78725 - Podcast With US #71: About the names of World Wars

N. Lygeros

In this podcast let’s talk about the impact of World War II. Now it seems obvious that we have two World Wars, the first one and the second one. I would like to explain that the impact of the second one was also something which changed the first one. In fact, the first one was called at that time the ‘Great War’, sometimes also the ‘War to End All Wars’ but never the ‘World War I’. The idea was that it was the last war. By the way even in French we have the expression ‘La Der des Ders’ which means in fact ‘La dernière des dernières’ of course guerres. So the idea was that this war, even if it was big one, was considered at that time the last one. So after the crisis of 1929 we have a change, a great change, maybe a change of phase and the idea is that the second one was so important by its impact that it became the second one, in fact before the first one. I mean by that that the name of the World War II was in fact the reason of the change of the name of the first one. So we can say even with this etymology that we are more the successors of World War II than I because even the first one was impacted by the second. The idea is that the first one is in fact the base and the second one is the generator. So we have like in fractals the idea that we have the first, which is a base, but we need the generator to continue the process. And now, in fact, we can feel it because after the second World War we have also the Cold War and even if it is possible to analyze that the past of the World War II with the notion of the Ante Cold War in fact we know that even that was impacted by the Cold War and now we have to consider ourselves that we are the continuity of this process. So we are not the continuity of the first World War I but the second one and we can say  by the way that without the crisis of 1929 maybe we couldn’t say that the World War II was a continuation of World War I. So even if now it looks obvious that we have two World Wars, in reality  the second one changed the name of the first one and this is the explanation of the generator of the base and the idea is that history changes even the past when the impact in the future is so big.