World War

A world war is a war involving many or most of the world's most powerful and populous countries. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theatres. The term is applied to the two major international conflicts that occurred during the twentieth century: the First World War (1914 — 1918) and the Second World War (1939 — 1945).

The First and Second World War

In terms of human technological history, the scale of the two "world wars" was enabled by the technological advances of the second industrial revolution and the resulting globalization that allowed global power projection and mass production of military hardware, but wars on such a scale have not been repeated due to the onset of the atomic age and the resulting danger of mutually assured destruction. It had been recognized that the complex system of opposing alliances — the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires against the British, Russian, French empires was likely to lead to a world-wide conflict in the event of war breaking out. Due to this fact, a very minute conflict between two countries had the potential to set off a domino effect of alliances, triggering a world war. The fact that the powers involved had large overseas empires virtually guaranteed that such a war would be world-wide, as the colonies' resources would be a crucial strategic factor. The same strategic considerations also ensured that the combatants would strike at each other's colonies, thus spreading the wars far more widely than those of pre-Columbian times.

Both world wars had also seen war crimes. The First World War had seen major use of chemical weapons despite the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 outlawing the use of such weapons in warfare. The Ottoman Empire had been responsible for the death of over one million Armenians during the First World War.

The Second World War was the first (and thus far, only) conflict in which atomic bombs had been used, devastating the Japanese cities of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nazi Germany had been responsible for multiple genocides, most notably the Holocaust. The United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and Canada, all had deported and interned minority groups within their own borders, and largely due to this conflict later, many ethnic Germans were expelled out much of Eastern Europe. Imperial Japan had been notorious for attacking neutral nations without a declaration of war, such as at the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and its brutal treatment and killing of Allied prisoners of war and the inhabitants of Asia, most notably by using them for forced labor and at the Rape of Nanking where 250,000 civilians in the city had been brutally murdered by Japanese troops. Non-combatants had suffered as badly as or worse than combatants, and the distinction between combatants and non-combatants was often blurred as belligerents of both world wars mobilized for total war.

The outcome of the world wars had a profound effect on the course of world history. The old European empires had collapsed or been dismantled as a direct result of the wars' crushing costs and in some cases the defeat of imperial powers. The United States of America had been firmly established as the dominant global superpower, along with its ideological foe, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in close competition. These two superpowers exerted political influence over most of the world's nation-states for decades after the end of the Second World War. The modern international security, economic and diplomatic system had been created in the aftermath of the wars.

Institutions such as the United Nations were established to collectivize international affairs, with the explicit goal of preventing another outbreak of general war. The wars had also greatly changed the course of daily life. Technologies developed during wartime had a profound effect on peace-time life as well, for instance; advances in: jet aircraft, penicillin, nuclear energy, and electronic computers.

Hypothetical Third World War

Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War, there has been a widespread and prolonged fear of an upcoming Third World War between nuclear-armed powers. The Third World War is generally considered a hypothetical successor to the Second World War and is often suggested to become a nuclear war, devastating in nature and likely much more violent than the First World War and the Second World War combined. This war has been anticipated and planned for by military and civil authorities, and explored in fiction in many countries. Concepts have ranged from purely conventional scenarios, to limited use of nuclear weapons, to the complete destruction of the planet's surface.

 

 

 

 

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "World war", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.