world soul, Lat. anima mundi, in philosophy, term denoting a universal spirit or soul that functions as an organizing principle. While many early Greek philosophers saw the world as of one principle, Plato was the first to state that this concept held the same relation to the world as the human soul did to the body. Friedrich Wilhelm Josef von Schelling used the term as a unifying principle, coordinating the organic and the inorganic in life. World soul is prominent in Asian philosophy. Hinduism is a religion whose theoretical basis is a world soul, called Brahman (see Upanishads; Vedanta).

World Wildlife Fund (WWF), international organization formed to raise money for conservation projects, est. 1961. The international organization, believing that its name no longer reflected the scope of its activities, became the Worldwide Fund for Nature in 1986, but the affiliated groups in the United States and Canada retained the original name. The organization now typically refers to itself as WWF—The Conservation Organization, or simply WWF. It has been responsible for international agreements on conservation and has supported research on endangered species, including the giant panda, its symbol.

World Wide Web (WWW or W3), collection of globally distributed text and multimedia documents and files and other network services linked in such a way as to create an immense electronic library from which information can be retrieved quickly by intuitive searches. The Web represents the application of hypertext technology and a graphical interface to the Internet to retrieve information that is contained in specially formatted documents that may reside in the same computer or be distributed across many computers around the world. It consists of three main elements. The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) comprises the programming codes, or tags, that define fonts, layouts, embedded graphics, and links (hyperlinks) to other documents accessible via the Web. The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) defines a set of standards for transmitting Web pages across the Internet. The Universal Resource Locator (URL) is a standardized naming convention for identifying a Web document or file, in a sense the address of a link. The result is called the Web because it is made up of many sites, all linked together, with users traveling from one site to the next by clicking a computer's pointing device on a hyperlink.

Web sites, also called Web pages, are really Internet sites that all use the same techniques and HTML tags to create multimedia documents with hypertext links. Each Web page can contain many screens or printed pages of text, graphics, audio, and even video, and the starting point for any Web site is called its home page. Although each page is an Internet site, it must be accessed via a special program called a Web browser, which can translate the HTML into the graphical images, text, and hypertext links intended by the creator of the page.

Interactive television is a generic term that encompasses a variety of Web-related television technologies and products. Typically, a home television receiver and a telephone line are connected through a small appliance that accesses the Internet through the telephone line and converts the downloaded Web pages into a form that can be displayed on the receiver. A remote control interface allows the user to navigate through the Web and select the information to be displayed.

Ted Nelson, an American computer consultant, had promoted the idea of linking documents via hypertext during the 1960s, but the technology required was not to be available for another 20 years. The foundation of what we now think of as the Web originated with work done on the retrieval of information from distributed systems by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN during the 1980s. This culminated in the introduction of a text-only interface, or browser, to the scientific community in 1990 and to the public in 1991. Because of the difficulty of using this version, acceptance outside the scientific and academic communities was slow. Marc Andreessen, an undergraduate student working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), developed a graphical browser for the Web, introducing a UNIX version in 1993. Versions for the Windows and Macintosh operating systems followed in 1994, and acceptance of the World Wide Web blossomed quickly. In the late 1990s the development of improved browsers with greater multimedia functionality, security, and privacy, as well as more powerful search engines capable of indexing the ever greater information on the Web, led to the commercialization of the Internet (see e-commerce).

World War II, 1939-45, worldwide conflict involving every major power in the world. The two sides were generally known as the Allies and the Axis.

Causes and Outbreak

This second global conflict resulted from the rise of totalitarian, militaristic regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan, a phenomenon stemming in part from the Great Depression that swept over the world in the early 1930s and from the conditions created by the peace settlements (1919-20) following World War I.

After World War I, defeated Germany, disappointed Italy, and ambitious Japan were anxious to regain or increase their power; all three eventually adopted forms of dictatorship (see National Socialism and fascism) that made the state supreme and called for expansion at the expense of neighboring countries. These three countries also set themselves up as champions against Communism, thus gaining at least partial tolerance of their early actions from the more conservative groups in the Western democracies. Also important was a desire for peace on the part of the democracies, which resulted in their military unpreparedness. Finally, the League of Nations, weakened from the start by the defection of the United States, was unable to promote disarmament (see Disarmament Conference); moreover, the long economic depression sharpened national rivalries, increased fear and distrust, and made the masses susceptible to the promises of demagogues.

The failure of the League to stop the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1931 was followed by a rising crescendo of treaty violations and acts of aggression. Adolf Hitler, when he rose to power (1933) in Germany, recreated the German army and prepared it for a war of conquest; in 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland. Benito Mussolini conquered (1935-36) Ethiopia for Italy; and from 1936 to 1939 the Spanish civil war raged, with Germany and Italy helping the fascist forces of Francisco Franco to victory. In Mar., 1938, Germany annexed Austria, and in Sept., 1938, the British and French policy of appeasement toward the Axis reached its height with the sacrifice of much of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the Munich Pact.

When Germany occupied (Mar., 1939) all of Czechoslovakia, and when Italy seized (Apr., 1939) Albania, Great Britain and France abandoned their policy of appeasement and set about creating an "antiaggression" front, which included alliances with Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Poland, and speeding rearmament. Germany and Italy signed (May, 1939) a full military alliance, and after the Soviet-German nonaggression pact (Aug., 1939) removed German fear of a possible two-front war, Germany was ready to launch an attack on Poland.

World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany, without a declaration of war, invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, and all the members of the Commonwealth of Nations, except Ireland, rapidly followed suit. The fighting in Poland was brief. The German blitzkrieg, or lightning war, with its use of new techniques of mechanized and air warfare, crushed the Polish defenses, and the conquest was almost complete when Soviet forces entered (Sept. 17) E Poland. While this campaign ended with the partition of Poland and while the USSR defeated Finland in the Finnish-Russian War (1939-40), the British and the French spent an inactive winter behind the Maginot Line, content with blockading Germany by sea.

From Norway to Moscow

The inactive period ended with the surprise invasion (Apr. 9, 1940) of Denmark and Norway by the Germans. Denmark offered no resistance; Norway was conquered by June 9. On May 10, German forces overran Luxembourg and invaded the Netherlands and Belgium; on May 13 they outflanked the Maginot Line. Their armored columns raced to the English Channel and cut off Flanders, and Allied forces were evacuated from Dunkirk (May 26-June 4). General Weygand had replaced General Gamelin as supreme Allied commander, but was unable to stop the Allied debacle in the "battle of France." On June 22, France signed an armistice with Germany, followed by an armistice with Italy, which had entered the war on June 10. The Vichy government was set up in France under Marshal Pétain. Britain, the only remaining Allied power, resisted, under the inspiring leadership of Winston Churchill, the German attempt to bomb it into submission.

While Germany was receiving its first setback in the Battle of Britain, fought entirely in the air, the theater of war was widened by the Italian attack on the British in North Africa (see North Africa, campaigns in, by the Italian invasion (Oct. 28, 1940) of Greece, and by German submarine warfare in the Atlantic Ocean. Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria joined the Axis late in 1940, but Yugoslavia resisted German pressure, and on Apr. 6, 1941, Germany launched attacks on Yugoslavia and Greece and won rapid victories. In May, Crete fell.

Great Britain gained a new ally on June 22, 1941, when Germany (joined by Italy, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Finland), invaded the Soviet Union. By Dec., 1941, German mechanized divisions had destroyed a substantial part of the Soviet army and had overrun much of European Russia. However, the harsh Russian winter halted the German sweep, and the drive on Moscow was foiled by a Soviet counteroffensive.

War Comes to the United States

Though determined to maintain its neutrality, the United States was gradually drawn closer to the war by the force of events. To save Britain from collapse the Congress voted lend-lease aid early in 1941. In Aug., 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met Churchill on the high seas, and together they formulated the Atlantic Charter as a general statement of democratic aims. To establish bases to protect its shipping from attacks by German submarines, the United States occupied (Apr., 1941) Greenland and later shared in the occupation of Iceland; despite repeated warnings, the attacks continued. Relations with Germany became increasingly strained, and the aggressive acts of Japan in China, Indochina, and Thailand provoked protests from the United States.

Efforts to reach a peaceful settlement were ended on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan without warning attacked Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Malaya. War was declared (Dec. 8) on Japan by the United States, the Commonwealth of Nations (except Ireland), and the Netherlands. Within a few days Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

The first phase of the war in the Pacific was disastrous for the Allies. Japan swiftly conquered the Philippines (where strong resistance ended at Corregidor), Malaya, Burma (Myanmar), Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), and many Pacific islands; destroyed an Allied fleet in the Java Sea; and reached, by mid-1942, its furthest points of advance in the Aleutian Islands and New Guinea.

Australia became the chief Allied base for the countermoves against Japan, directed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Nimitz, and Admiral Halsey. The first Allied naval successes against Japan were scored in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, where U.S. bombers knocked out the major part of Japan's carrier fleet and forced Japan into retreat. Midway was the first decisive blow against the Axis by Allied forces. On land the Allies took the offensive in New Guinea and landed (Aug. 7, 1942) on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

The Turning Point

Despite the slightly improved position in the Pacific, the late summer of 1942 was perhaps the darkest period of the war for the Allies. In North Africa, the Axis forces under Field Marshal Rommel were sweeping into Egypt; in Russia, they had penetrated the Caucasus and launched a gigantic offensive against Stalingrad (see Volgograd). In the Atlantic, even to the shores of the United States and in the Gulf of Mexico, German submarines were sinking Allied shipping at an unprecedented rate.

Yet the Axis war machine showed signs of wear, while the United States was merely beginning to realize its potential, and Russia had huge reserves and was receiving U.S. lend-lease aid through Iran and the port of Murmansk. The major blow, however, was leveled at the Axis by Britain, when General Montgomery routed Rommel at Alamein in North Africa (Oct., 1942). This was followed by the American invasion of Algeria (Nov. 8, 1942); the Americans and British were joined by Free French forces of General de Gaulle and by regular French forces that had passed to the Allies after the surrender of Admiral Darlan. After heavy fighting in Tunisia, North Africa was cleared of Axis forces by May 12, 1943.

Meantime, in the Soviet stand at Stalingrad and counteroffensive resulted in the surrender (Feb. 2, 1943) of the German 6th Army, followed by nearly uninterrupted Russian advances. In the Mediterranean, the Allies followed up their African victory by the conquest of Sicily (July-Aug., 1943) and the invasion of Italy, which surrendered on Sept. 8. However, the German army in Italy fought bloody rearguard actions, and Rome fell (June 4, 1944) only after the battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio. In the Atlantic, the submarine threat was virtually ended by the summer of 1944. Throughout German-occupied Europe, underground forces, largely supplied by the Allies, began to wage war against their oppressors.

The Allies, who had signed (Jan. 1, 1942) the United Nations declaration, were drawn closer together militarily by the Casablanca Conference, at which they pledged to continue the war until the unconditional surrender of the Axis, and by the Moscow Conferences, the Quebec Conference, the Cairo Conference, and the Tehran Conference. The invasion of German-held France was decided upon, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was put in charge of the operation.

Allied Victory in Europe

By the beginning of 1944 air warfare had turned overwhelmingly in favor of the Allies, who wrought unprecedented destruction on many German cities and on transport and industries throughout German-held Europe. This air offensive prepared the way for the landing (June 6, 1944) of the Allies in N France (see Normandy campaign) and a secondary landing (Aug. 15) in S France. After heavy fighting in Normandy, Allied armored divisions raced to the Rhine, clearing most of France and Belgium of German forces by Oct., 1944. The use of V-1 and V-2 rockets by the Germans proved as futile an effort as their counteroffensive in Belgium under General von Rundstedt (see Battle of the Bulge).

On the Eastern Front Soviet armies swept (1944) through the Baltic States, E Poland, Belorussia, and Ukraine and forced the capitulation of Romania (Aug. 23), Finland (Sept. 4), and Bulgaria (Sept. 10). Having evacuated the Balkan Peninsula, the Germans resisted in Hungary until Feb., 1945, but Germany itself was pressed. The Russians entered East Prussia and Czechoslovakia (Jan., 1945) and took E Germany to the Oder.

On Mar. 7 the Western Allies—whose chief commanders in the field were Omar N. Bradley and Montgomery—crossed the Rhine after having smashed through the strongly fortified Siegfried Line and overran W Germany. German collapse came after the meeting (Apr. 25) of the Western and Russian armies at Torgau in Saxony, and after Hitler's death amid the ruins of Berlin, which was falling to the Russians under marshals Zhukov and Konev. The unconditional surrender of Germany was signed at Reims on May 7 and ratified at Berlin on May 8.

Allied Victory in the Pacific

After the completion of the campaigns in the Solomon Islands (late 1943) and New Guinea (1944), the Allied advance moved inexorably, in two lines that converged on Japan, through scattered island groups—the Philippines, the Mariana Islands, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. Japan, with most of its navy sunk, staggered beneath these blows. At the Yalta Conference, the USSR secretly promised its aid against Japan, which still refused to surrender even after the Allied appeal made at the Potsdam Conference. On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States first used the atomic bomb and devastated Hiroshima; on Aug. 9, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The USSR had already invaded Manchuria. On Aug. 14, Japan announced its surrender, formally signed aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2.

Aftermath and Reckoning

Although hostilities came to an end in Sept., 1945, a new world crisis caused by the postwar conflict between the USSR and the United States—the two chief powers to emerge from the war—made settlement difficult. By Mar., 1950, peace treaties had been signed with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland; in 1951, the Allies (except the USSR) signed a treaty with Japan, and, in 1955, Austria was restored to sovereignty. Germany, however, remained divided—first between the Western powers and the USSR, then (until 1990) into two German nations (see Germany).

Despite the birth of the United Nations, the world remained politically unstable and only slowly recovered from the incalculable physical and moral devastation wrought by the largest and most costly war in history. Soldiers and civilians both had suffered in bombings that had wiped out entire cities. Modern methods of warfare—together with the attempt of Germany to exterminate entire religious and ethnic groups (particularly the Jews)—famines, and epidemics, had brought death to tens of millions and made as many more homeless. The suffering and degradation of the war's victims were of proportions that passed the understanding of those who had been spared. The conventions of warfare had been violated on a large scale (see war crimes), and warfare itself was revolutionized by the development and use of nuclear weapons.

Political consequences included the reduction of Britain and France to powers of lesser rank, the emergence of the Common Market (see European Economic Community; European Union), the independence of many former colonies in Asia and Africa, and, perhaps most important, the beginning of the cold war between the Western powers and the Communist-bloc nations.

World War I, 1914-18, also known as the Great War, conflict, chiefly in Europe, among most of the great Western powers. It was the largest war the world had yet seen.

Causes

World War I was immediately precipitated by the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by a Serbian nationalist in 1914. There were, however, many factors that had led toward war. Prominent causes were the imperialistic, territorial, and economic rivalries that had been intensifying from the late 19th cent., particularly among Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, and Austria-Hungary.

Of equal importance was the rampant spirit of nationalism, especially unsettling in the empire of Austria-Hungary and perhaps also in France. Nationalism had brought the unification of Germany by "blood and iron," and France, deprived of Alsace and Lorraine by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, had been left with its own nationalistic cult seeking revenge against Germany. While French nationalists were hostile to Germany, which sought to maintain its gains by militarism and alliances, nationalism was creating violent tensions in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy; there the large Slavic national groups had grown increasingly restive, and Serbia as well as Russia fanned Slavic hopes for freedom and Pan-Slavism.

Imperialist rivalry had grown more intense with the "new imperialism" of the late 19th and early 20th cent. The great powers had come into conflict over spheres of influence in China and over territories in Africa, and the Eastern Question, created by the decline of the Ottoman Empire, had produced several disturbing controversies. Particularly unsettling was the policy of Germany. It embarked late but aggressively on colonial expansion under Emperor William II, came into conflict with France over Morocco, and seemed to threaten Great Britain by its rapid naval expansion.

These issues, imperialist and nationalist, resulted in a hardening of alliance systems in the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente and in a general armaments race. Nonetheless, a false optimism regarding peace prevailed almost until the onset of the war, an optimism stimulated by the long period during which major wars had been avoided, by the close dynastic ties and cultural intercourse in Europe, and by the advance of industrialization and economic prosperity. Many Europeans counted on the deterrent of war's destructiveness to preserve the peace.

War's Outbreak

The Austrian annexation (1908) of Bosnia and Herzegovina created an international crisis, but war was avoided. The Balkan Wars (1912-13) remained localized but increased Austria's concern for its territorial integrity, while the solidification of the Triple Alliance made Germany more yielding to the demands of Austria, now its one close ally. The assassination (June 28, 1914) of Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo set in motion the diplomatic maneuvers that ended in war.

The Austrian military party, headed by Count Berchtold, won over the government to a punitive policy toward Serbia. On July 23, Serbia was given a nearly unacceptable ultimatum. With Russian support assured by Sergei Sazonov, Serbia accepted some of the terms but hedged on others and rejected those infringing upon its sovereignty. Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany, rejected the British proposal of Sir Edward Grey (later Lord Grey of Fallodon) and declared war (July 28) on Serbia.

Russian mobilization precipitated a German ultimatum (July 31) that, when unanswered, was followed by a German declaration of war on Russia (Aug. 1). Convinced that France was about to attack its western frontier, Germany declared war (Aug. 3) on France and sent troops against France through Belgium and Luxembourg. Germany had hoped for British neutrality, but German violation of Belgian neutrality gave the British government the pretext and popular support necessary for entry into the war. In the following weeks Montenegro and Japan joined the Allies (Great Britain, France, Russia, Serbia, and Belgium) and the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). The war had become general. Whether it might have been avoided or localized and which persons and nations were most responsible for its outbreak are questions still debated by historians.

From the Marne to Verdun

The German strategy, planned by Alfred von Schlieffen, called for an attack on the weak left flank of the French army by a massive German force approaching through Belgium, while maintaining a defensive stance toward Russia, whose army, Schlieffen assumed, would require six weeks to mobilize. By that time, Germany would have captured France and would be ready to meet the forces on the Eastern Front. The Schlieffen plan was weakened from the start when the German commander Helmuth von Moltke detached forces from the all-important German right wing, which was supposed to smash through Belgium, in order to reinforce the left wing in Alsace-Lorraine. Nevertheless, the Germans quickly occupied most of Belgium and advanced on Paris.

In Sept., 1914, the first battle of the Marne (see Marne, battle of the) took place. For reasons still disputed, a general German retreat was ordered after the battle, and the Germans entrenched themselves behind the Aisne River. The Germans then advanced toward the Channel ports but were stopped in the first battle of Ypres (see Ypres, battles of); grueling trench warfare ensued along the entire Western Front. Over the next three years the battle line remained virtually stationary. It ran, approximately, from Ostend past Armentières, Douai, Saint-Quentin, Reims, Verdun, and Saint-Mihiel to Lunéville.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, the Russians invaded East Prussia but were decisively defeated (Aug.-Sept., 1914) by the Germans under generals Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Mackensen at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes (see under Masuria). The Germans advanced on Warsaw, but farther south a Russian offensive drove back the Austrians. However, by the autumn of 1915 combined Austro-German efforts had driven the Russians out of most of Poland and were holding a line extending from Riga to Chernovtsy (Chernivtsi). The Russians counterattacked in 1916 in a powerful drive directed by General Brusilov, but by the year's end the offensive had collapsed, after costing Russia many thousands of lives. Soon afterward the Russian Revolution eliminated Russia as an effective participant in the war. Although the Austro-Hungarians were unsuccessful in their attacks on Serbia and Montenegro in the first year of the war, these two countries were overrun in 1915 by the Bulgarians (who had joined the Central Powers in Oct., 1915) and by Austro-German forces.

Another blow to the Allied cause was the failure in 1915 of the Gallipoli campaign, an attempt to force Turkey out of the war and to open a supply route to S Russia. The Allies, however, won a diplomatic battle when Italy, after renouncing its partnership in the Triple Alliance and after being promised vast territorial gains, entered the war on the Allied side in May, 1915. Fighting between Austria and Italy along the Isonzo River was inconclusive until late 1917, when the rout of the Italians at Caporetto made Italy a liability rather than an asset to the Allies.

Except for the conquest of most of Germany's overseas colonies by the British and Japanese, the year 1916 opened with a dark outlook for the Allies. The stalemate on the Western Front had not been affected in 1915 by the second battle of Ypres, in which the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front, nor by the French offensive in Artois—in which a slight advance of the French under Henri Pétain was paid for with heavy losses—nor by the offensive of Marshal Joffre in Champagne, nor by the British advance toward Lens and Loos.

In Feb., 1916, the Germans tried to break the deadlock by mounting a massive assault on Verdun (see Verdun, battle of). The French, rallying with the cry, "They shall not pass!" held fast despite enormous losses, and in July the British and French took the offensive along the Somme River where tanks were used for the first time by the British. By November they had gained a few thousand yards and lost thousands of men. By December, a French counteroffensive at Verdun had restored the approximate positions of Jan., 1916.

Despite signs of exhaustion on both sides, the war went on, drawing ever more nations into the maelstrom. Portugal and Romania joined the Allies in 1916; Greece, involved in the war by the Allied Salonica campaigns on its soil, declared war on the Central Powers in 1917.

From America's Entry to Allied Victory

The neutrality of the United States had been seriously imperiled after the sinking of the Lusitania (1915). At the end of 1916, Germany, whose surface fleet had been bottled up since the indecisive battle of Jutland (see Jutland, battle of), announced that it would begin unrestricted submarine warfare in an effort to break British control of the seas. In protest the United States broke off relations with Germany (Feb., 1917), and on Apr. 6 it entered the war. American participation meant that the Allies now had at their command almost unlimited industrial and manpower resources, which were to be decisive in winning the war. It also served from the start to lift Allied morale, and the insistence of President Woodrow Wilson on a "war to make the world safe for democracy" was to weaken the Central Powers by encouraging revolutionary groups at home.

The war on the Western Front continued to be bloody and stalemated. But in the Middle East the British, who had stopped a Turkish drive on the Suez Canal, proceeded to destroy the Ottoman Empire; T. E. Lawrence stirred the Arabs to revolt, Baghdad fell (Mar., 1917), and Field Marshal Allenby took Jerusalem (Dec., 1917). The first troops of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), commanded by General Pershing, landed in France in June, 1917, and were rushed to the Château-Thierry area to help stem a new German offensive.

A unified Allied command in the West was created in Apr., 1918. It was headed by Marshal Foch, but under him the national commanders (Sir Douglas Haig for Britain, King Albert I for Belgium, and General Pershing for the United States) retained considerable authority. The Central Powers, however, had gained new strength through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (Mar., 1918) with Russia. The resources of Ukraine seemed at their disposal, enabling them to balance to some extent the effects of the Allied blockade; most important, their forces could now be concentrated on the Western Front.

The critical German counteroffensive, known as the second battle of the Marne, was stopped just short of Paris (July-Aug., 1918). At this point Foch ordered a general counterattack that soon pushed the Germans back to their initial line (the so-called Hindenburg Line). The Allied push continued, with the British advancing in the north and the Americans attacking through the Argonne region of France. While the Germans were thus losing their forces on the Western Front, Bulgaria, invaded by the Allies under General Franchet d'Esperey, capitulated on Sept. 30, and Turkey concluded an armistice on Oct. 30. Austria-Hungary, in the process of disintegration, surrendered on Nov. 4 after the Italian victory at Vittorio Veneto.

German resources were exhausted and German morale had collapsed. President Wilson's Fourteen Points were accepted by the new German chancellor, Maximilian, prince of Baden, as the basis of peace negotiations, but it was only after revolution had broken out in Germany that the armistice was at last signed (Nov. 11) at Compiègne. Germany was to evacuate its troops immediately from all territory W of the Rhine, and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was declared void. The war ended without a single truly decisive battle having been fought, and Germany lost the war while its troops were still occupying territory from France to Crimea. This paradox became important in subsequent German history, when nationalists and militarists sought to blame the defeat on traitors on the home front rather than on the utter exhaustion of the German war machine and war economy.

Aftermath and Reckoning

World War I and the resulting peace treaties (see Versailles, Treaty of; Saint-Germain, Treaty of; Trianon, Treaty of; Neuilly, Treaty of; Sèvres, Treaty of) radically changed the face of Europe and precipitated political, social, and economic changes. By the Treaty of Versailles Germany was forced to acknowledge guilt for the war. Later, prompted by the Bolshevik publication of the secret diplomacy of the czarist Russian government, the warring powers gradually released their own state papers, and the long historical debate on war guilt began. It has with some justice been claimed that the conditions of the peace treaties were partially responsible for World War II. Yet when World War I ended, the immense suffering it had caused gave rise to a general revulsion to any kind of war, and a large part of mankind placed its hopes in the newly created League of Nations.

To calculate the total losses caused by the war is impossible. About 10 million dead and 20 million wounded is a conservative estimate. Starvation and epidemics raised the total in the immediate postwar years. Warfare itself had been revolutionized by the conflict (see air forces; chemical warfare; mechanized warfare; tank).

World Trade Organization (WTO), international organization established in 1995 as a result of the final round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations, called the Uruguay Round. The WTO is responsible for monitoring national trading policies, handling trade disputes, and enforcing the GATT agreements, which are designed to reduce tariffs and other barriers to international trade and to eliminate discriminatory treatment in international commerce. In an effort to promote international agreements, WTO negotiations are conducted in closed sessions; many outsiders have strongly criticized such meetings as antidemocratic. Unlike GATT, the WTO is a permanent body but not a specialized agency of the United Nations; it has far greater power to mediate trade disputes between member countries and assess penalties. In the Uruguay Round, agreement was reached to reduce tariffs on manufactured goods by one third. Under the WTO, subsidies and quotas are to be reduced on imported farm products, automobiles, and textiles, which were not covered by GATT; there is also freer trade in banking and other services and greater worldwide protection of intellectual property. Negotiations to eliminate subsidies and protections for agricultural products, however, have proved to be a stumbling block. The Doha Round of talks, launched in 2001, have been deadlocked over such subsidies; the round was originally scheduled to be finished in Jan., 2005. The WTO is headquartered in Geneva and also holds international ministerial conferences; it has 151 members.

World Trade Center, former building complex in lower Manhattan, New York City, consisting of seven buildings and a shopping concourse on a 16-acre (6.5-hectare) site; it was destroyed by a terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Prior to its destruction, the World Trade Center had been the world's largest commercial complex, home to many businesses, government agencies, and international trade organizations. Most prominent among its structures were the 110-story rectangular twin towers, one rising to 1,362 ft (415 m) and the other to 1,368 ft (417 m), with floors roughly an acre in size. Designed by Minoru Yamasaki and Emery Roth, the towers and concourse portion of the center were completed in 1973 at a cost of some $750 million. For a brief period (until the completion of the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1974), the World Trade towers were the tallest buildings in the world. They remained the largest structures on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, an internationally known landmark and tourist attraction rising high above the skyline of lower Manhattan.

In 1993 a terrorist car-bomb explosion damaged portions of the complex, killing six people and causing more than $300 million in damage. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other Islamic extremists were convicted of conspiracy and other charges related to the bombing in 1993, and the so-called mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, was convicted in 1998. On Sept. 11, 2001, a second terrorist attack, in which two hijacked commercial jetliners were crashed into the towers, ignited huge, intense fires in the upper stories of both buildings, weakening them and leading to their collapse. Other structures in the complex were completely or partially destroyed as a result, and many surrounding buildings were severely damaged. More than 2,700 people, including the passengers and crew of the airliners and several hundred emergency personnel responding to the initial fires, lost their lives; more than 7,000 people were injured.

The enormity of the events of Sept. 11 (see also 9/11), which also involved a similar attack with a hijacked jetliner on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the crash in W Pennsylvania of a fourth hijacked plane, galvanized national feeling in the United States, where many watched the events unfold on television. In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in history, President George W. Bush announced a war on terrorism, and many nations pledged their support. Al Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, was identified by U.S. authorities as being behind the attacks, and the United States subsequently began military operations in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based and where the government was closely allied with him.

In Dec., 2001, Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who had been arrested (Aug., 2001) on immigration violations in Minnesota, was indicted on charges that he was part of the conspiracy responsible for the September attacks. He pleaded guilty in 2005 to being part of a conspiracy to attack the White House in a similar manner but denied being part of either Sept. 11 attack, and was given a life sentence in 2006.

The alleged mastermind of the plot was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti of Pakistani parentage who had become a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003, held by the United States at an undisclosed location, and transferred to Guantánamo Bay in 2006. According to a censored transcript of a closed-door hearing in 2007, he admitted to organizing and supervising the execution of the attacks of Sept. 11, but the government also later revealed that he had been subjected to waterboarding, which is generally regarded as a form of torture. In Feb., 2008, the Pentagon announced that a military tribunal would try Mohammed and five others held at Guantánamo on conspiracy and other charges relating to the attacks.

In the aftermath of the center's destruction, many competing interests—the city and state of New York, the owners of the site, the buildings' developer, survivors of the attack and families and friends of those killed, and others—advocated a variety of approaches to rebuilding the site. After a lengthy design competition, a preliminary master construction plan for the site, by Daniel Libeskind, was approved in 2003. The design has since been much modified, and a new overall plan was unveiled in 2006.

Embracing the footprints where the towers once stood, a street-level memorial plaza is planned, with two sunken pools fed by waterfalls; the names of those who died as a result of the attack will be displayed in the plaza, which will also include a World Trade Center Museum. Surrounding the memorial, will be a group of office towers that rise in height toward the the "Freedom Tower" (Tower 1), designed by the American architect David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Tower 2 is being designed by England's Lord Norman Foster, Tower 3 by another English architect, Lord Richard Rogers, and Tower 4 by Japan's Fumihiko Maki. The complex will also include a transportation hub by Spain's Santiago Calatrava and a performing arts center to be created by Frank Gehry.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO), specialized agency of the United Nations; established in 1951 with headquarters at Geneva. It replaced the International Meteorological Organization, which was established in 1878. WMO aims at promoting international cooperation between the world's meteorological stations, standardizing meteorological observations, encouraging research and training, and extending the use of meteorological findings to different fields. Satellites, used to collect meteorological data and in communications, have made possible the rapid exchange of observations for forecasting in the WMO-sponsored World Weather Watch. WMO operates through the World Meteorological Congress (which meets at least every four years) with delegates from its entire membership, an executive committee, a technical commission, a secretariat, and six regional meteorological associations in Africa, Asia, South America, North and Central America, SW Pacific, and Europe. It has 187 members.

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), specialized agency of the United Nations, with headquarters at Geneva. WIPO became an agency in 1974, but its roots go back to 1883 when the need for international protection of intellectual property prompted the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property and to 1886 with the Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Both conventions created international bureaus, which merged (1893) to become the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property (BIRPI). In 1960, BIRPI moved from Bern to Geneva and a decade later it became WIPO. Today's organization administers intellectual property matters recognized by United Nations member states, managing international treaties that deal with some aspect of intellectual property protection. WIPO also assists governments, organizations, and the private sector in monitoring developments in the field. It not only helps to protect such traditional works of the mind as patented inventions, books, music, works of art, films, industrial designs, and trademarks, but is increasingly involved in the protection of information technology and World Wide Web-related matters. WIPO has 184 member nations.

World Health Organization (WHO), specialized agency of the United Nations, established in 1948, with its headquarters at Geneva. WHO admits all sovereign states (including those not belonging to the United Nations) to full membership, and it admits territories that are not self-governing to associate membership. There are 193 member nations. WHO is governed by the World Health Assembly, consisting of representatives of the entire membership, which meets at least once a year; an executive board elected by the World Health Assembly; and a secretariat headed by a director-general. There are regional organizations in Africa, the E Mediterranean, SE Asia, Europe, the W Pacific, and the Americas. WHO worked to eradicate smallpox, has made notable strides in checking polio, leprosy, cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis, and sponsors medical research on tropical and other diseases. WHO has drafted conventions for preventing the international spread of disease, such as sanitary and quarantine requirements, and for reducing smoking, and has given attention to the problems of environmental pollution. WHO is also authorized to issue global health alerts and take other measures to prevent the international spread of health threats.

World Education Fellowship: see New Education Fellowship.

World Cup: see soccer.

World Court, popular name of the Permanent Court of International Justice, established pursuant to Article 14 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The protocol establishing it was adopted by the Assembly of the League in 1920 and ratified by the requisite number of states in 1921. By the time of its dissolution in 1945 (when its functions were transferred to the newly created International Court of Justice), the court had 59 member states. Established at The Hague, the court was empowered to render judgments in disputes between states that were voluntarily submitted to it and to give advisory opinions in any matters referred to it by the Council or the Assembly of the League. Its functions, thus, were judicial rather than, as in the case of the older Hague Tribunal, purely arbitral and diplomatic. It also differed from the Hague Tribunal in having a permanent group of judges instead of a panel from which judges might be selected to hear a particular dispute. The court originally had 11 judges and 4 deputy judges, but in 1931 its composition was changed to 15 regular judges. Judges were elected for nine-year terms by the Council and the Assembly concurrently; they were selected from a list of nominees of the Hague Tribunal regardless of nationality, except that not more than one citizen of a country might sit on the bench at any one time. Although the United States never joined the court (because the Senate refused to ratify the protocol), there was always an American jurist on the bench. To assure impartiality, the judges were paid salaries and were forbidden to engage in governmental service or in any legal activity except their judicial work. In the course of its existence, the court rendered 32 judgments and 27 advisory opinions. An important judgment was that which affirmed (1933) Danish sovereignty over the northern coast of Greenland and disallowed Norway's claim. The advisory opinions of the court were important in developing international law. A notable opinion declared (1931) that the proposed customs union of Germany and Austria would violate Austria's pledge to remain independent. The court virtually ceased to function after the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940.

World Council of Churches, an international, interdenominational organization of most major Protestant, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches; founded in Amsterdam in 1948, its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. The idea of a world fellowship of Christian churches took concrete form in 1937, when two ecumenical conferences—on life and work and on faith and order—elected a joint committee to formulate plans for a world council. This provisional committee met at Utrecht in 1938 under the organization's first general secretary, Willem Adolf Visser't Hooft, but it was not until after World War II that the first assembly took place (1948) and formally ratified the constitution. At Amsterdam there were 147 Christian churches from 44 countries; today there are 341 member churches from over 100 countries.

The governing body of the council is the assembly, which meets every seven years. The assembly appoints a central committee of 150 members, which meets five times between assemblies; this committee in turn elects a 26-member executive committee. The council also has a presidium to which eight persons are appointed. The council, which has no legislative power over its member churches, provides an opportunity for its constituents to act together in matters of common concern under their common calling "to accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior." Its concerns include international relations, environmental justice, education, and mission. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the council but sends delegated observers to its assemblies; it has full membership on the council's Commission of Faith and Order and on its Joint Working Group.

See ecumenical movement.

World Conservation Union: see International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

World Bank: see International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Third World, the technologically less advanced, or developing, nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, generally characterized as poor, having economies distorted by their dependence on the export of primary products to the developed countries in return for finished products. These nations also tend to have high rates of illiteracy, disease, and population growth and unstable governments. The term Third World was originally intended to distinguish the nonaligned nations that gained independence from colonial rule beginning after World War II from the Western nations and from those that formed the former Eastern bloc, and sometimes more specifically from the United States and from the former Soviet Union (the first and second worlds, respectively). For the most part the term has not included China. Politically, the Third World emerged at the Bandung Conference (1955), which resulted in the establishment of the Nonaligned Movement. Numerically, the Third World dominates the United Nations, but the group is diverse culturally and increasingly economically, and its unity is only hypothetical. The oil-rich nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Libya, and the newly emerged industrial states, such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore, have little in common with desperately poor nations, such as Haiti, Chad, and Afghanistan.

Seven Wonders of the World, in ancient classifications, were the Great Pyramid of Khufu (see pyramid) or all the pyramids with or without the sphinx; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, with or without the walls; the mausoleum at Halicarnassus; the Artemision at Ephesus; the Colossus of Rhodes; the Olympian Zeus, statue by Phidias; and the lighthouse at Pharos, Alexandria, or, instead, the walls of Babylon.

Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs: see Rotblat, Sir Joseph.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), revolutionary industrial union organized in Chicago in 1905 by delegates from the Western Federation of Mines, which formed the nucleus of the IWW, and 42 other labor organizations. It became the chief organization in the United States representing the doctrines of syndicalism. Leaders included Eugene V. Debs, William D. Haywood, and Daniel De Leon. Its members were called, among other nicknames, the Wobblies.

The aim of the IWW was to unite in one body all skilled and unskilled workers for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism and rebuilding society on a socialistic basis. Its methods were direct action, propaganda, the boycott, and the strike; it was opposed to sabotage, to arbitration or collective bargaining, and to political affiliation and intervention. The organization spread to Canada and Australia and in a very small way to Europe, but its main activities were confined to the United States. It was especially strong in the lumber camps of the Northwest, among dock workers in port cities, in the wheat fields of the central states, and in textile and mining areas. Of the 150 strikes conducted by the IWW, the most notable occurred at Goldfield, Nev. (miners, 1906-7); at Lawrence, Mass. (textile workers, 1912); at Paterson, N.J. (silk workers, 1913); in the Mesabi range, Minn. (iron miners, 1916); in the lumber camps of the Northwest (1917); at Seattle (general strike, 1919); and in Colorado (miners, 1927-28).

The IWW's stand against political action led to controversy among the members, with De Leon emphasizing the Marxist point of view as against those opposing political action. De Leon and his followers were expelled in 1908 and set up an independent organization, which was never more than a splinter group and was dissolved in 1925. In 1924 a split took place in the parent organization between the Westerners and the Easterners over the question of centralization.

At the time of World War I the IWW was antimilitaristic; its members were accused of draft evasion, of fomenting German-paid strikes in order to cripple essential war industries; of sabotage; and of criminal syndicalism. Many of its leaders and members were thrown into jail. Adding to the union's troubles was the fact that a great portion of the membership was made up of migratory and casual laborers, and it was difficult to organize them into a cohesive group. From a probable strength of at least 30,000 in 1912, the membership fell to less than 10,000 in 1930 and in the mid-1990s was less than 1,000.

Centre of the world, a widespread motif in myths and folktales among various peoples, especially in Asia, Australia, and North America. There are two main forms. In the vertical tradition, the tree extends between and connects earth, heaven, and the underworld; oracles, judgments, and other prophetic activities are performed at its base. In the horizontal tradition, the tree is planted at the centre of the world and is protected by supernatural guardians; it is the source of terrestrial fertility and life.

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Large merchant ship that visits designated ports on a regular schedule, carrying whatever cargo and passengers are available on the date of sailing. The first liners were operated in the North Atlantic, notably by Samuel Cunard of Britain, beginning in 1840. Their heyday lasted from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. Many were extraordinarily luxurious. Among the most famous were Cunarders such as the Mauretania and the Queen Mary; the German Vaterland (later renamed Leviathan), for many years the largest ship afloat; the ill-fated Titanic; and the United States. Their reign ended in the 1960s with the rise of jet travel, but liners ranging from cruise ships to refrigerated cargo ships continued to sail.

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Horizontal and vertical circulation system of ocean waters, produced by gravity, wind friction, and water density variation. Coriolis forces cause ocean currents to move clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and deflect them about 45° from the wind direction. This movement creates distinctive currents called gyres. Major ocean currents include the Gulf Stream–North Atlantic–Norway Current in the Atlantic Ocean, the Peru (Humboldt) Current off South America, and the West Australia Current.

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Large, continuous body of salt water. Ocean covers nearly 71percnt of the Earth's surface and is divided into major oceans and smaller seas. The three principal oceans, the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian, are largely delimited by land and submarine topographic boundaries. All are connected to what is sometimes called the Southern Ocean, the waters encircling Antarctica. Important marginal seas, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, are partially enclosed by landmasses or island arcs. The largest are the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas, Caribbean and adjacent waters, Mediterranean, Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, Yellow and China Seas, and Sea of Japan.

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Body of salt water extending from the Antarctic region in the south to the Arctic circle in the north and lying between the continents of Asia and Australia on the west and North and South America on the east. It occupies about one-third of the surface of the earth and is by far the largest of the world's oceans. Its area, excluding adjacent seas, is approximately 63,800,000 sq mi (165,250,000 sq km), twice that of the Atlantic Ocean and more than the whole land area of the globe. Its mean depth is 14,040 ft (4,280 m). The western Pacific is noted for its many peripheral seas.

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Body of salt water stretching between Africa in the west, Australia in the east, Asia in the north, and Antarctica in the south. With an area of 28,360,000 sq mi (73,440,000 sq km), it covers approximately one-seventh of the Earth's surface, and it is the smallest of the world's three major oceans (see Atlantic Ocean; Pacific Ocean). Its greatest depth (24,442 ft [7,450 m]) is in the Java Trench. Its chief marginal seas include the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Andaman Sea, Bay of Bengal, and the Great Australian Bight. Its major islands and island groups include Madagascar, Sri Lanka, and the Mascarenes.

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Ocean separating North and South America from Europe and Africa. The second largest of the world's oceans, the Atlantic has an area of 31,830,000 sq mi (82,440,000 sq km). With its marginal seas, including the Baltic, North, Black, and Mediterranean to the east, and Baffin Bay, Hudson Bay, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea to the west, it covers some 41,100,000 sq mi (106,450,000 sq km). Including these latter bodies of water, its average depth is 10,925 ft (3,330 m); its maximum depth is 27,493 feet (8,380 m) in the Puerto Rico Trench. Its most powerful current is the Gulf Stream.

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Ocean centring approximately on the North Pole. Smallest of the world's oceans, it is almost completely surrounded by the landmasses of Eurasia and North America, and it is distinguished by a cover of ice. Lands in it and adjacent to it include Point Barrow in Alaska, the Arctic Archipelago, Greenland, Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, and northern Siberia. The ocean covers about 5,440,000 sq mi (14,090,000 sq km) and reaches a maximum depth of about 18,000 ft (5,500 m). Its marginal seas include the Barents, Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian, Greenland, Kara, Laptev, and White seas. Areas within the Arctic Circle were first explored beginning in the 9th century by the Norse. In the 16th–17th centuries explorers searching for the Northwest Passage reached the area; Martin Frobisher discovered the southern part of Baffin Island (1576–78), and Henry Hudson navigated the eastern coast of Hudson Bay (1610–11). Later explorers included Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen, Robert E. Peary, and Richard E. Byrd. Development of the area's natural resources was spurred by the discovery of oil in Alaska in the 1960s. Virtually all of the Arctic has now been mapped.

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Musical genre incorporating diverse styles from Africa, eastern Europe, Asia, South and Central America, the Caribbean, and nonmainstream Western folk sources. The term was first coined largely in response to the sudden increase of recordings in non-English languages that were released in Great Britain and the United States in the 1980s, but by the early 1990s world music had become a bona fide musical genre and counterpoint to the increasingly synthetic sounds of Western pop music. Initially, African popular music and world music were virtually synonymous, and the genre's biggest stars included the Nigerians King Sunny Ade and Fela Anikulapo Kuti and the Senegalese Youssou N'Dour. Moreover, one of its earliest advocates was the Cameroonian-born Frenchman Francis Bebey. By the 21st century world music encompassed everything from Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the pop-flamenco of the French group the Gipsy Kings to “ambient-global” projects that merged so-called ethnic voice samples with state-of-the-art rhythm programming.

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Use of computer modeling and simulation to enable a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional visual or other sensory environment. A computer-generated environment simulates reality by means of interactive devices that send and receive information and are worn as goggles, headsets, gloves, or body suits. The illusion of being in the created environment (telepresence) is accomplished by motion sensors that pick up the user's movements and adjust his or her view accordingly, usually in real time. The basis of the technology emerged in the 1960s in simulators that taught how to fly planes, drive tanks, shoot artillery, and generally perform in combat. It came of commercial age in the 1980s and is now used in games, exhibits, and aerospace simulators. It has potential for use in many fields, including entertainment, medicine and biotechnology, engineering, design, and marketing.

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or Web

Leading information-exchange service of the Internet. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN and introduced to the world in 1991. The Web gives users access to a vast array of documents that are connected to each other by means of hypertext or hyperlinks. A hypertext document with its corresponding text and hyperlinks is written in HTML and is assigned an on-line address, or URL. The Web operates within the Internet's basic client-server architecture. Individual HTML files with unique electronic addresses are called Web pages, and a collection of Web pages and related files (such as graphics files, scripted programs, and other resources) sharing a set of similar addresses (see domain name) is called a Web site. The main or introductory page of a Web site is usually called the site's home page. Users may access any page by typing in the appropriate address, search for pages related to a topic of interest by using a search engine, or move quickly between pages by clicking on hyperlinks incorporated into them. Though introduced in 1991, the Web did not become truly popular until the introduction of Mosaic, a browser with a graphical interface, in 1993. Subsequently, browsers produced by Netscape and Microsoft have become predominant.

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or Second World War

(1939–45) International conflict principally between the Axis Powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—and the Allied Powers—France, Britain, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China. Political and economic instability in Germany, combined with bitterness over its defeat in World War I and the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, allowed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise to power. In the mid-1930s Hitler began secretly to rearm Germany, in violation of the treaty. He signed alliances with Italy and Japan to oppose the Soviet Union and intervened in the Spanish Civil War in the name of anticommunism. Capitalizing on the reluctance of other European powers to oppose him by force, he sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 (see Anschluss) and to annex Czechoslovakia in 1939. After signing the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Two days later France and Britain declared war on Germany. Poland's defeat was followed by a period of military inactivity on the Western Front (see Phony War). At sea Germany conducted a damaging submarine campaign by U-boat against merchant shipping bound for Britain. By early 1940 the Soviet Union had divided Poland with Germany, occupied the Baltic states, and subdued Finland in the Russo-Finnish War. In April 1940 Germany overwhelmed Denmark and began its conquest of Norway. In May German forces swept through The Netherlands and Belgium on their blitzkrieg invasion of France, forcing it to capitulate in June and establish the Vichy France regime. Germany then launched massive bombing raids on Britain in preparation for a cross-Channel invasion, but, after losing the Battle of Britain, Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely. By early 1941 Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria had joined the Axis, and German troops quickly overran Yugoslavia and Greece in April. In June Hitler abandoned his pact with the Soviet Union and launched a massive surprise invasion of Russia, reaching the outskirts of Moscow before Soviet counterattacks and winter weather halted the advance. In East Asia Japan expanded its war with China and seized European colonial holdings. In December 1941 Japan attacked U.S. bases at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. The U.S. declared war on Japan, and the war became truly global when the other Axis Powers declared war on the U.S. Japan quickly invaded and occupied most of Southeast Asia, Burma, the Netherlands East Indies, and many Pacific islands. After the crucial U.S. naval victory at the Battle of Midway (1942), U.S. forces began to advance up the chains of islands toward Japan. In the North Africa Campaigns the British and Americans defeated Italian and German forces by 1943. The Allies then invaded Sicily and Italy, forcing the overthrow of the fascist government in July 1943, though fighting against the Germans continued in Italy until 1945. In the Soviet Union the Battle of Stalingrad (1943) marked the end of the German advance, and Soviet reinforcements in great numbers gradually pushed the German armies back. The massive Allied invasion of western Europe began with the Normandy Campaign in western France (1944), and the Allies' steady advance ended in the occupation of Germany in 1945. After Soviet troops pushed German forces out of the Soviet Union, they advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania and had occupied the eastern third of Germany by the time the surrender of Germany was signed on May 8, 1945. In the Pacific an Allied invasion of the Philippines (1944) was followed by the successful Battle of Leyte Gulf and the costly Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa (1945). Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and Japan's formal surrender on September 2 ended the war. Estimates of total military and civilian casualties varied from 35 million to 60 million killed, including about 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Millions more civilians were wounded and made homeless throughout Europe and East Asia. Seealso Anti-Comintern Pact; Atlantic Charter; Battles of El Alamein, the Atlantic, the Bulge, Guadalcanal, and the Philippine Sea; Casablanca, Potsdam, Tehran, and Yalta conferences; Dunkirk Evacuation; lend-lease; Munich agreement; Nürnberg Trials; Siege of Leningrad; Sino-Japanese Wars; Omar Bradley, Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Bernard Law Montgomery, Benito Mussolini, George Patton, Erwin Rommel, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Yamamoto Isoroku, Georgy K. Zhukov.

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or First World War

(1914–18) International conflict between the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—and the Allied Powers—mainly France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and (from 1917) the U.S. After a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in June 1914, a chain of threats and mobilizations resulted in a general war between the antagonists by mid-August. Prepared to fight a war on two fronts, based on the Schlieffen Plan, Germany first swept through neutral Belgium and invaded France. After the First Battle of the Marne (1914), the Allied defensive lines were stabilized in France, and a war of attrition began. Fought from lines of trenches and supported by modern artillery and machine guns, infantry assaults gained little ground and were enormously costly in human life, especially at the Battles of Verdun and the Somme (1916). On the Eastern Front, Russian forces initially drove deep into East Prussia and German Poland (1914) but were stopped by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg and forced back into Russia (1915). After several offensives, the Russian army failed to break through the German defensive lines. Russia's poor performance and enormous losses caused widespread domestic discontent that led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Other fronts in the war included the Dardanelles Campaign, in which British and Dominion forces were unsuccessful against Turkey; the Caucasus and Iran (Persia), where Russia fought Turkey; Mesopotamia and Egypt, where British forces fought the Turks; and northern Italy, where Italian and Austrian troops fought the costly Battles of the Isonzo. At sea, the German and British fleets fought the inconclusive Battle of Jutland, and Germany's use of the submarine against neutral shipping eventually brought the U.S. into the war in 1917. Though Russia's armistice with Germany in December 1917 released German troops to fight on the Western Front, the Allies were reinforced by U.S. troops in early 1918. Germany's unsuccessful offensive in the Second Battle of the Marne was countered by the Allies' steady advance, which recovered most of France and Belgium by October 1918 and led to the November Armistice. Total casualties were estimated at 10 million dead, 21 million wounded, and 7.7 million missing or imprisoned. Seealso Battles of Caporetto and Ypres; Fourteen Points; Lusitania; Paris Peace Conference; Treaties of Brest-Litovsk, Neuilly, Saint-Germain, Sèvres, Trianon, and Versailles; Edmund H.H. Allenby, Ferdinand Foch, John French, Douglas Haig, Paul von Hindenburg, Joseph-Jacques-Césaire Joffre, Erich Ludendorff, John Pershing.

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International organization based in Geneva that supervises world trade. It was created in 1995 to replace the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Like its predecessor, it aims to lower trade barriers and encourage multilateral trade. It monitors members' adherence to GATT agreements and negotiates and implements new agreements. Critics of the WTO, including many opponents of economic globalization, have charged that it undermines national sovereignty by promoting the interests of large multinational corporations and that the trade liberalization it encourages leads to environmental damage and declining living standards for low-skilled workers in developing countries. By the early 21st century, the WTO had more than 145 members.

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Complex formerly consisting of seven buildings around a central plaza, near the southern tip of Manhattan. Its huge twin towers (completed 1970–72) were designed by Minoru Yamasaki (1912–86). At 1,368 ft (417 m) and 1,362 ft (415 m) tall, they were the world's tallest buildings until surpassed in 1973 by the Sears Tower in Chicago. The towers were notable for the relationship of their simple, light embellishment to their underlying structure. In 1993 a bomb planted by terrorists exploded in the underground garage, killing several people and injuring some 1,000. A much more massive attack occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when first One World Trade Center and then Two World Trade Center were struck by hijacked commercial airliners that were deliberately flown into them. Shortly thereafter both of the heavily damaged towers, as well as adjacent buildings, collapsed into enormous piles of debris. The attacks claimed the lives of some 2,750 people. Thousands more were injured. See September 11 attacks.

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Public-health agency of the UN, established in Geneva in 1948 to succeed two earlier agencies. Its mandate is to promote “the highest possible level of health” in all peoples. Its work falls into three categories. It provides a clearinghouse for information on the latest developments in disease and health care and establishes international sanitary standards and quarantine measures. It sponsors measures for the control of epidemic and endemic disease (including immunization campaigns and assistance in providing sources of pure water). Finally, it encourages the strengthening of public-health programs in member nations. Its greatest success to date has been the worldwide eradication of smallpox (1980).

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Major international football (soccer) competition. The tournament brings together 32 qualifying national teams from around the world, culminating in a match between the two top teams. It has been held every fourth year since 1930 (except during World War II). Followed and watched by billions of people worldwide, it has by far the greatest audience of any single sporting event in the world. Several competitions in other sports also use the name “world cup.”

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or World Court

Principal judicial body of the United Nations, located at The Hague. Its predecessor organization was the Permanent Court of International Justice, the judicial body of the League of Nations. Its first session was held in 1946. Its jurisdiction is limited to disputes between states willing to accept its authority on matters of international law. Its decisions are binding, but it has no enforcement power; appeals must be made to the UN Security Council. Its 15-member body of judges, each of whom serves a nine-year term, is elected by countries party to the court's founding statute. No two judges may come from the same country. Seealso European Court of Justice.

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Christian ecumenical organization founded in 1948 in Amsterdam. It functions as a forum for Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations, which cooperate through the WCC on a variety of undertakings and explore doctrinal similarities and differences. It grew out of two post-World War I ecumenical efforts, the Life and Work Movement (which concentrated on practical activities) and the Faith and Order Movement (which focused on doctrinal issues and the possibility of reunion). The impetus for these two organizations sprang from the International Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, the first such cooperative effort since the Reformation. The Roman Catholic church, though not a member of the WCC, sends representatives to its conferences. The more fundamentalist Protestant denominations have also refused to join.

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Specialized agency of the United Nations system, established at the Bretton Woods Conference for postwar reconstruction. It is the principal international development institution. Its five divisions are the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD; its main component), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The IDA (founded 1960) makes interest-free loans to the bank's poorest member countries. The IFC (founded 1956) lends to private businesses in developing countries. The MIGA (founded 1985) supports national and private agencies that encourage foreign direct investment by offering insurance against noncommercial risks. The ICSID (founded 1966) was developed to relieve the IBRD of the burden of settling investment disputes. Seealso International Monetary Fund.

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Former U.S. airline acquired by the AMR Corp. Formed in 1930 as Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., from two smaller airlines, the company established the first coast-to-coast service that same year, flying from Newark, N.J., to Los Angeles in 36 hours. In 1946 TWA began flights between New York City and Paris, and it expanded by the 1950s to routes through Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. It adopted its present name in 1950. Howard R. Hughes was its principal stockholder and guiding genius from 1939 to 1960–61, when he lost control to a group of investors. Financially troubled since the 1980s, TWA continued to operate despite twice landing in bankruptcy court in the 1990s. It was acquired by AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, in 2001.

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Former U.S. airline acquired by the AMR Corp. Formed in 1930 as Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc., from two smaller airlines, the company established the first coast-to-coast service that same year, flying from Newark, N.J., to Los Angeles in 36 hours. In 1946 TWA began flights between New York City and Paris, and it expanded by the 1950s to routes through Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. It adopted its present name in 1950. Howard R. Hughes was its principal stockholder and guiding genius from 1939 to 1960–61, when he lost control to a group of investors. Financially troubled since the 1980s, TWA continued to operate despite twice landing in bankruptcy court in the 1990s. It was acquired by AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, in 2001.

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Preeminent architectural and sculptural achievements of antiquity, as listed by various Greco-Roman observers. Included on the best-known list were the Pyramids of Giza (the oldest of the wonders and the only one substantially in existence today), the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (thought to be a series of landscaped terraces, ascribed to King Nebuchadrezzar II, the semilegendary Queen Sammu-ramat, or the Assyrian king Sennacherib), the Statue of Zeus at Olympia (a large gold-and-ivory figure of the god on his throne by Phidias), the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (a temple, built in 356 BC, famous for its imposing size and the works of art that adorned it), the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria (a lighthouse built circa 280 BC on the island of Pharos off Alexandria, said to have been more than 350 ft, or 110 m, high). These wonders inspired the compilation of many other lists of seven attractions, or “wonders,” by later generations.

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Series of international meetings of eminent scientists to discuss problems of nuclear weapons and world security. The first meeting was held in 1957 at the estate of Cyrus Eaton in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. The Pugwash organization was established to convene subsequent conferences to discuss arms control and disarmament; these were held in the Soviet Union, Britain, India, and the U.S., among other countries. The organization and its president and founding member, Joseph Rotblat (born 1908), received the 1995 Nobel Prize for Peace.

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known as the Wobblies

Radical labour organization founded in Chicago in 1905. The founders, who opposed the moderate policies of the AFL (see AFL-CIO), included William Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners, Daniel De Leon of the Socialist Labor Party, and Eugene V. Debs. In 1908 the IWW split, and a militant group led by Haywood prevailed. To reach its goal of worker control of the means of production, it advocated general strikes, boycotts, and sabotage. Its tactics led to arrests and adverse publicity, though it made gains through strikes in the mining and lumber industries. It opposed U.S. participation in World War I, and some of its leaders were prosecuted. By the 1920s membership had dwindled greatly.

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