I was just wondering why the original title of World War I, ‘the Great War,’ still isn’t used. When, how and why did the name change?
There has been another World War since then. Also, World War II is referred to these days as the “last Great War” so for clarity they call it World War I instead.
… I hate to give this answer, but I have to imagine it’s because of the far greater war that occurred 20 years later. I mean, Russia alone lost 3 times more soldiers in WWII than all combined casualties in WW1.
we still call it the great war in this part of england, i have never heard it being described as anything else elsewhere in britain
Whereas I’ve only really heard “WW1” (although if you said “The Great War”, there would be no confusion). I’d guess that there’s a correlation between age and whether it’s “Great” or not, but I see that gherkin is a student.
Perspectives change with new developments. They don’t call WWI the War to End All Wars anymore, either.
In retrospect, it wasn’t as great a war as people of the time thought.
Well, it wasn’t as world-wide as people thought. That idea was a result of European, and US, provinciality. As others have noted, the extent of WWII dwarfed that of 1914-18 so the phrase “Great War” just sort of disappeared, at least in the US.
However, the PBS series The Great War makes it pretty clear that to those involved it was a “great war” and was a terrible ordeal for those below the rank of General. I can’t think of another war in which almost a whole army, the French, committed mutiny over the tactics of their commanders.
Rent the movie Paths of Glory to get a feel for the quality and mentality of the leadership in that war.
That PBS series that David mentioned is fascinating!
Ooh, I have Paths of Glory on DVD! Great movie, not so great War.
I think there is a case for saying that “The Great War” started in 1914 and ended in 1945.
The ‘14 - 18’ and ‘39 - 45’ parts were just intensive parts of it, when historians looks at the ‘hundred years war’ or the ‘wars of the roses’ thase took place over extended periods of time, but since the causes of those events run like a thread all the way through them, they are joined together, even though there were peeriods of peace in between.
I think the same can be said of the first 50 years of the 20thC, and there was precious little peace in those interwar years, as nations such as Abyssinia, and China would be embroiled in conflict for much of it.
There are also cases for 1914-1992, 1905-1945, 1905-1992, 1890-1992, 1870-1945, 1870-1992, 1848-1945, 1848-1992, and other divisions . These are all based on how what you’re looking at; 1905-1945 (Russo-Japanese war to ww2) for the end of the colonial era, 1890-1992 (spanish-american war to cold war) for rise of the US, 1848/1870-1945/1992 (German unification start or Franco-Prussian war to WW2 or Cold War). I suspect that fifty or a hundred years down the line we’ll end up with something like one of the above as the standard time period, but it will probably depend on what the next era is like.