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 The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754 ...

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 t ...

Etymology

The ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...

'' cited the first known usage in the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

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 Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

and his associate,

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' 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 Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

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 s ...

, 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 Charles à Court Repington, , (29 January 1858 – 25 May 1925), known until 1903 as Charles à Court, was an English soldier, who went on to have a second career as an influential war correspondent during the First World War. He is also credite ...

, as a title for his memoirs (published in 1920); he had noted his discussion on the matter with a Major Johnstone of

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in his diary entry of September 10, 1918. The term "World War I" was coined by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' 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 ''Kristeligt Dagblad'' is a Danish newspaper in Copenhagen, Denmark. History and profile ''Kristeligt Dagblad'' was established in 1896. It was an initiative of the Lutheran Inner Mission created to oppose radicalism and atheism. The paper is ...

'' 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, nat ...

authors had been noting the concept of a Second World War in 1919 and 1920, when

Milo Hastings Milo Milton Hastings (June 28, 1884 – February 25, 1957) was an American inventor, author, and nutritionist. He invented the forced-draft chicken incubator and Weeniwinks, a health-food snack. He wrote about chickens, science fiction, and hea ...

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 German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

: (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 The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardization, mass production and industrialization from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The ...

and the resulting

globalization Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...

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 ba ...

of military hardware. It had been recognized that the complex system of opposing military alliances (the

and Austro-Hungarian Empires against the British, Russian, and

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 In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

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 am ...

having outlawed the use of such weapons in warfare. The

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...

was responsible for the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...

, 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 bom ...

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 ...

and

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

, 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 Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, led by

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and the ...

, was responsible for genocides, most notably

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

, the killing of about 6,000,000

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

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 N ...

, including

Romani people The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan peoples, Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic Itinerant groups in Europe, itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have Ro ...

and homosexuals. The

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

deported and interned minority groups within their own borders and, largely because of the conflict, many ethnic

Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

were later expelled from

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whi ...

. Japan was responsible for attacking neutral nations without a

declaration of war A declaration of war is a formal act by which one 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 national government, ...

, such as the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...

. 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 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 prisoners of w ...

and the inhabitants of

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

. It also used Asians as forced laborers and was responsible for the

Nanking massacre The Nanjing Massacre (, ja, 南京大虐殺, Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as ''Nanking'') was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the ...

in which 250,000 civilians were brutally murdered by Japanese troops. Noncombatants suffered at least as badly as or worse than

combatants Combatant is the legal status of an individual who has the right to engage in hostilities during an armed conflict. The legal definition of "combatant" is found at article 43(2) of Additional Protocol I (AP1) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It ...

, and the distinction between combatants and noncombatants was often blurred by the belligerents of

total war Total war is a type of warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-com ...

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 A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than " country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, m ...

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 The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

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, jet ...

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 usin ...

, nuclear energy, and

electronic computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These progra ...

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, and be more devastating and violent than both the First and Second World Wars.

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

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 Robert James Woolsey Jr. (born September 21, 1941) is an American political appointee who has served in various senior positions. He headed the Central Intelligence Agency as Director of Central Intelligence from February 5, 1993, until January 1 ...

,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

and the

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...

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 The Arab Spring ( ar, الربيع العربي) was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and econo ...

(2010–2012), the Syrian civil war (2011–present), the

war in Iraq (2013–2017) The War in Iraq was an armed conflict between Iraq and its allies and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) which began in 2013 and ended in December 2017. Following December 2013, the insurgency escalated into full-scale guerrilla war ...

, the

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War; uk, російсько-українська війна, rosiisko-ukrainska viina. has been ongoing between Russia (alongside Russian separatists in Ukraine) and Ukraine since February 2014. Following Ukraine's Rev ...

(2014–present), the

Yemeni Civil War (2014–present) {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Yemeni Civil War , partof = the Yemeni Crisis, Arab Winter, War on terror, and the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict , image = Yemeni Civil War.svg , width ...

, the 2022 Kazakh unrest 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 ...

has been described as "World War Zero" by some historians. Some historians consider the

(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 Kingdom of France, France and a European coalition which mainly included the Holy Roman Empire (led by t ...

(1689-1697), the

War of the Spanish Succession The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict that took place from 1701 to 1714. The death of childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700 led to a struggle for control of the Spanish Empire between his heirs, Phil ...

(1701-1714), the

War of the Austrian Succession The War of the Austrian Succession () was a European conflict that took place between 1740 and 1748. Fought primarily in Central Europe, the Austrian Netherlands, Italy, the Atlantic and Mediterranean, related conflicts included King George ...

(1740-1748), the Seven Years' War, the

French Revolutionary Wars The French Revolutionary Wars (french: Guerres de la Révolution française) were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted France against Britain, Austria, Pruss ...

(1792-1802), and the

Napoleonic Wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fre ...

(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 The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

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 England and France during the Late Middle Ages. It originated from disputed claims to the French throne between the English House of Plantagen ...

(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 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.

References

External links

This is the Fourth World War
an interview with philosopher Jean Baudrillard {{Globalization, state=autocollapse War World Wars by type *

Etymology

History

First World War

Second World War

Potential Third World War

Other global conflicts

See also

References

External links