# Was WWII ever called "the Six Years' War"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 19, 2023, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922 "2023-04-19T20:15:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/1 "2023-04-19T20:15:02Z")
I’m reading _The Notion Club Papers_, an unfinished novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was probably written around 1945 or 1946. It has a rather complicated setting, but the book’s introduction is feigned to be written in 2014. In this introduction, a document seemingly written between 1980 and 1990 is discussed. The paper of the document is however said to be older than the time it was written: > … perhaps 40 to 50 years older, belonging, that is, to the period during or just after the Six Years’ War. So was that term used to refer to WWII at the time Tolkien wrote this (1945-1946)? Or did he use this term as a kind of verisimilitude, using a neologism and imagining that it would have come into use by 2014? I do see a book called “The Six Years’ War: A Concise History of Australia in the 1939-45 War”, published in 1973, but I can’t find any other uses of this term to refer to WWII. (There was a “Six Years’ War” in the Dominican Republic in 1868-1874 but that seems to be irrelevant.) ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/2 "2023-04-19T20:34:18Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Or did he use this term as a kind of verisimilitude, using a neologism and imagining that it would have come into use by 2014? I’d have to imagine that this is the case, I’ve never seen WWII referred to this way. ---
**Author:** ![WellHelloThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9dc877/32.png) [@WellHelloThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WellHelloThere)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/3 "2023-04-19T20:34:47Z")
I think it is world building. Calling one thing by another name helps differentiate your fantasy alternate history world from the current one, even though they are technically the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/4 "2023-04-19T20:47:42Z")
When did “World War II” come into common usage? ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/5 "2023-04-19T20:57:15Z")
Earlier threads: > [@When did WW 2 get its name?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-ww-2-get-its-name/501940/12): > > It appears to have been used regularly by newspapers during the war. I have a subscription to Newspaper Archive, which allows you to search hundreds of mostly smaller papers. On preview I see samclem beat me, but my search was deeper. stuck_out_tongue Entering whole phrase World War II and limiting the years to 1942-1945 yields 60,360 hits. The usage of “World War II” is exactly the way we use it today. Chester Times - June 3, 1944, Chester, Pennsylvania (Copied with all errors of scanni… > [@WWII during WWII?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-during-wwii/601985): > > Hello Everyone, I apologize for having two active questions, but this one is really puzzling me. Was World War II referred to WWII while it was going on? I mean in the late '30’s until '41 it was still pretty much a Europe war and localized Asian war. When did it become known as WWII and was it called anything else during the conflict? ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/6 "2023-04-19T20:58:01Z")
On a quick check of Australian newspapers it appears, as ‘World War No. 2’, in early 1939 as the idea of a new war became increasingly real’. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/7 "2023-04-19T21:01:41Z")
In the eyes of the imperial powers who had non-European possessions and colonies, the war was definitely global right from the beginning. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/8 "2023-04-20T13:27:38Z")
FDR and Churchill agreed in the name. My google search doesn’t find a date. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/9 "2023-04-20T13:46:46Z")
While the Western powers looked back to the war of 1914 to 1918 and named the current war World War Two, the Soviets referred to a different historical parallel. They looked back to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, which was known as the Patriotic War. So Hitler’s new larger invasion was called the Great Patriotic War. The Japanese called the war the Greater East Asia War. The Chinese called it the War of Resistance. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/10 "2023-04-20T14:38:39Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Chinese called it the War of Resistance. I was taken aback at the vehemence with which my Chinese father in law insisted that the war he lived through as a child (he was born in 1937) was not World War II, because WWII was generally defined as 1939-1945 which cut out the first two and a half years of the conflict in China and generally ignored the events before 1940 in northeast Asia. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/11 "2023-04-20T14:45:31Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The Japanese called the war the Greater East Asia War. That’s rarely used because that is more concerned with the war in China, where the war against America had a much larger impact on Japan and the Japanese. Generally, Japanese simply call it “(the) war”, such as 戦争中 “during the war” and 戦後 “after the war”. If the war is specified, it’s usually the Pacific War 太平洋戦争 although other times they will use WWII, 第二次世界大戦 if the article or TV program, etc is including the war in Europe as well, but generally it’s “(the) war”. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/12 "2023-04-20T14:49:42Z")
I actually tend to sympathize with your father-in-law. 1939 seems like a very euro-centric start date. In which case, perhaps _the Six Years War_ would actually be more appropriate as it might better distinguish the 1939-41 period of the conflict as being a regional war among European powers that occurred _in parallel with_ regional conflicts in Asia, which the Chinese might fairly describe as _the War of Resistance_ from their end. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/13 "2023-04-20T14:53:23Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > I was taken aback at the vehemence with which my Chinese father in law insisted that the war he lived through as a child (he was born in 1937) was not World War II, because WWII was generally defined as 1939-1945 which cut out the first two and a half years of the conflict in China and generally ignored the events before 1940 in northeast Asia. I’ve always looked at it a different way - that giving WW2 a start date of 1939 is unfairly Euro-centric, and that WW2 started in 1937 when Japan invaded China, or 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia, or even 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria. But I guess it’s really just semantics. ---
**Author:** ![Mighty\_Mouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mighty_mouse/32/7776_2.png) [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/14 "2023-04-20T16:25:28Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > I actually tend to sympathize with your father-in-law. 1939 seems like a very euro-centric start date. Oh yes. I hope I didn’t give a different impression. Even though I grew up and was educated through university in Pakistan, I had a very European centric view of history. Even the history we learned in Pakistani schools heavily focused on events in Europe as a driving force of world history. Collapse of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, Age of Exploration, Industrial Revolution etc. Then layered on that a narrative of the Islamic golden age of science, learning and civilization. Marrying into a Chinese family gave me exposure to a worldview where European events were largely peripheral. Quite interesting and refreshing. Even if it came with its own baggage of rewritten history and jingoism. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2023, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/15 "2023-04-22T09:44:55Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > I actually tend to sympathize with your father-in-law. 1939 seems like a very euro-centric start date. In which case, perhaps _the Six Years War_ would actually be more appropriate as it might better distinguish the 1939-41 period of the conflict as being a regional war among European powers that occurred _in parallel with_ regional conflicts in Asia, which the Chinese might fairly describe as _the War of Resistance_ from their end. yes, the allies didnt fight along side Chinse, they rarely went into the same theatre of war . There were tiny crossovers, eg the chinese assistance in the Doolittle Raid. But of course we all knew China was a tinderbox of tension, liable to turn against you. Europeans go into China, and half the chinese would join with the Japanese to expel the europeans. The communist vs mandarin civil war was goig to happen, they let the sleeping dog lie, no need to wake it up with the japanese or communists playing the “anti-european” card… ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2023, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/16 "2023-04-22T09:46:46Z")
But I find a 1945 article calling it “the six years war”. [16 Aug 1945 - THE SIX YEARS' WAR - Trove](https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/134373732?searchTerm=six%20years%20war) and here is a 1960 use of “the six year war” [French President Charles De Gaulle and the Six-Year War - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veJj9bgUMoI) I find 2 books of 1970’s calling it the six years war in the book title. There is a reference to when it was officially called WW2 by the USA and the UK , for the sake of simplicity using the name in English sphere of influence as the question… so it was January 1948 officially named them WW1 and WW2. But it also said that “the six year war” was a possible name. see > **[The Long Shadow](https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/The_Long_Shadow/3TwtAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22the%2Bsix%2Byears%2Bwar%22&pg=PT275&printsec=frontcover)** > > In Britain we have lost touch with the Great War. Our overriding sense now is of a meaningless, futile bloodbath in the mud of Flanders -- of young men whose lives were cut off in their prime for no evident purpose. But by reducing the conflict to... ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2023, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/17 "2023-04-22T13:51:26Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I’ve always looked at it a different way - that giving WW2 a start date of 1939 is unfairly Euro-centric, and that WW2 started in 1937 when Japan invaded China, or 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia, or even 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria. But I guess it’s really just semantics. And I’ve also heard it argued that the Korean War was just a regional continuation of the same war. And the Korean War famously never actually ended, just went into a hopefully-permanent mostly-cease-fire. So the “last shots of World War II” were whenever the current Kim most recently decided to flex his muscles by blowing something up. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2023, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/18 "2023-04-22T14:10:48Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > I was taken aback at the vehemence with which my Chinese father in law insisted that the war he lived through as a child (he was born in 1937) was not World War II, because WWII was generally defined as 1939-1945 which cut out the first two and a half years of the conflict in China and generally ignored the events before 1940 in northeast Asia. I’ve seen Britons mock Americans for our supposedly parochial view that World War II started in 1941. But this is pretty much the same view Britons have about the war starting in 1939. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2023, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/19 "2023-04-22T14:20:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And I’ve also heard it argued that the Korean War was just a regional continuation of the same war. I feel it’s a stretch to say the Korean war was an extension of WWII. But World War II did drag on in Asia. Japan and China officially signed a peace treaty in 1978. And Japan and Russia officially signed a peace treaty in 1998. Thereby ending the sixty-seven year war. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2023, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922/20 "2023-04-22T14:40:30Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’ve seen Britons mock Americans for our supposedly parochial view that World War II started in 1941. But this is pretty much the same view Britons have about the war starting in 1939. As a Brit, I never thought the war “began” in 1939. I am perfectly aware that Hitler had been invading countries for years before that. However, I think it is reasonable to say that it wasn’t a “World War” until Canada and Australia became involved, which happened as a response to the invasion of Poland in 1939. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-wwii-ever-called-the-six-years-war/982922.md?page=2)