[2] in a series of articles published around 1850 called The Class Struggles in France. Rasmus B. Anderson in 1889 described an episode in Teutonic mythology as a "world war" (Swedish: världskrig), justifying this description by a line in an Old Norse epic poem, "Völuspá: folcvig fyrst I heimi" ("The first great war in the world".)[3] German writer August Wilhelm Otto Niemann had used the term "world war" in the title of his anti-British novel, Der Weltkrieg: Deutsche Träume (The World War: German Dreams) in 1904, published in English as The Coming Conquest of England.
The term "first world war" was first used in September 1914 by German biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that "there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word",[4] citing a wire service report in The Indianapolis Star on 20 September 1914. In English, the term "First World War" had been used by Lt-Col. Charles à Court Repington, as a title for his memoirs (published in 1920); he had noted his discussion on the matter with a Major Johnstone of Harvard University in his diary entry of September 10, 1918.[5][6]
The term "World War I" was coined by Time magazine on page 28b of its June 12, 1939 issue. In the same article, on page 32, the term "World WarII" was first used speculatively to describe the upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of September 11, 1939.[7] One week earlier, on September 4, the day after France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad used the term on its front page, saying "The Second World War broke out yesterday at 11 a.m."[8]
Speculative fiction authors had been noting the concept of a Second World War in 1919 and 1920, when Milo Hastings wrote his dystopian novel, City of Endless Night.
Other languages have also adopted the "world war" terminology, for example; in French: "world war" is translated as guerre mondiale, in German: Weltkrieg (which, prior to the war, had been used in the more abstract meaning of a global conflict), in Italian: guerra mondiale, in Spanish and Portuguese: guerra mundial, in Danish and Norwegian: verdenskrig, in Russian: мировая война (mirovaya voyna), and in Finnish: maailmansota.
World War I occurred from 1914 to 1918. In terms of human technological history, the scale of World WarI was enabled by the technological advances of the second industrial revolution and the resulting globalization that allowed global power projection and mass production of military hardware. It had been recognized that the complex system of opposing military alliances (the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires against the British, Russian, and French Empires) was likely, if war broke out, to lead to a worldwide conflict. That caused a very minute conflict between two countries to have the potential to set off a domino effect of alliances, triggering a world war. The fact that the powers involved had large overseas empires virtually guaranteed that such a war would be worldwide, as the colonies' resources would be a crucial strategic factor. The same strategic considerations also ensured that the combatants would strike at each other's colonies, thus spreading the wars far more widely than those of pre-Columbian times. [further explanation needed]
The outcome of the war had a profound effect on the course of world history. The old European empires collapsed or were dismantled as a direct result of the wars' crushing costs and, in some cases, their fall was caused by the defeat of imperial powers. The United States became firmly established as the dominant global superpower, along with its ideological foe, the Soviet Union, in close competition. The two superpowers exerted political influence over most of the world's nation-states for decades after the end of the Second World War. The modern international security, economic, and diplomatic system was created in the aftermath of the war.[10]
Institutions such as the United Nations were established to collectivize international affairs, with the explicit goal of preventing another outbreak of general war. The wars had also greatly changed the course of daily life. Technologies developed during wartime had a profound effect on peacetime life as well, such as by advances in jet aircraft, penicillin, nuclear energy, and electronic computers.[10]
World War II was considered the most brutal conflict in human history. Throughout its length, the world's vast majority of nations took part and countless major key battles were fought in multiple theatres.
Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, there has been a widespread and prolonged fear of a potential third World War between nuclear-armed powers.[11][12] It is often suggested that it would become a nuclear war, and be more devastating and violent than both the First and Second World Wars. Albert Einstein is often quoted as having said in 1947 that "I know not with what weapons World WarIII will be fought, but World WarIV will be fought with sticks and stones."[13][14][15][16] It has been anticipated and planned for by military and civil authorities, and it has also been explored in fiction in many countries. Scenarios have ranged from conventional warfare to limited or total nuclear warfare.[citation needed]
Various former government officials, politicians, authors, and military leaders (including James Woolsey,[17]Alexandre de Marenches,[18]Eliot Cohen,[19] and Subcomandante Marcos[20]) have attempted to apply the labels of the "Third World War" and the "Fourth World War" to various past and present global wars since the end of the Second World War, such as the Cold War and the War on Terror respectively. However, none of the wars have commonly been deemed world wars.[citation needed]
Some historians consider the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) to have been a world war. Historians Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig include it among a list of eight world wars, including the two generally agreed upon world wars plus these six others: the Nine Years' War (1689-1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), the Seven Years' War, the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), and the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).[28] British historian John Robert Seeley dubbed all of those wars between France and Great Britain (later the UK) between 1689 and 1815 (including the American Revolutionary War from 1775-1783) as the Second Hundred Years' War, echoing an earlier period of conflict between France and England known as the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453).[29] Although that period included the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–1720) in which France and Great Britain were on the same side. Some writers have referred to the American Revolutionary War alone as a world war.[29]
Other possible example is the Second Congo War (1998–2003) that involved nine nations and led to ongoing low-intensity warfare despite an official peace and the first democratic elections in 2006. It has frequently been referred to as "Africa's World War", even though it was only waged on one continent.[30]
^Proffitt, Michael (2014-06-13). "Chief Editor's notes June 2014". Oxford English Dictionary's blog. Archived from the original on 2022-04-15. Retrieved 2022-04-25.
^"Grey Friday: TIME Reports on World War II Beginning". TIME. September 11, 1939. Archived from the original on 11 October 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2014. World War II began last week at 5:20 a. m. (Polish time) Friday, September 1, when a German bombing plane dropped a projectile on Puck, fishing village and airbase in the armpit of the Hel Peninsula.
^"Den anden Verdenskrig udbrød i Gaar Middags Kl. 11", Kristeligt Dagblad, September 4, 1939, Extra edition.
^"World War IV". 2002. Archived from the original on 2008-05-06. Retrieved 2010-02-04.Woolsey claims victory in WWIII, start of WWIV
^Andelman, Professor David; Marenches, Comte Alexandre de; Marenches, Count De; Andelman, David (1992). The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage... ISBN0688092187.Book regarding alleged WWIV
^White, Matthew (2012). The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities. W. W. Norton. pp. 529–530. ISBN978-0-393-08192-3.