History Main / TheShortWar

* ''Film/ABoyAndHisDog'' opens with a title card saying that World War IV only took five days, "just long enough for the final missiles to leave their silos on both sides" as Blood says later. However WorldWarIII lasted thirty-three years (though that includes the ColdWar as well).

* The year-long New Krypton Arc of ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' concluded with a storyline titled "The 100 Hour War", which detailed the "War" between Earth and New Krypton.
* The DC comic ''ComicBook/FiftyTwo'' featured one issue titled "World War III". Since each issue of 52 represented one week of a year, World War III lasted a little under a week. Also notable in that the war was basically everyone versus one FlyingBrick, making an unusually small fighting force.

* ''WebOriginal/FriendshipIsWitchcraft'': If the lyrics to 'How Applejack Won The War' are to be taken seriously, Applejack won said war in only ''four days'', going on the full offensive the whole time and undertaking only about one battle each day, taking no prisoners all the while. In the present day, she looks back fondly on these days as some of her best, in contrast to Rarity's ShellShockedVeteran.

* The post-Cold War era seems to generally have either short flare ups like the 2020 phase of the Karabakh Conflict (which was decisively won by Azerbaijan) or long and painful low intensity conflicts with no end in sight, often continuing in civil conflict after major military operations end (like Afghanistan after the 2021 withdrawal of coalition forces, with the Taliban facing major insurgencies against its rule).

* The shortest conflict officially considered a war was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which, depending on how you count it, lasted 38-45 minutes on August 27, 1896. For context: during that time, Zanzibar was under the control of a British protectorate and ruled by the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini. On August 25, Hamad suddenly died via poisoning, and his cousin Khalid bin Barghash immediately and illegitimately attempted to seize the position for himself (it's widely accepted that [[TheUsurper he in fact assassinated Hamad for the purpose]], but it's never been officially proven), an act seen by the British as a ''casus belli''. The British amassed two cruisers, three gunboats, 150 marines and sailors, 900 pro-Anglo Zanzibaris, and an ultimatum to Khalid to stand down and leave the palace at the capitol, only for Khalid -- whose army consisted of about 2,800 untrained civilians and ''one yacht'' outfitted with a machine gun -- to reject all offers to leave peacefully and remain hulled up in the palace to declare himself Sultan. [[LethallyStupid Sure enough]], [[CurbStompBattle Khalid's army and the palace were annihilated after a half-hour of]] ''[[CurbStompBattle noise]]''. Regardless of whether you consider the end of the war the time the bombardment finally ceased or when the flag at the palace was taken down, the entire armed conflict began and was resolved in less than an hour.

** In "The Deprogrammers", the Torkor conquered Earth in a little over a week.
** In "Final Appeal", the War of 2059 took place over the course of several days in June of that year. Due to the widespread use of nuclear weapons, 80% of the Earth's population were killed.

* The shortest conflict officially considered a war was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which, depending on how you count it, lasted 38-45 minutes on August 27, 1896. For context: during that time, Zanzibar was under the control of a British protectorate and ruled by the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini. On August 25, Hamad suddenly died via poisoning, and his cousin Khalid bin Barghash immediately and illegitimately attempted to seize the position for himself (it's widely accepted that [[TheUsurper he in fact assassinated Hamad for the purpose]], but it's never been officially proven), an act seen by the British as a ''casus belli''. The British amassed two cruisers, three gunboats, 150 marines and sailors, 900 pro-Anglo Zanzibaris, and an ultimatum to Khalid to stand down and leave the palace, only for Khalid -- whose army consisted of about 2,800 untrained civilians and ''one yacht'' outfitted with a machine gun -- to reject all offers to leave peacefully and remain hulled up in the palace to declare himself Sultan. [[LethallyStupid Sure enough]], [[CurbStompBattle Khalid's army and the palace were annihilated after a half-hour of]] ''[[CurbStompBattle noise]]''. Whether you consider the end of the war the time the bombardment finally ceased or when the flag at the palace was officially removed, whichever way, the entire armed conflict began and was resolved in less than an hour.

* The shortest conflict officially considered a war was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which, depending on how you count it, lasted 38-45 minutes on August 27, 1896. For context: during that time, Zanzibar was under the control of a British protectorate and ruled by the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini. On August 25, Hamad suddenly died via poisoning, and his cousin Khalid bin Barghash immediately and illegitimately attempted to seize the position for himself (it's widely accepted that [[TheUsurper he in fact assassinated Hamad for the purpose]], but it's never been officially proven), an act seen by the British as a ''casus belli''. The British amassed two cruisers, three gunboats, 150 marines and sailors, 900 pro-Anglo Zanzibaris, and an ultimatum to Khalid to stand down and leave the palace, only for Khalid -- whose army consisted of about 2,800 untrained civilians and ''one yacht'' outfitted with a machine gun -- rejected all offers to leave peacefully and remained hulled up in the palace to declare himself Sultan. [[LethallyStupid Sure enough]], [[CurbStompBattle Khalid's army and the palace were annihilated after a half-hour of]] ''[[CurbStompBattle noise]]''. Whether you consider the end of the war the time the bombardment finally ceased or when the flag at the palace was officially removed, whichever way, the entire armed conflict began and was resolved in less than an hour.

* The shortest conflict officially considered a war was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which, depending on how you count it, lasted 38-45 minutes on August 27, 1896. For context: during that time, Zanzibar was under the control of a British protectorate and ruled by the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini. On August 25, Hamad suddenly died via poisoning, and his cousin Khalid bin Barghash immediately and illegitimately attempted to seize the position for himself (it's widely accepted that [[TheUsurper he in fact assassinated Hamad for the purpose]], but it's never been officially proven), an act seen by the British as a ''casus belli''. The British amassed two cruisers, three gunboats, 150 marines and sailors, 900 pro-Anglo Zanzibaris, and an ultimatum to Khalid to stand down and leave the palace, only for Khalid -- whose army consisted of about 2,800 untrained civilians and ''one yacht'' outfitted with a machine gun -- rejected all offers to leave peacefully and remained hulled up in the palace to declare himself Sultan. [[LethallyStupid Sure enough]], [[CurbStompBattle Thuwaini's army and the palace were annihilated after a half-hour of]] ''[[CurbStompBattle noise]]''. Whether you consider the end of the war the time the bombardment finally ceased or when the flag at the palace was officially removed, whichever way, the entire armed conflict began and was resolved in less than an hour.

* The shortest conflict officially considered a war was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which, depending on the source, lasted 38-45 minutes.

* TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}: The Ten Minute War started on September 10, 2004, with an unprovoked chemical attack on Israel by Libya. It ended shortly afterward with the [[NukeEm nuclear destruction]] of Libya's three largest cities, including Tripoli, killing millions and leading to the complete collapse of Libya as a state.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E6TheDoctorsDaughter The Doctor's Daughter]]", the two sides of a war use cloning to increase their manpower. They say that the war has gone on for countless generations. In a certain sense it's true, but in a stricter sense the war has been going on for seven days. The Doctor gets them to make peace.

-->-- ''Machinima/CivilProtection''

* In volume 2 of ''Literature/HowARealistHeroRebuiltTheKingdom'', King Souma of Elfrieden defeats two rebelling dukes in a CivilWar with two battles on consecutive days, then turns around and uses the rest of the week to entrap and destroy the army of neighboring Amidonia that tried to invade while he was distracted, then occupying half the country. We are told that later historians alternately call the conflict either the Three-Front War, or the One-Week War.

* ''Free Flight'' by Douglas Terman is set in a Soviet-occupied North America after the Seven Hour War.
* ''Akropolis'' by Matt Wallace. The United States government discovers that the Chinese are planning to ally themselves with the eponymous eldritch city and decide ThisMeansWar The next paragraph is only: ''The war lasts approximately 18 hours.'' This is foreshadowed when the US military first tried to assault the Akropolis, only for the attackers to get turned to ash without the city's inhabitants even noticing that anything had happened.

* The original Persian Gulf War (a.k.a. Operation Desert Storm), which didn't make it past the month it had started and had the fewest casualties of any war with American involvement by the time Kuwait was liberated. While the preceding air campaign lasted weeks, Operation Desert Saber (the ground component of the Gulf War) lasted exactly 100 hours.

* The reason why the UsefulNotes/ColdWar lasted for as long as it did was because if the war heated up, Nuclear Weapons would make quick work of any capability to wage war. In fact, the United States believed that if they were ever attacked by the Soviets, only 3% of their nuclear forces would make it off the launch pad... so they built their forces to such a size where they could nuke the whole of Russia with 3 percent of their forces. The Russians were believed to had enough missiles aimed at Cheyenne Mountain that the force would equal one gigaton of TNT or twenty times the single largest bomb ever detonated. With those kinds of numbers, it wasn't a matter that the war was stopped because of diplomacy, but because there was nothing left to fight the war. It was better to diplomatically work out the problem than blowing up the entire planet because someone you didn't like was on the other side of it.

* ''Akropolis'' by Matt Wallace. The United States government discovers that the Chinese are planning to ally themselves with the eponymous eldritch city and decide ThisMeansWar. The next paragraph is only: ''The war lasts approximately 18 hours.'' This is foreshadowed when the US military first tried to assault the Akropolis, only for the attackers to get turned to ash without the city's inhabitants even noticing that anything had happened.

** During the first years of World War II, the German invasions of Poland and France were won in about a month each.

* The post-Cold War era seems to have either short flare ups like the 2020 phase of the Karabakh Conflict (which was decisively won by Azerbaijan) or long and painful low intensity conflicts with no end in sight, often continuing in civil conflict after major military operations end (like Afghanistan after the 2021 withdrawal of coalition forces, with the Taliban facing major insurgencies against its rule).