Canadian Forces

E

World War II

World War II (1939-1945) represents what many consider to be the defining moment for Canada’s armed forces. More than 1 million Canadian men and women served as part of the Allied Forces. All three services were actively engaged and all made important contributions. More than 40,000 Canadians died in the war effort.

E

1

Land Combat

The army’s total strength counted nearly 750,000 troops. It fielded three infantry divisions, two armored divisions, and two independent armored brigades in Europe. In addition, three divisions were devoted to defending Canada at home. The army fought unsuccessfully to defend Hong Kong against Japanese attack in late 1941, and suffered terribly in a raid on the German-held French port of Dieppe in mid-1942.

Canadians were the first Allied troops ashore on the mainland of Italy in 1943. When Canadian reinforcements arrived, the 1st Canadian Corps was formed. It breached enemy lines near Monte Cassino in central Italy in May 1944. The Corps advanced further into German-held territory when it broke the enemy line south of the city of Rimini, Italy, in September.

Meanwhile, the 2nd Canadian Corps and the rest of the First Canadian Army waited in Britain for the invasion of France. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Canadians participated in the assault on the beaches of Normandy, one of the greatest Allied victories of the war. Canadian soldiers penetrated deeper into France than any other Allied formation. Canadian soldiers helped capture the city of Caen, then led the attack to push the Germans back further. The Canadian Army suffered more than 18,000 casualties in Normandy.

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After Normandy the Canadians formed the left flank of the Allied advance, capturing the ports along the sea in France and Belgium. This proved to be slow, grim work in battles waged across flat, flooded fields. Canadian forces were charged with driving the Germans from their last strongholds along the Schledt River near Antwerp, Belgium. Canadians were among the Allied troops that defeated the Germans there in early November 1944, enabling the first Allied supply ship to enter the harbor in Antwerp three weeks later. In 1945 Canadians led the assault on the final German defense along the Rhine River, then went on to clear northern Holland and occupy northwestern Germany.

E

2

Combat at Sea

The RCN concentrated on defending shipping in the North Atlantic. Relying largely on small ships built in Canada, the Navy provided half of all the escorts for transatlantic convoys delivering shipments of military supplies from the United States and Canada to Britain by 1942. Canada was instrumental in preventing German submarines from cutting off Britain’s supply lines. In 1943 the Canadian Northwest Atlantic command was established. This command, which controlled defense of merchant shipping north of Maine to the edge of the Grand Banks, was the only Allied theater of war commanded by a Canadian (Rear Admiral L. W. Murray).

By 1944 RCN ships escorted all of the main transatlantic convoys, and made up 40 percent of the Allied antisubmarine forces in British waters. Canadian destroyers served with the British fleet and RCN torpedo boats operated in the English Channel. Canadian minesweepers cleared the approaches to the beaches at Normandy in preparation for D-Day, and the RCN put Canadian soldiers ashore to participate in that famous invasion. By the end of the war the RCN was the third largest navy in the Allied Forces, behind the United States and Britain, with roughly 450 armed ships and nearly 100,000 personnel.

E

3

Air Combat

The RCAF grew to roughly 250,000 personnel—nearly 100 squadrons—and ran the British Commonwealth Air Training Program for Allied aircrew. Between 1942 and 1945 this program turned out more than 130,000 specially trained personnel, including pilots, navigators, air gunners, and flight engineers. The RCAF’s overseas effort was heavily integrated into the larger effort of Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF). One-fourth of the squadrons under RAF control were Canadian. In addition, Canadians comprised at least one-fourth of the aircrew in British squadrons. In total, 48 RCAF squadrons served overseas. Nearly as many served at home, defending Canada against German submarine (see U-boat) attacks in the North Atlantic and the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. They also cooperated with the Americans, preventing Japanese submarines from penetrating coastal waters off Alaska in the northeastern Pacific.

A Canadian squadron participated in the Battle of Britain in 1940, during which the Germans tried unsuccessfully for two months to draw out and destroy Britain’s air squadrons. Canadian air personnel or squadrons participated in every major theater of the war. The RCAF’s largest operational force was the No. 6 Group of Britain’s Royal Air Force bomber command, whose four-engine Lancaster and Halifax bombers participated in the bombing of Germany.

F

Postwar Alliances and Peacekeeping

In the aftermath of World War II, Canada, along with most of the countries that had been involved in the war, sought ways to prevent another world war. In 1945 Canada joined 50 other nations in forming the United Nations (UN), an international alliance devoted to promoting world peace. The first test of Canada’s commitment to the UN came in 1949, when border disputes on the Korean Peninsula escalated. This conflict resulted from the Cold War, the postwar struggle for power between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It erupted into the full-fledged Korean War (1950-1953) when North Korea, backed by the USSR and China, invaded South Korea, backed by the United States. At the urging of the United States, the UN declared a breach of peace and sent troops and supplies to augment American and South Korean forces. Canadian troops joined soldiers from Australia, Turkey, and many other countries in fighting alongside the South Koreans. More than 27,000 Canadians fought in the Korean War, and 516 Canadians lost their lives.

In 1949, as tensions between the United States and the USSR on the Korean Peninsula escalated, Canada joined 11 other countries to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This group is an alliance that provides for the collective security of powers rimming the North Atlantic. As part of its obligation to the newly formed alliance, Canada sent a brigade of troops to Germany, where the brigade stayed until the end of the Cold War. Membership in NATO also required Canada to strengthen its peacetime forces. The RCN underwent a major expansion, resuming the role in defense of the Atlantic it had established by the end of World War II, and becoming a world leader in antisubmarine tactics. The RCAF deployed nearly 1,000 aircraft to Europe and participated in the design and building of several new aircraft. By the early 1960s more than 120,000 personnel were on active duty, the first time Canada’s regular force outnumbered its reserve.

Canada also developed closer defense ties with the United States following World War II. Building on a relationship developed in the early stages of that war, the two countries expanded their cooperation in the 1950s to include a network of early radar warning systems. In 1957 the North American Air Defense command (NORAD) was activated to provide an integrated command for air defense of North America.

While Canada was building postwar alliances, crises in other parts of the world threatened to disrupt the delicate world peace of the Cold War. Canada established its role as a leader in peacekeeping in 1956 during the Suez Crisis, an international conflict triggered when the Egyptian government seized control of the Suez Canal from the United Kingdom and France. Lester Bowles Pearson, then Canada’s prime minister, proposed sending an emergency UN force to keep peace in the area until a settlement could be established. In the following years, Canada’s peacekeeping role expanded to other countries. Between 1960 and 1964, Canada participated in a UN peacekeeping mission to maintain peace in the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) during that nation’s transition from Belgian to local rule. In 1962 and 1963, Canadian pilots were among UN peacekeepers in western New Guinea when that region underwent a similar transition of power. Between 1964 and 1993 more than 12,000 Canadian soldiers helped the UN promote peace between Greek and Turkish factions on the island of Cyprus.

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