# What was WWI called before WWII?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 6, 2004, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980 "2004-06-06T17:58:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/21 "2004-06-07T02:25:51Z")
My old frat house had a pre-WWII encyclopedia and there was no WWI in it (obviously). It was under “The Great War.” No cite to back that.
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### Author:  [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/22 "2004-06-07T07:42:16Z")
Just Reading a book about eugenics- War Against the Weak- and was surprised to see a US correspondent in the early thirties at the rise of Hitler refer to the coming ‘Second World War’ in exactly those terms!
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### Author:  [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/23 "2004-06-07T10:19:15Z")
From what I can recall off the top of my head, I think “The Great War” and “The War To End All Wars” were coined after the fighting. At least in the US. My Grandfathers (the one’s I’ve mentioned fighting in WWII) always referred to it as the “War in Europe.” I would suspect this was the common name in the US while it was happening. Sexy? No. What some called it? Yes.
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### Author:  [@Kid\_Gilligan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kid_Gilligan)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/24 "2004-06-07T10:26:40Z")
Just a thought, but I don’t suppose there was much of a need for a distinction while it was happening.
The War in Europe was probably surplus information. I imagine you could have referred to it simply as “the war” without much confusion.
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### Author:  [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/25 "2004-06-07T11:15:45Z")
> [@duffer](#):
>
> From what I can recall off the top of my head, I think “The Great War” and “The War To End All Wars” were coined after the fighting. At least in the US. \*\*My Grandfathers (the one’s I’ve mentioned fighting in WWII) \*\* always referred to it as the “War in Europe.” I would suspect this was the common name in the US while it was happening. Sexy? No. What some called it? Yes.
Damn it, I meant when they told me of thier fathers. :smack:
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### Author:  [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/26 "2004-06-07T13:22:00Z")
In the titles of books about WW1 published in 1914-1916, it is most frequently called “the European War” and “the Great War”. But Theodore Roosevelt published a book with the title “America and the World War” in 1915 – this might be one of the first times the war was called “the World War”.
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### Author:  [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/27 "2004-06-07T13:50:08Z")
Just as a personal comment, I remember a pair of ‘in memoriam’ stone plaques at the church I went to when I was a little boy… commemorating members of the parish who had lost their lives in ‘the great war’ and ‘the second world war.’
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/28 "2004-06-07T14:17:05Z")
My parents had an encyclopedia (published in the U.S.) from the late 1930s that called it the “World War.”
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### Author:  [@galen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/29 "2004-06-07T14:17:39Z")
Marxists described it more accurately as “The Great Imperialist War”. The war between the imperialist powers of Europe had been brewing for a couple of decades.
Germany had come late to the imperialist game and wanted in on the action, but all the colonies had been spoken for. War was the inevitable result.
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### Author:  [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/30 "2004-06-07T16:37:46Z")
For that matter, we could’ve named it the War Between the Inbred Interelated Monarchs of Western Europe.
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### Author:  [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2004, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-wwi-called-before-wwii/248980/31 "2004-06-07T16:46:50Z")
“I’m as English as Queen Victoria!”
\> “So… your father’s a German, you’re half German, and you married a German?”
-Blackadder-
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