Canada in World War II

Canada’s substantial and wide-ranging part in the Allied military and economic effort in the Second World War led Canadian leaders to coin the term “middle power,” that is, ranking behind only the great powers. From a population of about 11 million, the country put 1.1 million in uniform, half of whom served in air, land, and naval forces overseas primarily in the Atlantic and European theaters. They fought largely under British higher command, Canada having come to nationhood as part of the British Empire/Commonwealth with armed forces modeled on the British forces. The economic effort was larger still. Canadian-made military equipment (some three times as much as needed by Canadian forces), food, lumber, and industrial resources supplied Allied nations around the world. The war was transformative for the country. Burgeoning US power and Britain’s parlous position brought a decisive shift in the balance in Canada’s international relations to its neighbor to the south. One result of the change from the familiar corridors of power in London to Washington, where Canada had much less influence, was the dramatic growth of the small Canadian foreign service more effectively to press the country’s interests. Major Canada-US initiatives included a permanent alliance for the defense of North America that is still fundamental to continental security, and the integration of defense production in the two countries. Canada as much as the United States became an “arsenal of democracy,” producing artillery, small arms, explosives, electronics including radar and naval sonar, military vehicles (more than 800,000), aircraft, warships, and merchant ships, with an industrial work force of nearly one million men and women. These undertakings, together with the supply of food and raw materials to allied nations, had an enormous economic and social impact. The grim austerity of the Great Depression gave way to a boom, laying foundations for the country’s modern industrial economy, and providing the government revenues needed to launch the early programs of the modern welfare state, including generous benefits to war veterans. An existential issue for Canadian war policy was historic tensions between the English-speaking majority of the population, which tended to favor support for Britain, and the large Francophone minority centered in the province of Quebec, which did not. Those divisions had been severely aggravated by the imposition of conscription to reinforce the army corps Canada raised for the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War. In the Second World War the government exercised extreme caution in the mobilization of manpower, restricting military conscription to home service until the final months of the war when heavy battlefield losses necessitated the dispatch of a limited number of the conscripts overseas. The war effort did stimulate French-Canadian nationalisme, but not large-scale civil unrest.

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