Question: when did world war 2 become a world war
Answer: While a variety of global conflicts have been subjectively deemed `` world wars '' , such as the Cold War and the War on Terror , the term is widely and generally accepted only as it is retrospectively applied to two major international conflicts that occurred during the 20th century : World War I ( 1914 -- 1918 ) and World War II ( 1939 -- 1945 ) .