Census When do you think WWII started?

Saw a twitter poll on this and thought it would be an interesting question.

 

December 7, 1941. Duh.

 

7 July 1937 when the second Sino-Japanese War broke out, as that conflict remained ongoing into the “proper” war whereas the others mentioned came to an end, and the invasion of Poland is a frequent choice so that’s no fun.

 

The way they made me study it is 1939-1945, but I believe it's just a matter of conventions.

 

I think there's a good chance that, if humans are still around centuries into the future, eventually the 1914-1991 period will be seen as a continuous global conflict separated into phases.

 

They should call it the Second Hundred Years’ War to preserve the proud tradition of “Hundred Years’ War” being an inaccurate name for multiple reasons.

 

1939. While the Chinese and Japanese were at war long before then it wasn’t a world war.

 

Imagine not starting to fight the Nazis until 1941.

 

Nazi invasion of Poland. Japan was a separate issue until Pearl Harbor cause we declared war on them, then Germany on us in response.

 

Well technically Persia vs Greece aka the 300 incident could be WW2 as Persia tried once before..

 

After employing a hell of a lot of fascist imagery, the Greeks won! I learned that from early 2000s cinema.

 

Fascist? I don't know about that.

Propaganda yes. Absolutely. But because it's being told by the guy in the movie of course he makes it seem that way. In reality the Persians were more "civilized" than the Greeks. But thats what Propaganda does, so one could look at it from that viewpoint of discussion of how the film story went by according to this guy compared to what actually happened.

No excuse for the sequel though. That was crap

 

Ghost poll

 

There's a case to make for the second world war starting as a result of the American declaration of independence. Both the earlier Seven Years War and the Franco-British war of the 1780s (which also involved Spain and the Netherlands, and of course the 13 colonies) spanned the whole known world.

 

I know this thread brings the great temptation to mention that stupid Billy Joel song that rightly no one wants to act on, so I'll get that out of the way.

 

Considering I don't know it I can't comment on it

 

Tell Her About It

 

I don’t know what a pair of pink sidewinders and a bright orange pair of pants has to do with this.

 

The Nazi invasion of Poland is a traditional, safe choice for the proximate start of the war, because it was the act that globalized the war. And since the question is about when the “world” war started, I feel it kinda has to be there.

If the question was about the range of disconnected conflicts (or internal conflicts connected with others only by structural and ideological similarities) that were going on in that time period, and when the period of the proliferation of conflicts around the world started, then...you can stretch back pretty far to the explosion of nationalist movements of many stripes.

If you get into ultimate causes, that’s a whole other story.

Also, I’d like to blame The Eagles for something, but haven’t gotten a chance to lately. So I’ll say The Eagles.

 

In the words of Borat - what is a this?

British forces were fighting in Singapore and HK, the Dutch were in Indonesia... the Americans arrived late to the war having sat out 2 hard years of fighting by profiteering on the sidelines and the Soviets realised after the Nazis betrayed the second Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact that maaayyyybbbeeee that Hitler guy can't be trusted. It added new belligerents only, not new continents.