The worldwide name and generally used for the 6-year-old war is the Second World War or World War II/2[a] (which is commonly used in the United States). Before the attack of Pearl Harbor, the war is called as the Second Great War, a reference to the Great War which later got the name of World War I, and the European War.[1] In June 1941, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The United States official documents adopted the name World War II but only got its popularity after the United States declaration of war on the Japanese Empire on 8 December 1941. Eventually the name reached popularity among media outlets and later the name is officially used in public.[2] It was officially established as World War II when Harry S. Truman approved the term.[3]
The earliest record for someone using the term Second World War appeared just after 2 years the First World War ended by British soldier and author Charles à Court Repington, though he didn't directly mention the name, he just called the Great War at the time as the First World War and he believed that there would be other global wars as he wrote in his book The First World War:
I have called this great war the First World War because I believed it to be the first of a series of world wars.
On 3 September 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany due to its invasion of Poland, the magazine The Times became the first newspaper in the world to call the war as the Second World War, using the phrase: "The Second World War broke out yesterday". Following The Times' use of name, every British media and official document used this term.[3]
World War II
Ten days after the declaration of war by Britain and France, Time Magazine became the first American magazine to call it World War II by publishing the statement:
World War II began last week when Britain and France declared war on Germany.
In June 1941, US official documents named the ongoing war in Europe as World War II when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, on 8 December 1941, when the US declaring war on Japan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly called it World War II. From 1942 to 1945, it was widely known as a global war against fascism in English-speaking countries which include the United Kingdom and the United States. In September 1945, days after Japan surrendered, President Harry S. Truman approved the name use of World War II in government documents.[3]
On 23 June 1941, just one day after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, newspaper Pravda first used the term in one of their article titled: The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People, published by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, the term was to motivate the Soviet people and defend against the invader (which is Nazi Germany).[8] After the war in Europe was over, the term Great Patriotic War was mostly used inside of the Soviet Union and rarely mentioned outside of it. Nowadays, Russia and other post-Soviet nations are the ones that still use the term. In 2014, Uzbekistan was the first post-Soviet nation to not recognize the term and designed the name World War II as the official name.[9][10]
German–Soviet War/Nazi–Soviet War
Also known as the Soviet–German/Nazi War, this term mostly used in modern-day Germany and Ukraine to refer the war between the Soviets and Germans. Examples of this term being used are historians John Erickson (in The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin) and David M. Glantz in most of their works, the BBC[11] and The National WWII Museum[12] sometimes used this term in some of their articles.
Most Allied nations did not commonly distinguished the Pacific War with the Second World War, simply calling it the war against Japan. In the United States, terms like the War in the Pacific, Asia–Pacific War, Pacific–Asian Theater and the Pacific Theater were mostly used.
Japanese official documents published on 12 December 1941 used the name Greater East Asian War after Pearl Harbor to include the ongoing wars between Western Allies and China. The term was prohibited during the Allied occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952.[13] Another term is China incident, which the Japanese government used in order to avoid declaring war and it was used before 7 December 1941.[14]
In China, the war is called the War of Resistance against Japan or the Eight-Year War of Resistance, though these terms refer to the Second Sino‐Japanese War, which by definition is different from the Pacific War.[b] Other names like the Far East War and War in the East were also used in Britain and its Commonwealths.
↑ China and Japan have been fighting for four years alone, after the event of 7 December 1941, which brought the United States and its allies to go to war against Japan, it was widely accepted that the Pacific War was declared on 7 December 1941.
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