Chapter 6. The War Years, 1914–45
6.10 Canada Goes to War
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, which triggered a declaration of war on the part of France and Britain on 3 September. Both New Zealand and Australia declared war on the same day. William Lyon Mackenzie King’s government, however, held back until the 10th of September.
This delay was entirely about optics. The government wished to demonstrate to Britain and, more significantly, to Canadians that the decision to go to war was one that was made by Parliament in Ottawa and it was one that was endorsed by French and English Canadian politicians alike. King feared a repeat of the divisive experience of the Great War and that fear guided his actions throughout the Second World War. The delay of seven days had nothing to do with a lack of preparedness — in fact, the government was vastly more prepared for war (at least organizationally, if not materially) than was the case in 1914 — nor did it reflect concern about what the Americans might do. King was committed to supporting Britain against Germany regardless of Washington’s position. The point was to exercise the autonomy that had been won in the Statute of Westminster (1931) and enter the war as a free democracy.
This was not cause for celebration. Unlike August 1914, there were no raucous and patriotic parades in the autumn of 1939. Anyone over the age of 24 would have some recollection of the Great War. The parents of those men and women most likely to serve in uniform would keenly recall the costs of that war that was meant to end all wars. There was, too, the recollection of profiteering and corruption from the previous war. Of course, there was also the memory of economic good times, rising wages, and a return to prosperity. It was on this prospect that many Canadians hinged their hopes.
As in 1914, of course, optimists in 1939 predicted a short war that might be resolved at the bargaining table sooner rather than later. From September 1939 to May 1940, Canada — along with the rest of the British Commonwealth, France, and the other Allied Nations — was on the sidelines of what became known in French as the Drôle de guerre, in German as Sitzkrieg, and in English as the Phoney War. There was so little in the way of actual warfare going on that King was able to call an election for March 1940, which he won easily. Events in the winter and spring of 1940 were to dispel any possibility of a negotiated peace.
While the Allies built up their resources, Germany attacked and annexed Denmark and Norway. On 10 May 1940, the Wehrmacht finally turned its attention to the French Republic, which it invaded after storming through the Netherlands and Belgium. The blitzkrieg assault allowed the Germans to capture the majority of Allied troops stationed in France, although some 300,000 escaped via Dunkirk from 26 May to 4 June. The 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade was part of a doomed Second British Expeditionary Force subsequently sent to Brittan