On the East Coast, German U-boats savaged shipping along the seaboard from early 1942. That changed with the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, and German dictator Adolf Hitler’s ill-advised declaration of war on the United States a few days later. The Americans initially stayed neutral, believing that North America was safe from invasion and that the calamity in Europe did not demand the sacrifice of American lives. Unlike the United States, Canada was engaged with the war from the start. The shocking German victory, and the follow-on threat to Britain by attacking aerial armadas, forced Canada to expand its commitment rapidly.Ĭanadians would go on to serve and to fight around the world: in the Pacific and Far East, especially in Hong Kong and Burma in the Mediterranean and Italy on the oceans, primarily in the crucial Battle of the Atlantic and in the air war to defend Canada and Britain, and then to take the war to the Germans in the skies over many countries.įinally, Canada made an immense contribution in the land campaign to liberate Europe, which began on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and continued in tooth-and-nail combat through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.Īs James Alan Roberts, a pre-war ice cream salesman who rose in the army to the rank of brigadier, wrote after the war, “Canada is not a warlike nation we played an unbelievably important role. With much of continental Europe occupied, a new resilience - tinged with panic - drove the creation of new military units and an intense acceleration of weapons production. Stunned by France’s defeat, the Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King ushered in limited conscription for home defence. Even as our government sent troops to defend England, shored up defences on Canada’s coasts, and engaged in naval convoy work, the fall of France in June 1940 to the mechanized and marauding German forces came as an utter shock. Tens of thousands enlisted in the army, navy, and air force, but Canada was deeply unprepared.

When Britain and France went to war with Germany on September 3, 1939, Canada had a decision to make: Stand with its allies or stay neutral. Canada's History Youth Committee Members.The John Bragg Award for Atlantic Canada.

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Canadian navy world war 2 in pacific