Does anyone else wonder if there were any veterans in the 1920’s who said “You know I fought in that war and it didn’t seem all that great to me.”
Little Nemo.
“Great” refers to the extent, not the Quality, it was the first war to include men from every inhabited continent (and please remweber, this habit of splitting the Americas into 2 continents is fairly recent).
As has been stated 1914-18 was (generally) “The Great War” or “The World War” until 1939, First and Second World War seemed to come in at or soon after 1939-45, but I’m not sure when WW1 & WW2 came in (appalling abrieviations IMHO).
Of course, in Ireland, 1939-45 was simply “The Emergency”.
Walrus.
And the Japanese call it the Pacific War.
I thought the Japanese called it “The Great Pacific War”.
Our translations may vary. And the Japanese fought in WWI, albeit on the other side of Germany.
The Manchurian Invasion has a much different name in Japan also, but I cannot remember it.
I thought it was the Coexistant Expansion Prosperity War or some permutation of that.
The Japanese name for their desired empire was the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
And let’s not forget the War of the Pacific, but that was fought between Chile and the combination of Peru and Bolivia.
If I had to answer a question about on a final exam in college, it must have been important!
I have seen cites that state the war between Great Britain and France during the 18thC and early 19thC was the first true world war, since it involved conflict in Noth America, India, Africa, Egypt and some of the mid East and the use of proxy wars by both sides, the American revolutionaries recieved some weapons provisions from the French, for example, and the British used Indian armies to attack the French in India.
Add to all that the Napoleonic wars in Europe during this era where the Russians and Spanish were involved too and you have a long running series of conflicts that roll into each other and whose origins lie within each other.
Thanks, Beatle.
My high school history teacher said much the same thing about the conflict we in the US know “The French and Indian War,” a.k.a. The Dumbest-Named War.
Oh, and beatle… you’re scaring me. You weren’t in the kitchen at the time, were you?
– Beruang
I can remember seeing a photograph of a newsboy which dated from either '39 or '41, where he’s standing on a street corner, holding a newspaper with the words “World War Declared” in huge type on the front of it. Not sure if this was when the British and the French declared war on Germany or when Pearl Harbor was bombed (the caption to the photo gave the date), but in any case, it was immediately after the beginning of the hostilites, and not some time such as the mid-point of the war that the name was adopted.
Whoosh, Walrus, whoosh.