You Could Look It Up

Q. If you are referring to a specific war, like World War II, do you capitalize the word war even when you’re not attaching the full title, or leave it uncapitalized? For example, should I capitalize or not in the following sentence? The political fallout from the war was that Russia occupied East Germany.

A. If you type war into the Search box or look under war in the index, you’ll find examples at CMOS 8.113: World War I, Vietnam War, the war, the two world wars, etc.

[This answer relies on the 17th edition of CMOS (2017) unless otherwise noted.]