A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers. 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
Seven Years' War and the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
.
Etymology
The ''
Oxford English Dictionary'' cited the first known usage in the
English language to a
Scottish
Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
*Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland
*Scottish English
*Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
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, 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".) 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
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
, 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", 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.
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. 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."
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...
authors had been noting the concept of a Second World War in 1919 and 1920, when
Milo Hastings wrote his
dystopian
A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...
novel, ''City of Endless Night''.
Other languages have also adopted the "world war" terminology, for example; in
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
: "world war" is translated as , in
German: (which, prior to the war, had been used in the more abstract meaning of a global conflict), in
Italian: , in
Spanish and
Portuguese: , in
Danish and
Norwegian: , in
Russian: (), and in
Finnish: ''.''
History
First World War
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
Mass production, also known as flow production or continuous production, is the production of substantial amounts of standardized products in a constant flow, including and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch ...
of military hardware. It had been recognized that the complex system of opposing
military alliances (the
German and
Austro-Hungarian
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
Empires against the
British,
Russian, and
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
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.
War crimes were perpetrated in World War I.
Chemical weapons were used in the war despite the
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amon ...
having outlawed the use of such weapons in warfare. The
Ottoman Empire was responsible for the
Armenian genocide, during the First World War, as well as other war crimes.
Second World War
The Second World War occurred from 1939 to 1945 and is the only conflict in which
nuclear weapons
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
have been used; both
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
and
Nagasaki, in the
Japanese Empire
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...
, were
devastated by atomic bombs dropped by the United States.
Nazi Germany, led by
Adolf Hitler, was responsible for
genocides, most notably
the Holocaust, the killing of about 6,000,000
Jews and 11,000,000 others persecuted by the
Nazis
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
, including
Romani people and
homosexuals. The
United States, the
Soviet Union, and
Canada deported and
interned minority groups within their own borders and, largely because of the conflict, many ethnic
Germans were later expelled from
Eastern Europe. Japan was responsible for attacking
neutral nations
A neutral country is a sovereign state, state that is neutral towards belligerents in a specific war or holds itself as permanently neutral in all future conflicts (including avoiding entering into military alliances such as NATO, Collective Secu ...
without a
declaration of war
A declaration of war is a formal act by which one state (polity), state announces existing or impending war activity against another. The declaration is a performative speech act (or the signing of a document) by an authorized party of a nationa ...
, such as the
attack on Pearl Harbor. It is also known for its brutal treatment and killing of Allied
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
and the inhabitants of
Asia. It also used Asians as
forced laborers
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
and was responsible for the
Nanking massacre in which 250,000 civilians were brutally murdered by Japanese troops.
Noncombatants suffered at least as badly as or worse than
combatants, and the distinction between combatants and noncombatants was often blurred by the belligerents of
total war in both conflicts.
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.
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
A jet aircraft (or simply jet) is an aircraft (nearly always a fixed-wing aircraft) propelled by jet engines.
Whereas the engines in propeller-powered aircraft generally achieve their maximum efficiency at much lower speeds and altitudes, je ...
,
penicillin
Penicillins (P, PCN or PEN) are a group of β-lactam antibiotics originally obtained from ''Penicillium'' moulds, principally '' P. chrysogenum'' and '' P. rubens''. Most penicillins in clinical use are synthesised by P. chrysogenum using ...
,
nuclear energy
Nuclear energy may refer to:
*Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity
* Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom
*Nuclear potential energy
...
, and
electronic computers.
Potential Third World War
Since the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...
during the Second World War, there has been a widespread and prolonged fear of a potential third World War between nuclear-armed powers.
[Biggs, Lindy and Hansen, James (editors), 2004, ''Readings in Technology and Civilisation'', .][Worland, Rick, 2006, ''The Horror Film: An Introduction'', Blackwell Publishing, .] It is often suggested that it would become a
nuclear war
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear w ...
, 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." 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.
Various former government officials, politicians, authors, and military leaders (including
James Woolsey,
[Woolsey claims victory in WWIII, start of WWIV] Alexandre de Marenches
Count Alexandre de Marenches (7 June 19212 June 1995) was a French military officer, a director of the SDECE French external intelligence services (6 November 1970 – 12 June 1981), special advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, and a member o ...
,
[Book regarding alleged WWIV] Eliot Cohen,
[Why war on terrorism should be called WWIV] and
Subcomandante Marcos) 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
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
and the
War on Terror respectively. However, none of the wars have commonly been deemed world wars.
During the early-21st century, the
war in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
The War in Afghanistan was an armed conflict that began when an Participants in Operation Enduring Freedom, international military coalition led by the United States launched United States invasion of Afghanistan, an invasion of Afghanistan, ...
, the
Arab Spring (2010–2012), the
Syrian civil war (2011–present), the
war in Iraq (2013–2017), the
Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present), the
Yemeni Civil War (2014–present), the
2022 Kazakh unrest
The 2022 Kazakh unrest, also known as Bloody January () or the January tragedy (), was a series of mass protests that began in Kazakhstan on 2 January 2022 after a sudden sharp increase in liquefied gas prices following the lifting of a governm ...
and their worldwide spillovers are sometimes described as
proxy wars waged by the United States and Russia,
which led some commentators to characterize the situation as a "proto-world war" with many countries embroiled in overlapping conflicts.
Other global conflicts
The
Late Bronze Age collapse
The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC, between c. 1200 and 1150. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean (North Africa and Southeast Europe) and the Near East ...
has been described as "World War Zero" by some historians.
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
The Nine Years' War (1688–1697), often called the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the League of Augsburg, was a conflict between France and a European coalition which mainly included the Holy Roman Empire (led by the Habsburg monarch ...
(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).
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
The Hundred Years' War (; 1337–1453) was a series of armed conflicts between the kingdoms of Kingdom of England, England and Kingdom of France, France during the Late Middle Ages. It originated from disputed claims to the French Crown, ...
(1337-1453).
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.
Other possible example is the
Second Congo War
The Second Congo War,, group=lower-alpha also known as the Great War of Africa or the Great African War and sometimes referred to as the African World War, began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in August 1998, little more than a year a ...
(1998–2003) that involved nine nations and led to ongoing
low-intensity warfare
A low-intensity conflict (LIC) is a military conflict, usually localised, between two or more state or non-state groups which is below the intensity of conventional war. It involves the state's use of military forces applied selectively and with ...
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.
See also
*
Neocolonialism
*
New Imperialism
*
Revolutionary wave
*
List of largest empires
*
First wave of European colonization
*
List of military conflicts spanning multiple wars
*
List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll
*
Political history of the world
References
External links
This is the Fourth World War an interview with philosopher Jean Baudrillard
{{Globalization, state=autocollapse
War
World
Wars by type
*