We already know the standard 'Munich turns hot' and 'cliche'd-later-invasion-of Poland'. So, what are some other ways WWII could have gotten hot?
But you always have to define "World War II". If confined to Germany-Britain/France, is it just the "Anglo/French-German War"? If everything in Europe goes as OTL but the Pacific stays...well, pacific...is it just "The Great European Clusterf--k"? Or, if everything stays cold war-ish in Europe but Japan gets into it with Britain, France and/or the Netherlands is it a world war or the "Euro/Japanese War"?
Is anything a "World War" without the combat involvement of the United States?
The Japanese invasion of China is also claimed to have been the start of the 'World War'
However it would have been very pessimistic to have called it 'World War I' (the 1914-18 one that is).
That would have proclaimed that there would be another one coming.
Ivan
Worth noting that World War One was named World War One before the Second
Really? Do you have a source?
I simple don't believe that someone would use the Name WWI before WWII.
Far from waiting until the Second World War had started, the First World War was rather pessimistically named as such in 1918.
British Officer Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington recorded in his diary for 10 Sep 1918 that he met with a Major Johnstone of Harvard University to discuss what historians should call the war. Repington said it was then referred to as The War, 'but that this could not last'. They agreed that 'To call it The German War was too much flattery for the Boche.' Repington concludes: 'I suggested The World War as a shade better title, and finally we mutually agreed to call it The First World War in order to prevent the millennium folk from forgetting that the history of the world was the history of war.' Between the wars most people did refer to the war as the Great War, even though that had originally referred to the Napoleonic War. In the US, it was ‘The World War’.