I recall from history books that statesmen called it “the war to end all wars”. Of course, history books necessarily give Readers Digest versions of events. I’m wondering what ordinary grunts called WWI until the 40s. “The war to end all wars” just doesn’t seem to have the ring of what normal people would say in the course of everyday conversation.
“The Great War.”
At least in some circles, US, UK mostly.
Commonest term I have read is “The Great War”.
In Germany the term Weltkrieg - “world war” was already used before WW2, but for obvious reasons it was just the world war.
I own several books on WWI that were written in the 1920’s.
They use the term “The Great War”.
I searched the UT library catalog. Looking at titles from before 1939, it seems that the “World War” and “Great War” were used interchangeably.
http://utdirect.utexas.edu/lib/utnetcat/index2.WBX?search_type=TB&search_text="+Great+War+"
http://utdirect.utexas.edu/lib/utnetcat/index2.WBX?search_type=TB&search_text="+Great+War+"
I suppose if someone had the time, they could serach several such catalogs and tally up which title is the most popular, or maybe just see what newpapers of the time tended to use.
My parents have an encyclopedia published in the late 1940s which lists it as “War, European” which implies that some people called it “The European War”.
I have heard of it called “The War to End All Wars”.
If only.
I have seen a monument in Pennsylvania that referred to “the World War”. The monument dates from the 1920s. So the term was in use, but it doesn’t seem to have been common.
Most War Memorials in Australia refer to it as ‘The Great War.’
Yes, it was ‘The Great War’. It was probably being called ‘World War One’ earlier than most people might expect – certainly well before 1945. I’ve seen newspaper articles from at least as far back as 1941 referring to ‘World War Two’, and I think the term may have been used even in 1939. Once WW2 was being called that, it follows that the 1914-1918 war would be called ‘World War One’.
Incidentally, does anyone remember what the Soviets called WW1? I know about ‘The Great Patriotic War’ but I forget what they called the Great War.
For pre-WWII media, I have mostly seen the Great War. It is still called this, too.
For a slight hijack, when did WWII become WWII? After Russia got in it? After Japan and the US? Or some earlier time?
Presumably that would be the same time the “Great War” got renamed WWI, correct?
many (most?) American writers called it The World War. British ones called it the Great War (although Colonel Repington’s book The First World War was published in 1920).
To an earlier generation ‘the Great War’ meant the struggle against Napoleon a century earlier
I believe the Russian term translated to “The Great Patriotic War”
Curiously, the 1914-18 war was referred to as the “First World War” long before what we now call World War II. Charles a Court Repington wrote a book published in 1920 (!) with the title The First World War 1914-18. The Cassell Companion to Quotations, edited by Nigel Rees (Cassell: London, 1997), contains this note about the book and its title:
At p. 453 (punctuation Americanized).
This came up in an earlier thread and at that time I asked my mother. IIRC, she remembered the term being used upon the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939.
That’s WW2 for the Russians.
‘The War to End all Wars’ was used to describe WWI. Somewhat inaccurately, I might add.
Then again, if only I read all of the preceding posts…
That was the Soviet term for WWII.
WWI melded right in the Revolution of 1917 (which was still being fought by some up to the early 20s) but I don’t know what the actual term was. Sorry. Dopers?