I'm curious if the participating societies in the war referred to World War II by that name during the war or shortly after. If so, how did people feel about that name? At the time, did they see it as an inevitable outflow of World War I as we do? Would they have resented that interpretation? If this name was not given to that war until later, what was it called in the meantime?
Also, I understand that World War I was referred to as the Great War even in the 1940s. When did that change?
This might answer your questions:
OED says that the Manchester Guardian coined "World War No. 2" on 18 February 1919, "with reference to an imagined future war arising out of the social upheaval consequent upon the First World War (1914-18)."
Their next citation for "World War II" is Time Magazine on 11 September 1939.
The phrase "Second World War" appeared in Political Science Quarterly in September 1942; but it had been previously used by H G Wells in The Autocracy of Mr Parham in 1930.
Answered by Andrew Leach on stackexchange.