“Mobilize! Why Canada Was
Unprepared for the Second World War” was written by Larry D. Rose with a forward by J.L. Granatstein. Larry D.
Rose has worked as producer of CTV National News with Lloyd Robertson and as
news director at CTV Kitchener. He has also worked for The Canadian Press and
Global News and served as a second lieutenant and later as a captain in the
Royal Canadian Armoured Corps (Reserves).
The book was published by Dundurn in 2013 and is described
by the publisher with; “Despite Canada’s active participation in the First World
War, which many claimed made Canada
a nation, the country was almost defenceless in September 1939 when war was
declared again. Larry D. Rose, a long-time journalist and a military
specialist, examines the military’s own failures, the hidden agenda of Prime
Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, and the divisions within Canada leading
up to Canada’s entry into the war. He suggests that the lack of preparedness
was directly responsible for two of Canada’s
costliest military defeats: the battle of Hong Kong and Dieppe.”
“Mobilize!” is based on
interviews with veterans and extensive documentary research. Despite the fact
that many military historians have written about this period, the author argues
that no one has examined this part of our military history in such detail. It
seems likely that it is the authors background in journalism that makes this
well researched book so accessible.
This book explores the decisions
made by Prime Minister Mackenzie King and senior military officers that left Canada
virtually unarmed as World War II began. Because of a policy of limiting
Depression-era public spending, the government of the day did nothing to halt
the progressive erosion of Canadian military preparedness that had begun as
soon as the First World War ended. Caught as they were between the belief that Quebec would view overseas entanglements with hostility
and a complete misunderstanding of Hitler's objectives, Canada did
little to contribute effectively to British, global, or even their own, security.
The results were a nation
that entered the Second World War with a miniscule navy, obsolescent aircraft, archaic equipment, little or no
training and almost complete dependence on other countries for military defence.
The author argues that this lack of preparedness was directly responsible for Canada’s military defeats in both the battles of
Hong Kong and Dieppe.
The story Rose tells in the
13 chapters of this book is one that may seem familiar to a modern viewer, one
of under funded armed forces, fumbled military acquisitions and official
neglect. His account of “the Bren Gun scandal” is a reminder of how little has changed in Canadian procurement
practices. In that case an attempt to procure modern equipment turned into a
financial fiasco and a political football which left the public more divided
then before on the issue of military spending.
There are lessons to be
learned here that can be applied to the smaller budgets that our forces now
have to work with. Having said that, Rose is clear eyed in his understanding of
who is really to blame for the lack of Canadian military preparedness. While
unsparing, but balanced, in his appraisal of important figures like Prime
Minister King and General Andrew McNaughton, Rose points the finger squarely at
the Canadian public.
Rose quotes Professor David
Bercuson as saying that it was “Canadians
and their government who starved their military forces for years on end and
then one day sent them off against well-equipped enemies in pursuit not of national
interests as defined by Canadian politicians but of international interests
defined by external authorities. It is he says “the Canadian way of war”.
Rose himself writes that “Canada has never been a military
minded country. It has a superb record in war, but that is not the same thing.
In the twentieth century Canada
was more or less locked into a cycle: ignore the military, build up frantically
when war breaks out, dismantle quickly when the war ends and ignore again.
Canada has never learned to maintain institutional knowledge or military
readiness, making it abundantly clear that Canada does not value its armed
forces in peacetime.”
Unfortunately there does not seem to be any
reason to believe that this cycle will be any different in the twenty-first
century. We leave it to Mr. Rose's successors to write the story of why Canada was unprepared for its next conflict.
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