Myth: The only time two democracies declared war against each other was during World War 2 and it was Britain against Finland
01/01/07 00:00 Filed in: History
United Kingdom versus Finland
Myth
The story is that in all of history there has only ever been one incident where two fully fledged democracies have declared war against each other. This was during World War 2 (II) when Britain declared war against Finland. This was because Finalnd was fighting Russia and Russia was a member of the allies.
Despite declaring war, not a shot was fired.
Reality
Its a lovely story and it is quite true that Britain did indeed declare war on Finland. But it is not the first time a democracy declared war on another. Lets take for example the American war of 1812; when the United States of America declared war on Britain and tried to invade Canada. Scientifically this disproves the conjector, but there are many, many more incidents of both before and after to prove my point.
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