Conscription Crisis of 1944

The Conscription Crisis of 1944 was a political and military crisis following the introduction of forced military service for men in Canada during World War II. It was similar to the Conscription Crisis of 1917, but not as politically damaging.

Background

Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King had been haunted by the way the Conscription Crisis of 1917 had fractured the Liberal Party between its English-Canadian and French-Canadian members. King, who experienced the split first-hand, was determined to avoid another such split. In 1922, during the Chanak Crisis, when the United Kingdom almost went to war with Turkey, King had first asserted that Canada would not automatically go to war as part of the British Empire if the United Kingdom did, saying he would consult the Canadian Parliament first and presumably declare neutrality if the House of Commons were unwilling to go to war with Turkey. Though there were several reasons for King's reluctance to go to war with Turkey, at least one was the memory of how badly the First World War had strained Canadian domestic unity.

During the 1930s, Mackenzie King had displayed what the Canadian historian Colonel John A. English called "an abiding aversion to conscription" and "an apparently unshakable conviction in the efficacy of appeasement", regarding another world war as "the ultimate catastrophe" for which no price was too high to avoid. In 1935, King had been opposed to sanctions on Italy for invading Ethiopia; in 1936, he stated that Canada would not take part if Britain decided to take military action in response to the German remilitarization of the Rhineland; and in 1938, he had warmly supported the Munich Agreement as the necessary price for peace. King had laid down defence spending priorities in April 1939 that declared the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) was to be the main service, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) the secondary service and the Canadian Militia the last on the list, as he wanted to avoid fighting another land war, which was likely to cause heavy losses.

Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939, and sent one division to Europe, which did not have an opportunity to engage in combat before France was defeated by Germany. King's heart was not in the war; he wrote in his diary that if Hitler did not win the war, Stalin certainly would. King believed that another world war would lead to worldwide revolutionary upheaval, and that avoiding war would have been a much better outcome. A sign of King's true feelings about the war came in April 1943, when the mass graves of Polish officers massacred by the NKVD in and around Katyn Forest were discovered. King wrote in his diary that the Poles had caused the war in 1939 by refusing to allow Hitler to reincorporate the Free City of Danzig back into Germany; as such, King wrote that the Katyn massacre, and all of the Poles' suffering since the beginning of the war, was their own fault. British historian Victor Rothwell wrote that King's "spiteful" remarks about the Poles causing the war reflected his own resentment at having to declare war on Germany because of public pressure, despite his own inclinations towards neutrality.

As a war leader, King sought to avoid repeating what he regarded as the mistakes of his Conservative predecessor Sir Robert Borden in the First World War, which meant avoiding conscription, and King initially attempted to limit Canada's participation in the war solely to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). King had described the BCATP in a statement as "Canada's most effective contribution to the war effort", and privately complained that the British should not have asked for a division for Europe before approaching him with the BCATP, as he would never have sent the 1st Canadian Division to Britain if he could have settled only for the BCATP. As King saw it, "a big RCAF could never lead to conscription".

King feared the civil and political unrest that had occurred during World War I, and also hoped to defeat nationalist Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis. Thus when Duplessis called a snap election in September 1939 to seek a mandate to oppose the war, King pledged that same month not to introduce overseas conscription for the duration of the war. Duplessis's decision to dissolve the assembly on 25 September 1939 to seek a mandate to oppose the war created panic in Ottawa, with King calling Duplessis "diabolic" and a "little Hitler" in his diary, believing Duplessis's aim was to provoke such a crisis between French Canada and English Canada that Quebec would leave the Confederation.

During the 1939 Quebec election campaign, the Dominion government made an unprecedented intervention in a provincial election to defeat the '' Union Nationale'' government and ensure the victory of the pro-war Quebec Liberals under Adélard Godbout; all the resources of the Dominion government were thrown behind the provincial Liberals. All of the Dominion cabinet ministers representing ridings in Quebec threatened to resign if Duplessis was re-elected, claiming that no one would be left to stand up for Quebec in the cabinet if conscription become an issue again. Duplessis was one of Quebec's ablest politicians, a charismatic, colourful demagogue who preached a mixture of Catholic conservatism and Quebec nationalism. King feared him so much that in the 1939 election he used the powers of censorship under the War Measures Act to keep Duplessis from speaking on the radio.

It soon became evident that Duplessis's alcoholism was out of control. He ran an inept campaign, appearing visibly drunk at numerous campaign rallies as he delivered rambling speeches denouncing the war, which were most notable for his slurred words and lack of lucidity. By electing Godbout as Premier on 25 October 1939, there was an understanding in Quebec that the reward for voting Duplessis out would be no overseas conscription. Many Canadians supported Mackenzie King's pledge, even as it became obvious the war would not end quickly.

As in the First World War, young French Canadians joined the few traditional French-speaking regiments of the Canadian army, such as the Regular Army Royal 22^e Régiment, and several Militia regiments that were mobilized. In the infantry, barracks life and most training was in French and only the command and radio language was in English.

In the rest of the military, however, similar French-speaking units were not created. Among the justifications for this policy were the predominance of the radio, and the fact that technical instruction was only available in English. The 12th Armoured Regiment, originally mobilized by the Francophone Three Rivers Regiment (Tank) militia unit, was reorganized and fought as an English-speaking unit. Many French-speaking soldiers were sidetracked in the process. One of the most famous was Jean-Victor Allard, who demanded a transfer from the Three Rivers Regiment to the infantry; he went on to become a brigade commander in Northwest Europe and then in Korea, command a British division in NATO and subsequently become Chief of the Defence Staff of the Canadian Armed Forces, where he was pleased to create the first French-speaking brigade.

While units such as the Royal 22^e Régiment, Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, the Régiment de la Chaudière and the Régiment de Maisonneuve all had outstanding records during World War II, some feel that if they had been grouped in the same brigade (as French Canadians had requested, and as currently exists in the Canadian Armed Forces), it could have become a focus of pride for French Canada, encouraging the war effort and political support in Quebec. These units were, however, distributed among the various English-speaking divisions of the Canadian Army overseas. Historian J. L. Granatstein, in his book ''The Generals'', suggests that a shortage of French-speaking staff trained officers meant that any attempt to create an entire Francophone brigade would have likely ended in failure.

From the beginning, acceptance of French-speaking units was greater in Canada during World War Two than World War One. In 1914, the drive to create the 22nd Infantry Battalion (French-Canadian) had necessitated large rallies of French Canadians and political pressure to overcome Minister Sam Hughes' abhorrence of the idea. But during World War II, greater acceptance of French-Canadian units, as well as informal use of their language, lessened the ferocity of Quebec's resistance to the war effort.Mason Wade, ''French Canadians, 1760-1967'' (1968) vol 2 pp 994–1106.

Opposition to conscription was not limited to Quebec. In British Columbia, where alarm over the " Yellow Peril" was a major issue, many were opposed to conscription, fearful that conscription of Chinese-Canadians and Japanese-Canadians would lead to Asian-Canadian demands for the right to vote, to which the white population of British Columbia were adamantly opposed. Meanwhile, many on the political left had profound misgivings about the injustice of the war, and the attitude of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) towards the war has been described as "ambivalent".

The Zombies

In June 1940, the government adopted conscription for home service in '' The National Resources Mobilization Act'' (NRMA), which allowed the government to register men and women and move them into jobs considered necessary for wartime production. The act also allowed for conscription for the defence of Canada, but did not allow conscripts to be deployed for overseas service. French-Canadian nationalist mayor of Montreal Camillien Houde gave a speech urging all French-Canadian men not to register under the NRMA. The Dominion government used the suspension of ''habeas corpus'' under the War Measures Act to have the RCMP arrest Houde, who was held without charge until 1944. From 1940 onward, Defence Minister James Ralston and Navy minister Angus MacDonald were seen as the advocates of the armed forces in the cabinet, favouring winning the war even at the price of domestic disunity, in opposition to King, who argued victory could not come at the cost of domestic unity.

After adoption of the NRMA, men who refused to "go active" were derisively called "Zombies", both in Canada and overseas. The term was used because soldiers who could not fight in the war were regarded by some as the reanimated corpses from Haitian mythology who were neither alive nor dead but somewhere in between. The Zombies were widely reviled by those who had volunteered for overseas service, and referred to as cowards. The Canadian military was divided into two classes: "A" class servicemembers who volunteered to go overseas, and the "R" class servicemembers known as Zombies. At training camps, officers and NCOs constantly belittled, insulted and humiliated the Zombies to pressure them to "go active", making for tense relationships at the best of times.

King's efforts to keep the military out of action for as long as possible caused much dismay among more hawkish Canadians anxious to see Canada become more involved.. The Royal Canadian Legion issued its manifesto, "A Call for Total War", endorsed by some 500 civic groups across English Canada.. Ontario Premier Mitchell Hepburn and Premier of New Brunswick John B. McNair both demanded overseas conscription in speeches attacking King. A Gallup poll in November 1941 showed 61% of Canadians satisfied with the war effort, but 60% who also wanted conscription for overseas service. On 13 November 1941, King's old nemesis from the 1920s, former Prime Minister Arthur Meighen, became leader of the Conservative Party. His predecessor, "Fighting Bob" Manion, had supported King's conscription policies, but Meighen's call for "total war", including sending the Zombies overseas, was the centerpiece of his criticism of King. Meighen and King's rivalry was one of the most famous in Canadian political history; both men passionately hated one another, and Meighen travelled across the country accusing King of not doing everything within his power to win the war.

After the disaster of the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941 in which two Canadian battalions were lost, a political firestorm erupted in Canada. George A. Drew, leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, urged the Canadian people to "face the shameful truth", that the two battalions of badly trained men sent to Hong Kong were a sign of the failure of King's policies and of the need for conscription for overseas service. By the end of 1941, the armies of the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union and other allies were all fighting in various theatres of war, while the Canadian Army sat idle, guarding the UK against the unlikely threat of German invasion. By the end of December 1941, the Royal Canadian Air Force, which had started fighting in the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, had lost 1,199 men, and the Royal Canadian Navy had lost 439. In Hong Kong, the Canadian Army had lost 290 men, with 487 wounded and the rest held prisoner by the Japanese under horrific conditions, a majority dying in captivity.

The Plebiscite of 1942

By 1941, there were enough Canadian volunteers to form five overseas divisions. The Conservatives were pressuring King to advise the Governor General to introduce overseas conscription. The loss of the two battalions in Hong Kong had shocked the Canadian public, which demanded that Canada do more to win the war. Arthur Meighen's attacks on King started to resonate, and in January 1942, Meighen resigned his Senate seat to enter the House of Commons via a by-election in the York South riding of Toronto, backed by anti-King Liberal Premier of Ontario Mitchell Hepburn and a "Committee of 200" representing 200 of Toronto's most influential citizens. The Liberals did not run a candidate due to a convention that the Leader of the Opposition be permitted entry to the House, however, tacit support was given to CCF candidate Joseph W. Noseworthy. Historian Frank Underhill, who normally worked for the Liberals, wrote the Noseworthy's speeches. As the acerbic, sharp-tongued Meighen tended to get the better of King in debates, the Prime Minister feared the his archenemy's return to the Commons, and attempted to rob Meighen of his signature issue by announcing a referendum to release him from his September 1939 promise that there would be no overseas conscription.. Arthur Meighen was ultimately defeated by Noseworthy in the February 9, 1942 by-election.

In an "off-the-record" interview with two journalists from the '' Winnipeg Free Press'' in February 1942, King said that the purpose of the Canadian expeditionary force then training in the United Kingdom was only to defend Britain in the event of a German invasion, and that he would not be sending the five expeditionary force divisions to the Middle East, as the British were requesting. King told Grant Dexter of ''The Winnipeg Free Press'' on 28 February 1942 that the purpose of the Canadian Army in Britain was "to defend the heart of the Empire", and criticized Ralston for saying in the House of Commons that he wanted "to build up a strong striking force in Britain because we would ultimately use Britain as the springboard for our thrust on the continent". King told Dexter that "the trouble was with Ralston and the general staff. Ralston stood up for the generals, fought the cabinet on their behalf". King expressed the view that Ralson was too easily influenced by the generals and that "Generals are almost invariably wrong". In the same interview, King stated his belief that Japanese would invade British Columbia "just as soon as the Japs could muster the men and material".

In early 1942, Japanese successes in the Asia-Pacific theatre had led to widespread fears of their invading British Columbia. But while the Japanese did plan to annex the province once the war was won, in the spring of 1942 they were largely preoccupied with plans for the invasion of Australia and Hawaii, and the continuing war with China. Responding to racist hysteria that Japanese-Canadians were a fifth column loyal to Japan who would soon wage terrorist campaigns against whites, the King government interned all Japanese-Canadians. This was despite RCMP reports to the government that there was no need for internment, and that most Japanese-Canadians were loyal to Canada. The same fears of a Japanese invasion led King to create two divisions, the 6th and the 8th, largely composed of Zombies, to guard the Pacific coast. Another Zombie division, the 7th, was created to guard the Atlantic coast against a German invasion, just to show that the government was not indifferent to the Maritime provinces, through the military had advised the government there was little danger of a Japanese invasion and even less of a German one.

On 27 April 1942, a plebiscite was held on the question, "Are you in favour of releasing the Government from any obligations arising out of any past commitments restricting the methods of raising men for military service?" In Quebec, the ''Ligue pour la Défense du Canada'' was founded to campaign for the "No" side under the slogan , a reference to King's Quebec lieutenant, Ernest Lapointe, who had died of cancer in November 1941 and was fiercely opposed to sending the Zombies overseas. The ''Ligue pour la Défense du Canada'' united the entire spectrum of political opinion in Quebec; some of its most effective speakers were André Laurendeau, Henri Bourassa, Jean Drapeau and a young Pierre Trudeau. ''La Ligue pour la Défense du Canada'' professed to speak for all of Canada in opposing conscription, but its French-Canadian nationalist message had little appeal outside of French Canada. Reflecting the quasi-fascist mood of the nationalist intelligentsia of Quebec, speakers for the League often expressed approval of Vichy France, citing its Révolution nationale as a model for Quebec, and expressed a "disturbing anti-Semitic tendency". One rally for the League in Montreal ended with speakers blaming Canada's Jewish community for dragging the country into a war with Nazi Germany that did not concern French-Canadians. The event almost degenerated into a pogrom, with attendees beating up Jews on the streets of Montreal and smashing windows of Jewish shops; only the prompt intervention of the Montreal police put an end to the violence.

The plebiscite was supported by most English Canadians as well as the banned Communist Party of Canada, which established Tim Buck "Yes" Committees to campaign for a yes vote. Across Canada, 64.5% voted in favour of conscription, including 83% of English Canadians. The proposal hardly received any support from French Canadians, especially in Quebec, where anti-conscription groups (including one led by Henri Bourassa, the most vocal opponent of conscription in 1917) convinced 72.9% of voters to oppose the plebiscite. In addition to Quebec, six largely French-Canadian ridings in New Brunswick and Ontario also voted "No", as did several German-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking ridings, including Vegreville, Alberta, and Rosthern, Saskatchewan. King, who had expected all nine provinces to vote yes, was shocked by Quebec's "No" vote, and explained that henceforward his policy would be "Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary". The government then passed Bill 80, repealing the sections of the NRMA that did not allow for overseas conscription. Bill 80 passed the House of Commons by 158 votes to 58. However, many Canadians still did not support immediate conscription; there were a few riots in Montreal, though these were not on the same scale as the 1917 and 1918 riots.

Following the plebiscite, Public Works Minister Pierre Joseph Arthur Cardin quit the King cabinet to protest the possibility that the "Zombies" might be sent overseas. A number of other Quebec Liberal MPs also left the party in 1942 over the conscription issue, many of whom joined the Bloc populaire canadien when it was formed that fall to campaign against the government. The Defence Minister, Colonel James Ralston, resigned in protest over King's unwillingness to send the Zombies overseas, but King refused to accept his resignation.

The Aleutians and Italian campaigns

In his Christmas broadcast in 1942, former Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett sarcastically noted that this was the fourth Christmas in a row that the Canadian Army was sitting in Britain doing nothing, and that the only land battles that Canada had fought to date were Hong Kong and Dieppe, both of which were defeats. During the Operation Spartan wargame in March 1943, General Andrew McNaughton, commanding the First Canadian Army, had been badly defeated and was judged unfit to command an army in the field. The wargame umpires criticized McNaughton for leaving his headquarters to supervise the building of a bridge while his supply lines were caught up in a huge traffic jam. After Operation Spartan, the British strongly pressured the Canadians to remove McNaughton before he could lead the First Canadian Army into a real defeat in a battle.

King had tried to keep the Canadian military out of action to avoid casualties that might require a difficult decision on overseas conscription, but in the spring of 1943, with the Allies clearly winning the war, he was seized with the fear that the war might end with Canada winning no battles on land, something certain to hurt the Liberals in post-war elections. Accordingly, King ordered that the 1st Canadian Infantry Division, which had been sent to Britain in 1939, be included in Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.. General McNaughton was not keen on having a division being taken from his command, but was promised that 1st Division would return to Britain after Sicily was taken.
The 13th brigade, from one of the three "home defence" divisions in Canada, was sent to the Aleutian Islands Campaign in 1943 (the islands were technically North American soil and thus deployment there was not considered "overseas").. By this time, there were 34,000 soldiers, mostly Zombies, guarding the coast of British Columbia against possible Japanese invasion, and to dispel criticism that such a huge force could be more profitably deployed to Europe, King wanted the Zombies to see action. Other than officers and NCOs, these divisions in British Columbia were made up largely of conscripts, and desertions were noted before embarkation. Canadian conscripts deployed in the Aleutian Islands Campaign were pointedly issued American helmets. When the 13th Brigade landed on Kiska on 15 August 1943, the Canadians discovered that the Japanese had already left, and the island was empty. The only struggle the 13th Brigade had to face during its six-month stay on Kiska was a fight with taxmen over the question of whether they were overseas or not, as the former meant exemption from paying taxes. Servicemembers used the fact that they were west of the International Date Line to argue that they were in fact in Asia, making them deployed overseas. The Revenue department won.

Believing in Winston Churchill's repeated statements that Italy was the "soft underbelly of Europe" and that the Italian campaign would be easy, King decided in the fall of 1943 to keep the 1st Division, now operating as part of the British Eighth Army, in the Italian campaign and send it to mainland Italy. King also decided to send the 5th Canadian Armoured Division and 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade there, where they formed the I Canadian Corps of the Eighth Army. Despite Churchill's promises and King's hopes, Italy proved to be anything but a "soft underbelly". The mountains in Italy favoured defensive operations, and the German military made expert use of them to mount a bitter defensive campaign that took a heavy toll on the Allies. McNaughton, for his part, had strongly protested against losing the I Canadian Corps to the Eighth Army, greatly preferring to keep the I and II Canadian corps together in the First Canadian Army, and made increasingly furious remarks on the issue. Defence Minister Ralston had McNaughton removed on the spurious grounds of ill health in December 1943; historian Desmond Morton noted that McNaughton appeared very healthy when he returned to Canada later that month.

Introduction of conscription

There was an ethnic dimension to volunteering for the war. Historian Jack Granatstein noted that in both world wars, the Canadians most likely to volunteer to fight overseas were those who identified most strongly with the British Empire. Granatstein noted that in the First World War, British immigrants were disproportionately over-represented in the ranks of the Canadian Expeditionary Force; two-thirds of those who volunteered in 1914 were British-born, and an "extraordinary" 228,170 of the 470,000 young male British immigrants in Canada volunteered for the war. Conscription was introduced in 1917, and it was not until the following year that the majority of the CEF became Canadian-born. The same pattern repeated itself in the Second World War, with the difference being that this time, the majority of the Anglo-Canadians volunteering to fight overseas were Canadian-born rather than British-born. In contrast, during both wars, it was Canadians who least identified with the British Empire that were least likely to volunteer to fight overseas.

Granatstein wrote about World War II enlistment:

"If French-speaking Canadians enlisted well below their share of the population, as they did, and if ten percent of the total Canadian population joined one of the armed services, then Anglo-Canadians must have enlisted in higher numbers than all or almost all ethnic or religious communities. In other words, Canadians of British origin made up the lion's share of enlistments, exactly as in the Great War, though now most were Canadian-born."

Brigadier W.H.S. Macklin, an officer tasked with "converting" Zombies into "going active", wrote in May 1944 that he experienced almost total failure persuading French-Canadians to do so, adding: "The great majority f NRMA soldiers in other unitsare of non-British origin—German, Italian, and Slavic nationalities predominating. Moreover, most of them come from farms. They are of deplorably low education, know almost nothing of Canadian or British history and in fact are typical European peasants...." Granatstein wrote that the research supported Macklin's conclusions, if not his prejudices. However, the Army's need for men to "go active" by volunteering for overseas duty led to the ending of the whites-only policy for officers. About 500 Chinese-Canadians enlisted in the military, and unlike in the First World War, some were able to obtain officers' commissions, though this was not easy.

After the Italian campaign in 1943 and Normandy invasion in 1944, the lack of volunteers meant that Canada faced troop shortages. The offensive against the Gothic Line in Italy and the Normandy campaign, especially the battles of Caen

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