Test world doc… 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 War II" was first used
speculatively to describe the upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of
September 11, 1939.[4] 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."[5]

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World war
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"The World Wars" redirects here. For the 2014 miniseries, see The World Wars (miniseries).
For the conflict that was referred to as the World War before the start of the second war,
see World War I.

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A world war is a large-scale war which affects the whole world directly or indirectly. World wars
span multiple countries on multiple continents or just two countries, with battles fought in
many theaters. While a variety of global conflicts have been subjectively deemed "world wars",
such as the Cold War and the War on Terror, the term is widely and usually accepted only as it is
retrospectively applied to two major international conflicts that occurred during the 20th
century: World War I (1914–18) and World War II (1939–45).

Contents

• 1Origin of the term

• 2First World War
• 3Second World War
• 4Third World War
• 5Other global conflicts
o 5.1Wars with higher death tolls than the First World War
o 5.2Wars spanning continents
• 6See also
• 7References
• 8External links

Origin of the term[edit]

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,[1] 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".)[2] 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.
In English, the term "First World War" had been used by 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.[3]
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 War II" was first used speculatively to describe the
upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of September 11, 1939.[4] 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."[5]
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, and
in Russian: мировая война (mirovaya voyna.)

First World War[edit]

Main article: World War I
World War I occurred from 1914 to 1918. In terms of human technological history, the scale of
World War I 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. Wars on such a scale have not been repeated since the onset of the Atomic Age and
the resulting danger of mutually-assured destruction. It had been recognized that the complex
system of opposing alliances (the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires against
the British, Russian, and French Empires) was likely to lead to a worldwide conflict if a war broke
out. Due to this fact, a very minute conflict between two countries had 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 First World
War despite the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 having outlawed the use of such weapons
in warfare. The Ottoman Empire was responsible for the Armenian genocide, the death of over
one million Armenians during the First World War.

Second World War[edit]

Main article: World War II

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The Second World War occurred from 1939 to 1945 and is the only conflict in which nuclear
weapons have been used. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, were devastated by atomic bombs
dropped by the United States. Nazi Germany was responsible for genocides, most notably the
Holocaust, the killing of six million Jews. 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 without a declaration of war, such as the bombing of
Pearl Harbor. It is also known for its brutal treatment and killing of Allied prisoners of war and the
inhabitants of Asia. It also used Asians as forced laborers and was responsible for the Nanking
massacre where 250,000 civilians in the city were brutally murdered by Japanese troops. Non-
combatants suffered at least as badly as or worse than combatants, and the distinction between
combatants and non-combatants was often blurred by belligerents of total war in both
conflicts.[citation needed]
The outcome of World War II had a profound effect on the course of world history. The old
European empires either collapsed or were dismantled as a direct result of the wars' crushing
costs and, in some cases, their fall was due to 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
wars.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]

Third World War[edit]

Main article: World War III
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. The Third World War is generally considered a successor to the Second World War and
is often suggested to become a nuclear war, devastating in nature and likely much more violent
than both the First and Second World Wars; in 1947, Albert Einstein commented that "I know not
with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and
stones."[6][7] It has been anticipated and planned for by military and civil authorities and has
been explored in fiction in many countries. Concepts have ranged from purely-conventional
scenarios, to limited use of nuclear weapons, to the complete destruction of the planet's surface.

Other global conflicts[edit]

See also: American Revolutionary War, Cold War, War on Terror, Second Congo War, Syrian
Civil War, Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017), and Cold War II
Various former government officials, politicians, authors, and military leaders (including the
following people: James Woolsey,[8] Alexandre de Marenches,[9] Eliot
Cohen,[10] and Subcomandante Marcos[11]) have attempted to apply the labels of the "Third World
War" and "Fourth World War" to various past and present global wars since the closing of the
Second World War, for example, the Cold War and the War on Terror, respectively. Among these
are former American, French, and Mexican government officials, military leaders, politicians, and
authors. Despite their efforts, none of these wars are commonly deemed world wars.
Wars described by some historians as "World War Zero" include the Seven Years' War[12] and the
onset of the Late Bronze Age collapse.[13]
The Second Congo War (1998–2003) involved nine nations and led to ongoing low-level warfare
despite an official peace and the first democratic elections in 2006. It has often been referred to
as "Africa's World War".[14] During the early-21st century the Syrian Civil War and the Iraqi Civil
War and their worldwide spillovers are sometimes described as proxy wars waged between the
United States and Russia,[15][16][17][18] which led some commentators to characterize the situation as
a "proto-world war" with nearly a dozen countries embroiled in two overlapping conflicts.[19]
Wars with higher death tolls than the First World War[edit]
See also: List of wars by death toll and World War I casualties
The two world wars of the 20th century had caused unprecedented casualties and destruction
across the theaters of conflict.[20] There have been several wars that occurred with as many or
more deaths than in the First World War (16,563,868–40,000,000), including:

Estimated death tolls. Log. mean calculated using simple p

Lowest Highest
Event L
estimate estimate

Three Kingdoms 36,000,000[21] 40,000,000[22] Chi

An Lushan Rebellion 13,000,000[23] 36,000,000[24] Chi

Mongol conquests 30,000,000[25] 40,000,000[23] Eur

Conquests of Timur 15,000,000[26] 20,000,000[26] Asi

Qing dynasty conquest of the Ming dynasty 25,000,000[27] 25,000,000 Chi

Taiping Rebellion 20,000,000[28] 100,000,000[29][30][31] Chi

World War II 40,000,000[32] 85,000,000[33] Glo

Cold War 22,345,162 +94,000,000 Glo

Wars spanning continents[edit]

'World War 0' redirects here.
There have been numerous wars spanning two or more continents throughout history, including:
 Estimated death tolls. Log. mean calculated using simpl

Lowest Highest
Event
estimate estimate

Late Bronze Age collapse Egypt, Anatolia, Syria, C

Greco-Persian Wars Greece, Thrace, Aegean

Peloponnesian War Greece, Asia Minor, Sici

Thrace, Illyria, Greece, A

Wars of Alexander the Great
Minor, Syria, Babylonia

Wars of the Diadochi Macedon, Greece, Thrac

First Punic War 285,000 400,000[23] Mediterranean Sea, Sicil

[citation needed]

616,000 Italy, Sicily, Hispania, C

Second Punic War [citation needed] 770,000[23]
Africa, Greece

Roman–Seleucid War Greece, Asia Minor

Mesopotamia, Syria, Lev

Roman–Persian Wars
Minor, Balkans

First Mithridatic War Asia Minor, Achaea, Ae

Great Roman Civil War Hispania, Italy, Greece,

 Estimated death tolls. Log. mean calculated using simpl

Lowest Highest
Event
estimate estimate

Byzantine–Sassanid wars Caucasus, Asia Minor, E

Mesopotamia, Caucasus
Muslim conquests
Maghreb, Anatolia, Iberi

Arab–Byzantine wars Levant, Syria, Egypt, No

Crusades 1,000,000[34] 3,000,000[35] Iberian peninsula, Near E

Mongol conquests 30,000,000[25] 40,000,000[23] Eurasia

Byzantine–Ottoman Wars Asia Minor, Balkans

European colonization of the Americas 2,000,000[36] 100,000,000[37] Americas

Ottoman–Habsburg wars Hungary, Mediterranean

Atlantic Ocean, English

First Anglo-Spanish War
Main, Portugal, Cornwal

Atlantic Ocean, Brazil, W

Dutch–Portuguese War
Ocean, India, East Indies

Thirty Years' War 3,000,000 11,500,000 Europe, mainly present-d

Second Anglo-Spanish War Caribbean, Spain, Canar

Nine Years' War Europe, Ireland, Scotlan

 Estimated death tolls. Log. mean calculated using simpl

Lowest Highest
Event
estimate estimate

Europe, North America,

War of the Spanish Succession

War of the Quadruple Alliance Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, N

Third Anglo-Spanish War Spain, Panama

Europe, North America,

War of the Austrian Succession

1,500,000[23] Europe, North America,

Seven Years' War

North America, Gibralta

American Revolutionary War
Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Ind
 Estimated death tolls. Log. mean calculated using simpl

Lowest Highest
Event
estimate estimate

Europe, Egypt, Middle E

Ocean

French Revolutionary Wars

Europe, Atlantic Ocean,

3,500,000 7,000,000[38] Plata, French Guiana, W
[citation needed]
America, South Caucasu

Napoleonic Wars

Crimean War 255,000[39] 1,000,000[40] Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, S

15,000,000[41] 65,000,000[42] Global

World War I

40,000,000[32] 85,000,000[33] Global

World War II
 Estimated death tolls. Log. mean calculated using simpl

Lowest Highest
Event
estimate estimate

+94,000,000 ( 22
millions of people killed
22,345,162 by all civil wars started
(casualties by all in Asia, South America
wars started in the and Africa + number of
Cold War with Gulf people killed in Asia and
War, Vietnam Europe by the
War, Korean Communist
War, Algerian governments, with Global
War, Iran–Iraq casualties of Soviet
War, Nigerian Civil famine of 1946–
War or Soviet– 47, Cambodian
Afghan genocide, Cultural
Cold War
War included)[43][circular Revolution, and Great
reference]
Leap
Forward included)[44][circular
reference]

272,000[45] 1,260,000 Global

[45][46][47]

War on Terror

See also[edit]

• War portal

• 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

References[edit]
1. ^ Engels, Frederick. "Introduction to Borkheim".
2. ^ Rasmus Björn Anderson (translator: Viktor Rydberg), Teutonic
Mythology, vol. 1, p. 139, London: S. Sonnenschein & Co.,
1889 OCLC 626839.
3. ^ The First World War Quite Interesting Ltd. Encyclopedia.
Downloaded Feb. 11, 2017
4. ^ "Grey Friday: TIME Reports on World War II Beginning". TIME.
September 11, 1939. 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 air base in the armpit of the Hel Peninsula.
5. ^ "Den anden Verdenskrig udbrød i Gaar Middags Kl.
11", Kristeligt Dagblad, September 4, 1939.
6. ^ Calaprice, Alice (2005). The new quotable Einstein. Princeton
University Press. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-691-12075-1.
7. ^ "The culture of Einstein". MSNBC. 2005-04-19. Retrieved 2012-
08-24.
8. ^ "World War IV". 2002. Retrieved 2010-02-04.Woolsey claims
victory in WWIII, start of WWIV
9. ^ The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage ...
1992. ASIN 0688092187.Book regarding alleged WWIV
10. ^ "World War IV: Let's call this conflict what it is". 2001.
Retrieved 2010-02-04.Why war on terrorism should be called
WWIV
11. ^ Subcomandante Marcos (2001). "The Fourth World War Has
Begun". Nepantla: Views from South. 2 (3): 559–572. Retrieved 20
October 2014.
12. ^ "Why the first world war wasn't really". The Economist. 2014-07-
01.
13. ^ "World War Zero brought down mystery civilisation of 'sea
people'". New Scientist.
14. ^ Prunier, Gerard (2014). Africa's World War: Congo, the
Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe.
Barnes & Noble. ISBN 9780195374209. Retrieved 20
October 2014.
15. ^ Anne Barnard and Karen Shoumali (12 October 2015). "U.S.
Weaponry Is Turning Syria Into Proxy War With Russia". The New
York Times. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
16. ^ Martin Pengelly (4 October 2015). "John McCain says US is
engaged in proxy war with Russia in Syria". The Guardian.
Retrieved 17 October 2015.
17. ^ Holly Yan and Mark Morgenstein (13 October 2015). "U.S.,
Russia escalate involvement in Syria". CNN. Retrieved 17
October 2015.
18. ^ Taub, Amanda (1 October 2015). ""The Russians have made a
serious mistake": how Putin's Syria gambit will backfire". Vox.
Retrieved 17 October 2015.
19. ^ "Untangling the Overlapping Conflicts in the Syrian War". The
New York Times. 18 October 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
20. ^ "Top 10 Causes of WWI". The Rich Ten. Retrieved 11
June 2014.
21. ^ Robert B. Marks (2011). China: Its Environment and History
(World Social Change). Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers. ISBN 978-1442212756.
22. ^ Caselli, Graziella (2005). Demography – Analysis and Synthesis:
A Treatise in Population. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0127656601.
23. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f 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. ISBN 978-0-393-08192-3.
24. ^ "Death toll figures of recorded wars in human history".
 25. ^ Jump up to:a b The Cambridge History of China: Alien regimes
and border states, 907–1368, 1994, p.622, cited by White
26. ^ Jump up to:a b "Timur Lenk (1369–1405)". Users.erols.com.
Retrieved 2013-08-23.
27. ^ Macfarlane, Alan (1997-05-28). The Savage Wars of Peace:
England, Japan and the Malthusian Trap. Wiley-
Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-18117-0.
28. ^ "Taiping Rebellion – Britannica
Concise". Concise.britannica.com. Retrieved 2013-08-23.
29. ^ "The Taiping Rebellion 1850–1871 Tai Ping Tian
Guo". Taipingrebellion.com. Retrieved 2013-08-23.
30. ^ Livre noir du Communisme: crimes, terreur, répression, page
468
31. ^ By Train to Shanghai: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway
By William J. Gingles page 259
32. ^ Jump up to:a b Wallechinsky, David (1996-09-01). David
Wallechinskys 20th Century: History With the Boring Parts Left
Out. Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-92056-8.
33. ^ Jump up to:a b Fink, George: Stress of War, Conflict and Disaster
34. ^ John Shertzer Hittell, "A Brief History of Culture" (1874) p.137:
"In the two centuries of this warfare one million persons had been
slain..." cited by White
35. ^ Robertson, John M., "A Short History of Christianity" (1902)
p.278. Cited by White
36. ^ Rummel, R.J. Death by Government, Chapter 3: Pre-Twentieth
Century Democide
37. ^ Stannard, David E. (1993). American Holocaust: The Conquest
of the New World. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-508557-0. In the 1940s and 1950s
conventional wisdom held that the population of the entire
hemisphere in 1492 was little more than 8,000,000—with fewer
than 1,000,000 people living in the region north of present-day
Mexico. Today, few serious students of the subject would put the
hemispheric figure at less than 75,000,000 to 100,000,000 (with
approximately 8,000,000 to 12,000,000 north of Mexico).
38. ^ Charles Esdaile "Napoleon's Wars: An International History".
39. ^ Bodart, Gaston (1916). Westergaard, Harald (ed.). Losses of
Life in Modern Wars: Austria-Hungary; France. Clarendon Press.
p. 142.
40. ^ Edgerton, Robert (1999). Death or Glory: The Legacy of the
Crimean War. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-
8133-3789-0.
41. ^ Willmott 2003, p. 307
42. ^ "Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC". www.cdc.gov.
43. ^ List of wars by death toll
44. ^ The Black Book of Communism
45. ^ Jump up to:a b "Human costs of war: Direct war death in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan October 2001 – February
2013" (PDF). Costs of War. February 2013. Archived from the
original(PDF) on 30 April 2013. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
46. ^ "Update on Iraqi Casualty Data" Archived 2008-02-01 at
the Wayback Machine by Opinion Research Business. January
2008.
47. ^ "Revised Casualty Analysis. New Analysis 'Confirms' 1 Million+
Iraq Casualties"Archived 2009-02-19 at the Wayback Machine.
January 28, 2008. Opinion Research Business. Word Viewer
for.doc files.

External links[edit]
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