The Longest Modern War: The Greco-Albanian War 1940-1987 November 4, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
The longest war between states in modern history? Well, Wikipedia has a page and there are several freelance attempts to elevate this or that conflict to the most protracted, but what about the Greek-Albanian war of 1940-1987? Albania, in 1940, was an Italian satrapy and in October of that year when the Italians decided to attack Greece (ERROR!) the Albanian government was ‘encouraged’ (ahem) to declare war on their historic southern enemies. In fact, there was some background border messiness with Albanians laying claim to parts of northern Greece (Chameria) and Greece laying some claim to parts of southern Albania (Northern Epiros). The war took a few months to resolve itself into an Axis victory. The Greeks after bravely fighting (and beating in many instances) the Italians were crushed by the Germans in the spring of 1941. After that a free Greek government passed into exile and it was not until October 1944 that the country was properly liberated. However, Albania and Greece, despite being back at the starting line, found themselves in different camps. Albania had begun a nightmarish Leninist experiment, soon to turn into a nightmare Maoist experiment. Greece had become, meanwhile, a lackadaisical member of the western alliance, bruising for a fight with every one of its neighbours. The Greeks who had expanded thanks to the war, they had taken the Dodecanese in 1947 from Italy, believed that they had a right to Northern Epiros: Albania’s Communist regime had, naturally, quite the opposite view. (There are worse places to live than on the borders of two Balkan countries, but not many…) It took the Greeks until 1987 to finally end the war and normalize relations with Albania. As it happens both countries had stopped shooting at each other a long time before and diplomatic relations had been restored in 1971 (in the middle of the ‘war’!). There had even been some warmth between two countries, which were so clearly outliers in their respective blocks. Still pretty impressive, a war between two modern European countries that lasted for just under half a century…
Can anyone beat this? Note that civil wars don’t count, and the war in question has to be modern, i.e. post 1500: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Also a small note on the Greco-Albanian war. There is a minority, particularly Albanian opinion that the Greeks are still today at war with them: apparently a Greek War Law remains active. Greece denies this and claims that the issue was dealt with in 1987. The link is mainly entertaining for the border pettiness between countries.
15 nov 2015: Tacitus from Detritus writes: No doubt others will mention this as well, but I think technically North and South Korea are still at war. There is an armistice but no peace treaty. Occasionally shots are fired and lives lost as happened a couple of years ago when a South Korean naval vessel was torpedoed, presumably by a North Korean sub. 62 years and counting.
Similarly and for even longer, Russia and Japan are still technically at war since they can’t resolve the issue of the Kuril islands but unless you count a Japanese fisherman shot in 2006 that war is only on paper.
Stephen D writes. If you define “modern” as post-1500, there’s the Dutch War of Independence, 1586-1648 with occasional truces. Some devoted Republicans would cite the Anglo-Irish War, 1916-1998, or even for a small minority 1916-present, again with occasional truces.
