Who came up with the term World War II? I assume it was before 1939, but was it during World War I? And just what did they call WWI while it was happening? wasn’t it the “Great War”?
Hitler referred to WW I as “The World War” in “Mein Kampf,” so the term was probably already rather well-known. In keeping with numbering conventions of sequels, the follow up was called WW II, and the original was renamed WW I.
It was covered here
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=13884
And in fact, there’s even a prior link inside that thread, but I couldn’t get it to work.
Yeah, the link goes back to whan the Dope was using its previous version of board software… I’ve no idea how to update it.
<aside to moderator> Any way to automatically update this link, or find out which thread it pointed to? </aside>
Somewhere recently I saw a reprint of the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper with the headline announcung the end of WW2 in Europe, and it was referred to as the “Second Great War”.
I won’t bump the old thread, but the link in it points to the thread World Wars
I just used the “search” function, with “World War” (match all) in subject, and tomndebb in the username field.