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European Tensions |
War |
Mobilization |
Poland - France |
Battle of Britain |
Dieppe |
North Atlantic |
Training the Empire |
The Pacific |
Quebec Conference |
Hong Kong |
Home Front |
Sicily |
Italy | Conscription
| Normandy |
France |
Netherlands |
Germany
On September 1st, in anticipation of the
war, the Canadian Defence Department authorized the
implementation of Defence scheme #3 and order the
mobilization of the Mobile Force. On September 19th, the
Federal government dismissed proposals for the formation
of 3 divisions and instead order that one Division be
trained and prepared for deployment overseas. A second
Division would also be formed and prepared for defensive
missions of Canada.
Mackenzie King felt that the two issues
to be avoided in the mobilization effort were sending
too many forces overseas which might suffer high
causalities and resorting to conscription which in
Quebec would drive supports away from the Liberal party
and reopen wounds revolving around conscription during
that conflict.
King proposed that the Canadian war effort should be
directed towards the creation of a large air force and
an expanded navy, both of which could be manned by
volunteers and keep Canadian forces out of direct
military action. The air force program developed into
the British Commonwealth Training Plan which eventually
was composed of over 250,000 men who trained pilots
across Canada, contributed fighter pilots to the war
effort and assembled and trained bomber crews who were
to play an important role in the air war over Europe.
The Canadian navy grew
to over 100,000 men during the war and as the Battle of
the North Atlantic developed, the RCN became one of the
main combatants in the final victory of the allies. y
the end of WWII the Canadian navy was the third largest
in the world after the United States and Great Britain.
The recruitment to fill out the ranks of
the 1st and 2nd Divisions began, About 4200 veterans
from the First World War joined up. French Canadian
enlistment was slow due to the fact that the army was
organized around an English speaking core of
professional officers and militiamen and that although
France was fighting, the war was once again looked upon
as somewhat of an imperial empire war in Quebec. Only
Quebec and Saskatchewan fell short of their recruiting
targets. About 61.500 men were recruited in this first
drive and many were those who had suffered badly from
the effects of the depression and were looking for a way
out of unemployment. Others were the adventurous types
that join in almost every war that want to do something
different and stand up for their country.
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The initial training of these
first troops was carried out at or near their
homes while the army scrambled to acquire or
produce the equipment they would need to fight.
This forced the government to start spending
money and priming the pump so that the economy
began to really revive from it's 10 long years
of stagnation. Once the logistics had been set
up in overseas, the troops of the 1st Canadian
Division were order in December of 1939 to
Halifax for embarkation on the ships that would
take them to England.
Departing from New Westminster,
BC |
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Upon arrival in
Britain they were shipped to Aldershot where in January
of 1940 their training began in earnest. What was known
as the phony war, which was the period between the quick
fall of Poland in September, 1939 and the launching of
the German attack on France and the lowlands in May
1940, provided the Canadians with some time to get some
real training in and get better equipment and support.
This however was temporarily interrupted in April when
the Germans invaded Norway and the Canadians were sent
to Scotland for a few days expecting to go o Norway to
fight. They were not sent and returned to Aldershot to
continue preparations.
The rest of Canada began to buzz with
preparation, vastly increased production demand, a
quickly expanding government and military and a resonant
increase in activity throughout the other sectors of the
economy. The original plans for a limited army were
slowly discarded and a larger plan for building it up
were developed. The transformation from depression
to a full scale war footing had begun.
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