The Oxford English Dictionary cited the first known usage in the English language to

a Scottish newspaper, The People's Journal, in 1848: "A war among the great powers is now
necessarily a world-war." The term "world war" is used by Karl Marx and his
associate, Friedrich Engels,[2] in a series of articles published around 1850 called The Class
Struggles in France. Rasmus B. Anderson in 1889 described an episode in Teutonic
mythology as a "world war" (Swedish: världskrig), justifying this description by a line in
an Old Norse epic poem, "Völuspá: folcvig fyrst I heimi" ("The first great war in the world".)
[3]
 German writer August Wilhelm Otto Niemann had used the term "world war" in the title of
his anti-British novel, Der Weltkrieg: Deutsche Träume (The World War: German Dreams) in
1904, published in English as The Coming Conquest of England.
The term "first world war" was first used in September 1914 by German biologist and
philosopher Ernst Haeckel, who claimed that "there is no doubt that the course and character
of the feared 'European War' ... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word",
[4]
 citing a wire service report in The Indianapolis Star on 20 September 1914. In English, the
term "First World War" had been used by Charles à Court Repington, as a title for his
memoirs (published in 1920); he had noted his discussion on the matter with a Major
Johnstone of Harvard University in his diary entry of September 10, 1918.[5]
The term "World War I" was coined by Time magazine on page 28b of its June 12, 1939
issue. In the same article, on page 32, the term "World War II" was first used speculatively to
describe the upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of September
11, 1939.[6] One week earlier, on September 4, the day after France and the United Kingdom
declared war on Germany, the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad used the term on its
front page, saying "The Second World War broke out yesterday at 11 a.m."[7]
Speculative fiction authors had been noting the concept of a Second World War in 1919 and
1920, when Milo Hastings wrote his dystopian novel, City of Endless Night.
Other languages have also adopted the "world war" terminology, for example; in French:
"world war" is translated as guerre mondiale, in German: Weltkrieg (which, prior to the war,
had been used in the more abstract meaning of a global conflict), in Italian: guerra mondiale,
in Spanish and Portuguese: guerra mundial, in Danish and Norwegian: verdenskrig, and
in Russian: мировая война (mirovaya voyna.)
The Vietnam War (Vietnamese: Chiến tranh Việt Nam), also known as the Second
Indochina War,[56] and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against
America (Vietnamese: Kháng chiến chống Mỹ) or simply the American War, was a conflict
in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955[A 1] to the fall of Saigon on 30 April
1975.[10] It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North
Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China,
[14]
 and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South
Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies.[57][58] The war,
considered a Cold War-era proxy war by some,[59] lasted 19 years, with direct U.S.
involvement ending in 1973, and included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil
War, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.
The conflict emerged from the First Indochina War against the communist-led Viet Minh.[60][A
4]
 Most of the funding for the French war effort was provided by the U.S.[61] After the French
quit Indochina in 1954, the US assumed financial and military support for the South
Vietnamese state. The Việt Cộng, also known as Front national de libération du Sud-Viêt
Nam or NLF (the National Liberation Front), a South Vietnamese common front under the
direction of North Vietnam, initiated a guerrilla war in the south. North Vietnam had also
invaded Laos in the mid-1950s in support of insurgents, establishing the Ho Chi Minh Trail to
supply and reinforce the Việt Cộng.[62]:16 U.S. involvement escalated under President John F.
Kennedy through the MAAG program from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to
16,000 in 1963.[63][32]:131 By 1963, the North Vietnamese had sent 40,000 soldiers to fight in
South Vietnam.[62]:16 North Vietnam was heavily backed by the USSR and the People's
Republic of China. China also sent hundreds of PLA servicemen to North Vietnam to serve in
air-defense and support roles.[32]:371–4[64]
By 1964, 23,000 US advisors were stationed in South Vietnam. In August, the Gulf of Tonkin
incident occurred. A U.S. destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast
attack craft. In response, the U.S Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and gave
President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authority to increase American military presence in
Vietnam. Johnson ordered the deployment of combat units for the first time and increased
troop levels to 184,000.[63] Past this point, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (also known
as the North Vietnamese Army or NVA) engaged in more conventional warfare with U.S and
South Vietnamese forces. Despite little progress, the United States continued a significant
built-up of forces. U.S Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, one of the principal
architects of the war, began expressing doubts of victory by the end of 1966.[32]:287 U.S. and
South Vietnam forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search
and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The U.S. also
conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam and Laos.
The Tet Offensive of 1968 showed the lack of progress with these doctrines. With the VC
and PAVN mounting large-scale urban offensives throughout 1968, U.S domestic support for
the war began fading. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) expanded following a
period of neglect after Tet and was modeled after U.S doctrine. The VC sustained heavy
losses during the Tet Offensive and subsequent U.S.-ARVN operations in the rest of 1968,
losing over 50,000 men.[32]:481 The CIA's Phoenix Program further degraded the VC's
membership and capabilities. By the end of the year, the VC insurgents held almost no
territory in South Vietnam, and their recruitment dropped by over 80% in 1969, signifying a
drastic reduction in guerrilla operations, necessitating increased use of PAVN regular
soldiers from the north.[11]:247–9 In 1969, North Vietnam declared a Provisional Revolutionary
Government in South Vietnam in an attempt to give the reduced VC a more international
stature, but the southern guerrillas from then on were sidelined as PAVN forces began more
conventional Combined arms warfare. By 1970, over 70% of communist troops in the south
were northerners, and southern-dominated VC units no longer existed.[65] Operations crossed
national borders: Laos was invaded by North Vietnam early on, while Cambodia was used by
North Vietnam as a supply route starting in 1967; the route through Cambodia began to be
bombed by the U.S. in 1969, while the Laos route had been heavily bombed since 1964. The
deposing of the monarch Norodom Sihanouk by the Cambodian National Assembly resulted
in a PAVN invasion of the country at the request of the Khmer Rouge, escalating the
Cambodian Civil War and resulting in a U.S.-ARVN counter-invasion.
In 1969, following the election of U.S President Richard Nixon, a policy of "Vietnamization"
began, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN, with U.S. forces sidelined and
increasingly demoralized by domestic opposition and reduced recruitment. U.S. ground
forces had largely withdrawn by early 1972 and support was limited to air support, artillery
support, advisers, and materiel shipments. The ARVN, buttressed by said U.S. support,
stopped the first and largest mechanized PAVN offensive during the Easter Offensive of
1972. The offensive resulted in heavy casualties on both sides and the failure of the PAVN to
subdue South Vietnam, but the ARVN itself failed to recapture all territory, leaving its military
situation difficult. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 saw all U.S forces withdrawn;
the Case–Church Amendment, passed by the U.S Congress on 15 August 1973, officially
ended direct U.S military involvement.[66]:457 The Peace Accords were broken almost
immediately, and fighting continued for two more years. Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer
Rouge on 17 April 1975 while the 1975 Spring Offensive saw the capture of Saigon by the
PAVN on 30 April; this marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were
reunified the following year.
The scale of fighting was enormous. By 1970, the ARVN was the world's fourth largest army,
and the PAVN was not far behind with approximately one million regular soldiers.[67][17]:770 The
war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and
civilians killed range from 966,000[27] to 3.8 million.[52] Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians,[53]
[54][55]
 20,000–62,000 Laotians,[52] and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict,
and a further 1,626 remain missing in action.[A 3]
The Sino-Soviet split re-emerged following the lull during the Vietnam War. Conflict between
North Vietnam and its Cambodian allies in the Royal Government of the National Union of
Kampuchea, and the newly formed Democratic Kampuchea began almost immediately in a
series of border raids by the Khmer Rouge, eventually escalating into the Cambodian–
Vietnamese War. Chinese forces directly invaded Vietnam in the Sino-Vietnamese War, with
subsequent border conflicts lasting until 1991. Insurgencies were fought by the unified
Vietnam in all three countries. The end of the war and resumption of the Third Indochina
War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis,
which saw millions of refugees leave Indochina (mainly southern Vietnam), with an estimated
250,000 of whom perished at sea. Within the U.S, the war gave rise to what was referred to
as Vietnam Syndrome, a public aversion to American overseas military involvements,
[68]
 which together with the Watergate scandal contributed to the crisis of confidence that
affected America throughout the 1970s.[69]