Re the reply to ‘Biggles.’ Here in the U.K. on the evening of 22nd Sept on Channel 5 Television was a programme detailing how the U.S. military planned a joint Naval and ground assault on Canada to provoke a war with Britain and her Empire. Contrary to your staff writer’s contention that this was a purely theoretical excercise, the programme suggested that it was very VERY serious. Indeed it was suggested that the only reason why it was never actually executed was the when it was war-gamed against what was felt to be a credible joint Canadian and British Empire response, the result was that, even if the U.S. used poison gas on Canadian towns and cities - yes that was mentioned as serious policy! - the only result the war-gamers ever got out was that the U.S. would end up on the wrong end of a losing stalemate, as the U.S. fleet was trounced by the British in the Atlantic and subjected to a blockade of U.S. East Coast ports, the Canadians fought the U.S. Army to a standstill by a guerilla war against supply lines in the heavily wooded border areas, and were then driven back to the border by combined Canadian and Empire troops.
Apparently the British Government, with ghastly memories of WWI, had no intention of committing ground troops to a land war in N. America, reckoning that the Candians, backed by the crippling of the U.S. Atlantic fleet, and a blockade of their East Coast, could force the U.S. to back off and seek a (humiliating) negotiated peace. Only with the rise of the menace of Nazi Germany did President Roosevelt order the plans shelved.
“Little-John”
Here’s a link to the Staff Report in the “column” section of the Straight Dope Little-John is referring to, I think:
My only reply that it was “serious” in that it was an official governmental study/war plan, but that is far from saying that the plan was seriously considered to be one that was likely (or even desirable) to be implemented. This an the idea that the Staff Report tried to convey, I think.
Indeed, an excellent Staff Report by bibliophage.
It was both hypothetical and not hypothetical.
Certainly there was no plan to take Canada by conquest. However, the War Dept. had developed the famous “Rainbow Plans”, via war-gaming to determine what might be needed and the best strategies in case of several broadly based situations.
The idea wasn’t to draft blueprints for intended operations, but rather work out how those scenarios might be done ahead of time. A large part of War Plan Orange was actually put into use in the war vs. Japan.
And despite what you may think, the Canadians had their own plans devised to capture parts of the US pre-emptively if things looked like war.
The point of all this, is that a good military is prepared. I’ll bet that even the US, Canada and UK probably have some plans even today as to what might be done if our relationship were to seriously sour.
As in the Tom Lehrer lyrics:
We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they’ve hardly bothered us since then
Actually, we did invade Canada in 1928 to protect our strategic supplies of maple syrup, but no one noticed, so we just went home.
So, Canada’s plan was going to simultaneously attack:
[ul]
[li] Seattle[/li][li] Montana[/li][li] Minnesota[/li][li] Maine[/li][li] New York[/li][li] Niagara River[/li][li] St. Clalr River[/li][/ul]
That was a rather ambitious plan. Did Canada even have that many armies?
The whole idea that Canadian generals were planning to attack the U.S., and the U.S. generals were planning to attack Canada and go to war with Britain just shows you that war is too important to leave to the generals.
Why’de we want to attack Canada, they wouldn’t sell us any more Canadian Bacon if we did.
There are “war plans” for many, many things, no matter how unlikely. They don’t mean the “generals” are trying to gin up a war. There are war plans for real enemies too, like North Korea, but that still doesn’t mean war is imminent.
Also, things may have been different long ago, but nowadays the most reluctant people to go to war are the generals. I haven’t made a study of it or anything, I suppose it could be a result of Vietnam, but I have read a lot about the first and second Iraq wars, and what stands out is how little appetite the senior uniformed military has for a fight.
It wasn’t that different in the past. Over a hundred years ago, Chesterton could joke about it in The Man Who was Thursday:
A lot of the military value of war plans such as Plan Red is the practice in planning. The intended target is often a minor part of the plan. The logistics requirements for moving the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood to the Northeast to invade Quebec are pretty much identical to the requirements to move it to the Northeast to load onto ships to invade Iraq.
Did the planners consider an invasion of Canada to be possible? Yes. Did they consider it to be probable? Likely not.
As for the 1928 invasion, it was the rapid withdrawal of maple syrup stocks into the Chibougamau Strategic Maple Products Reserve citadel in northern Quebec (strongly protected by the near-impenetrable Montreal traffic on the road north), and the fierce posturing of the New Brunswick Rangers in defence of the critical Moncton/Acadia Sugar Bush redoubt, that were the real turning points that defeated the American invasion! (See Dwyer’s book *Battle Under (and for) the Maple Leaf *for an excellent in-depth study of the campaign, including the abortive West Coast amphibious landing that was turned back at the 11th hour when the US task force commander was informed that sugar maples only grow in the east.)
Now there’s a scenario about as improbable as some schmuck almost starting a war by letting his pig get loose. Pig War - Wikipedia
But we’re good, best buddies, in fact cough Northwest Passage - Wikipedia cough .
Truly, we are best of friends - but disagreements do happen between friends, so it probably shouldn’t be that much a surprise if someone, somewhere (on both sides, even), hasn’t taken some thought to possible worst-case scenarios - and they would indeed be Worst Case.
Here’s a link to a website where this Channel 5 documentary can be viewed:
http://www.channel5.com/shows/revealed/episodes/americas-planned-war-on-britain-revealed
It can only be watched in certain countries. If anyone here can watch it, it would be interesting to hear their reaction to it. Is Little-John accurately summarizing it? Does the documentary seem to be an accurate account of what the plan was and whether it was seriously intended, or is the documentary just exaggerating things?