Soldiers of the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade in the trenches at Gallipoli, 1915. Three Sikh soldiers in a sandbagged trench alongside a slingshot-like device for hurling bombs.
7 September 2021
Often the term for a thing is coined before that thing actually exists. One such case where prognosticating neologists have been right is the term world war. There have been two wars in history that are commonly labeled world wars. These two wars are, of course, World War I (1914–18) and World War II (1937–45). The Second World War is often dated from 1939, but that’s a Eurocentric viewpoint, ignoring the start of hostilities between Japan and China in 1937—if you’re going to call it a world war, you can’t ignore an entire continent where millions died in that war.
But back to the main point, the phrase world war, referring to a war fought around the globe, dates to at least 1848, when it appears in an article in The People’s Journal about how the rise of a great power outside of Europe (i.e., the United States) will mean that future conflicts will necessarily be global in scale:
This great republic is the paramount state on the American continents, and the third, if not the second, power in the world. And it is rapidly preparing to contend for the first place. It is customary to speak of England, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria as “the five great powers;” and in diplomatic science to regard these as the only states which are competent to take the initiative in political matters. It is time for us to amend our classification. Nations take rank according to the powers of mischief—a strange standard for a Christian people in the nineteenth century, but in the logic of accepted statesmanship the only true one. Yet even in this, the United States yield to no power in Europe. A war amongst the great powers is now necessarily a world-war: one that is, can be, confined to land operations, can only be of secondary importance. The battles which shall in the future create new empires—if, indeed, there be any more such, as we fear there will, although we hope otherwise—must be fought upon the high seas. Nations may now be destroyed at a distance from their centres of government; and those who have command of the ocean are the masters of the world.
But it would take over fifty years for a world war to actually break out. The phrase first world war was first used to refer to the 1914–18 war by German biologist Ernest Haeckel on 20 September 1914, a few weeks after the war had started, although he used it as a descriptor, not a label:
There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared “European war,” which directly or indirectly draws all other countries into the conflict, and so will become the first world war in the full sense of the word, will surpass all previous wars.
By the next month, people were already referring to it as the world war. An article by Charles Lowe titled The Great War makes an early use of that term in the Illustrated London News of 10 October 1914:
It is now nine and a-half weeks since the world-war began, and for the greater part of that period—or since the German march on Paris took the form of a retreat to the region of the rivers, the “Mesopotamia” of Northern France—every week, like a fresh turn of the kaleidoscope, has brought new victories and more encouragement to the Allies.
And by 1918 people were already attaching a number to the war, expecting that it would not be “the war to end all wars.” From the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Repington for 10 September 1918, which would be published in 1920 under the title, The First World War:
I saw Major Johnstone, the Harvard Professor who is here to lay the bases of an American History. We discussed the right name of the war. I said that we called it now The War, but that this could not last. The Napoleonic War was The Great War. To call it The German War was too much flattery for the Boche. I suggested The World War as a shade better title, and finally we mutually agreed to call it The First World War in order to prevent the millennium folk from forgetting that the history of the world was the history of war.
And from time to time, people have used world war to refer to struggles other than the between belligerent nations. For instance, the Manchester Guardian of 18 February 1919 ran an article with the headline World War No. 2 about the struggle against economic deprivation.
As to the next actual world war, the phrase second world war was being bandied about by 1920, but again the early uses were as descriptors, not labels. From an article in the Sunday Pictorial section of London’s Sunday Mirror for 4 January 1920:
What I foresee is the rekindling of implacable hate and the foundations of a second world war, for nations will never forget or forgive a humiliation of the nature contemplated.
Actual labeling of the war as World War II happened shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. From Time magazine of 4 September 1939:
Jan Christiaan Smuts, Minister of Justice and hero of World War I, cautioned South Africans to discuss World War II as little as possible because they “are living far away and are not conversant with the facts.”
And before the Second World War was over, people were already discussing the third. From The Economist of 2 January 1943:
Post-war economic policy will take place in two periods: the first of relief, the second of reconstruction. During the period of relief, the appalling shortages of the occupied and belligerent countries will have to be made good, mainly from American reserves and resources. Preparations for these relief measures are already being made. During this period, extensive planning and control will still be necessary, but the area of control should be gradually relaxed. In the second period, that of reconstruction, failure to grapple with realities would lead to a third World War. The success of the totalitarian states was largely due to the failure of the democracies to find the right answer to the problems of reconstruction after the last war.
And the prospect of World War III being primarily between the Soviet Union and the United States was raised by U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace in March 1943, when the two nations were still allies, as reported by the Daily Telegraph of 9 March 1943:
Vice-President Henry A. Wallace, speaking at Delaware, Ohio, to-day, declared that “unless the Western democracies and Russia come to a satisfactory understanding before the war ends, I very much fear that World War No. 3 will be inevitable.”
He added that, without a close and trusting understanding between Russia and the United States, “there was grave probability of Russia and Germany sooner or later making common cause.”
Unfortunately, when it comes to world wars, the prognosticators tend to be Cassandras.
Sources:
“Call for Understanding with Russia.” Daily Telegraph (London), 9 March 1943, 3. Gale Primary Sources: The Telegraph Historical Archive.
Dixon, Hepworth. “The American Republics.” The People’s Journal, vol. 4, 1848, 249–50. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Empire.” Time, 4 September 1939, 22. EBSCOhost Time Magazine Archive.
Haeckel, Ernest. “Noted German Scholar Places Blame of Starting War on Great Britain.” Indianapolis Sunday Star (Indiana), 20 September 1914, 37. NewspaperArchive.com.
Harrison, Austin. “The Problem of War Guilt.” Sunday Pictorial (Sunday Mirror, London), 4 January 1920, 5. Gale Primary Sources: Mirror Historical Archive, 1903-2000.
Lowe, Charles. “The Great War.” Illustrated London News, 10 October 1914, 3. Gale Primary Sources: The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842–2003.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, November 2010, modified March 2021, s.v. world war, n.; September 2014, modified June 2021, s.v. first, adj., adv., and n.2; second edition, 1989, s.v. second, adj. and n.2, third, adj. (and adv.) and n.
“Post-War Reconstruction—A View.” The Economist, 2 January 1943, 14. Gale Primary Sources: The Economist Historical Archive.
Repington, Charles à Court. The First World War 1914–1918, vol. 2 of 2. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920, 391. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Whiteing, Richard. “World War No. 2.” Manchester Guardian, 18 February 1919, 10. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Photo Credit: Reginald Arthur Savory, 1915. British National Army Museum. Public domain image.