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-HungarianAustria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I, which began with an Austro-Hungarian war declaration on the Kingdom of Serbia on 28 July 1914.Austro-Hungarian, and OttomanThe Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, was an empire that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and Northern Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Ottoman Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War I resulted in its partitioning and the loss of its Middle Eastern territories.Ottoman empires against the BritishThe British Empire, was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead.British, RussianRussian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. Russia remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire.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 WarWorld War I, also known as the First World War, or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. The war drew in all the world's economic great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. View World War I »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 GermanyNazi Germany (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government.Nazi Germany had been responsible for multiple genocides, most notably the Holocaust. The United States of AmericaThe United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country in North America. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. The United States shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south. The national capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city and financial center is New York City.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 JapanThe Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent formation of modern Japan. Economic and political turmoil in the 1920s led to the rise of militarism, nationalism and totalitarianism eventually culminating in Japan's membership in the Axis alliance.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 RepublicsSoviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The Soviet Union fall process began with growing unrest in the Union's various constituent national republics developing into an incessant political and legislative conflict between them and the central government. Estonia was the first Soviet republic to declare state sovereignty inside the Union.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 (UN)United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. The UN was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future world wars, succeeding the League of Nations, which was characterized as ineffective.United Nations (UN) 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.