Is WWII the largest event ever to occur?

I'm lost now guys, how come we are talking about the climate in the Mid East now?

 

Skip my vague reference(s) illude to the fact that WW 2 is not going to be the biggest people buster, it starts and will end in the mid-east descriptions we cannot even comprehend

 

I've been studying history since I was 10. I'm 30 now, and in all that time, I have never read anything on any event that was as large and had such an impact as World War 2. The whole world changed after it was over, albeit for the worse as it's pretty much turned out these days.

As for the religious sub-debate.........as it was said earlier, I study events that truly happened and have physical proof that they did, not something that supposedly happened 2,000 years ago with not one shred of evidence to support it. However, assume for a minute that said events really did happen 2,000 years ago, then yes, that would be the single biggest event ever, and World War 2 would be a close 2nd.

If you want to talk about the person that's responsible for most human deaths ever and had the largest impact in all history, forget Hitler, forget Stalin. The man you have to put the blame on is Gavrilo Princip. His killing of the Archduke triggered WW1, and when you really stop to think about it, he also caused WW2. If there was no Versailles Treaty, chances are really good there wouldn't have been no Hitler and the Nazis and in the snowball effect, no World War 2. Yes the Nazis existed before Hitler took over, but if he didn't get all the power he had, they probably wouldn't have become as infamous as they are.

 

Consider that for WW2, the industrial and national mobilizations were of a scale that was unheard of, before or since.

No other conflict has so had so many large nations fighting at once.

 

I'd have to disagree with you on that last line...take for instance the Napoleonic Wars. They involved all the major world powers of the time, including some minor countries - about 20 in all.

 

WWII may be the largest event ever to happen in "mankind's history."

WAR. War in genaral is an event, us as humans through the ages have always Inflected on others and has always existed,
even to the Time of Prehistoric Times when tribes would fight and kill each other. The urge to kill each other off,
when ones point of view is different or Their Religion, is an event that has echoed through the ages of our own existence.

Look at the Spaniards for 300++ years we rapped pillaged, robbed, destroyed and Killed Millions all in the Name of
Efen God. The Spanish Inquisitions, The Mayan, Aztecs, Genghis Khan, for sacrifices and rituals to please the God's.
The Egyptians, Romans, Moorish, North American Indian Tribes+++++ All were involved in horrific crimes against humanity,
While torturing and lobotomizing human beings by the Millions while still alive.


Through the Ages we've called ourselves as, a Civil societies, There's nothing Civil about WAR. But the Majority of all
countries have wanted World domination or Power and used War to get it.


The Event of War, and we got better at it Also, the Art of War and Killing in 2010 is Alive and doing very well, I heard

 

Somehow it seems to me that we are living in an era of rapid change. When one looks over the way the world has changed over the last hundred years or so the change has been enormous.

WWII is more or less smack in the middle of that time frame and I think it sped up the process of change. The taming of the atom, space travel are just a couple of changes which come to mind.

Previous wars may of had a large impact upon local issues, but globally I don't know.

I'm not too sure if religion can be compared as the change brought about by religion is much slower and deals more with men's souls rather than their physical enviroment.

It's kind of like comparing apples and oranges, but I would suggest that the change in the world 65 years after WWII is much greater than the change in the world 65 years after Christ's death.

KTK

 

Yes, the present world is certainly rapidly changing. You can look at almost any field and compare to 50 - 100 years ago and see how much has changed.

Books - for example - everyone writes these days. There are millions of books out there. Certain books sell over 1 Million copies. Go back 50 - 100 years, very few writers, very few books, selling 1,000 books was considered impressive and successful.

Music - every highschool has a half-dozen bands. The industry has been commercialized, so many different bands come and go. Go back 50 years, music was an art form, a select few pursued it, the great songs were written by people who could actually play instruments, selling your band wasn't based on if you could dance and if you looked hot.

War certainly speeds up technology, as people are actively trying to address a need and get the money and permission to experiment in fields that would otherwise be ignored. Lots of good and bad things come out of these technologies - the radio wave and the A-bomb for instance.

Again, though, the definition of what defines 'greatest event' is too loosely defined in this thread. It needs to be more subjective so you can narrow the field down and truly compare events.

 

Personally, in spite of this being a rather "broad" subject I do believe it was the largest single event in world history. In no other instance is every known or recognized nation/government on the globe involved. Even if they chose to remain neutral, they were affected.

By that I don't mean "sending troops" to fight, nor do I mean every inhabitant of every nation. However, even if a nation wasn't actively involved the war had a direct effect on their government and economy. As an example, Argentina's economy went literally into the dumper since their major export purchaser was Great Britain. Without the money to purchase Argentine beef and wheat, they had no customer. While evey indeginous tribal member in the back-woods of Brazil may not have even known of a war taking place, their government was involved by siding with the western allies.

This isn't just twenty or so major nations (as in the Napoleonic Wars), but evey nation globally, no matter how much or little. There was even little Nepal contributing some of the most feared fighters in the war (Ghurka).

 

The only thing close to it was possibly "the great mortality" of the Black Plague that swept Europe and Asia in 1346 on.
I know WW2 was very different since it was entirely man-made. However the Black plague was even more destructive to humanity, since no one in those days had the slighest idea of a cure or treatment. No one made the rat-flea-man connection until relatively recently and over 1/4 of Europe's population died. The world's population went from 450 million to 350 million between 1346 and 1400 - and the black plague returned to Europe after that, for almost every generation until the 1700's, killing thousands or millions each time.

 

When you look at the developements that came out of the years of WWII both good and bad, it certainly is a contender for the largest event to influence mankind. Almost everyone was involved in one way or another, and the positive things that have come out of it are too numerous to name. It is a shame that the negatives were part of it, and unfortunately many of those are still with us. It as WWI was suppose to end wars, but we still have wars and we will continue to always have wars. As long as there are two people who are close enough to see each other sooner or later there will be conflict.

 

I believe it was in agreement to all those who do also simply because of the technological advancements that occurred. The people of all the different countries "not involved" were looking to all the different theaters that were occurring and every country was either preparing for the involvement or hoping to avoid it.

 

The biggest event to occur was when God created the universe. Nothing can ever compare ;-)) Yes, im being sort of a wiseacre-but its the truth.

 

what about the 50 or 100 years war back in the 17th/16th century's?

 

Yes you are Carl, and whether it is the "truth" or not is irrelevant. But since we are only dealing with "events" as in on OUR globe, the Second World War outstrips the "let there be light" story.

If you are going to put non-human events into the mix then the "Big Whack" that more than likely formed our moon 4.4 million years ago ranks right up there.

Goto:

NOVA Online | To the Moon | Origins (2)

But we aren't speaking of those types of "events" are we.

 

PAH, small pittance. Thats like comparing a Firecracker to a box of Dynamite ;-)

 

Heh heh, I can relate to that Clint. But??????......

 

People speak of WW2 as being an 'event'. It was not. Rather, it was a SERIES' of events that had one or more other events as the root of their cause.

World War 2 became a series of events that superceded on another faster than contemporaries could react. 'Events' piled up one after another as the protaganist's ability to change the circumstances that caused each event disappeared with new, further events....and so on, so forth.

The most momentus 'event' in our short history was the aquisition of language as a means for exchange of information that could be passed down for more than one or two generations. Whether you tag this event as occurring when writing was developed, or when we stopped trading signals with one another and began to exchange information that reflected abstract ideas....it really depends on your point of view. One may as well say the most significant 'event' was surely our transition from fruit eating primates to primates that hunted over a wide area, relying on protein in large doses rather than gradually ingesting the needed amounts with a deluge of vegetable matter.

All depends on your outlook. My view is that when we as a species domesticated the dog to help us hunt larger game, we set ourselves on a path that lead naturally to conflict of all types....conflicts like WW2, for instance.