Canada at War: Normandy and Northwest Europe

Bo and Joey are joined by historian Mike Bechthold to discuss the Canadian effort in the Second World War in Normandy and Northwest Europe!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Whole crew, that whole crew, talking about whole grew and
reminding the whole crew a history pod past, going back
to the past with the rifles past.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
It might lean you a gas are you biting inspired?
But you'll never get tired of whole crew, That whole crew.
Top scholars on the show with Joey and.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Boo that well, Hello, hello, just just popped off my
ranking bottleshelf there, eh, already, dude, we have surprisingly you know,

(01:19):
we met and we talked yesterday or two days ago,
and just in that time we have a lot more
to talk about. I have all kinds of fun little
updates for you. Right, Okay, I haven't seen you or
talked to you and forever, but again it's only been
twenty four hours. So well, and I will tell you. Like,
i know, Monday's episode was a little long, but I'm

(01:42):
still thinking about it. I still just enjoyed the ever
living hell out of.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
That Uncle chas Man. I mean, he made our lives
so easy on that episode.

Speaker 5 (01:51):
Yeah too, Like you know, the the the idea of
doing a podcast, a history podcast about a movie, yeah
kind of like I don't know, but to sit down
and really talk about the refugee, the immigrant experience in.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
The filming of Casablanca, which I don't know when the
episode will air compared to when this one will air.
If you haven't listened to that one, you need to.

Speaker 6 (02:19):
Yeah, I mean finding on film does it? You know,
I do a pretty pretty good job of it. That
was kind of a first for us, and I don't
think we could have had anybody better to talk nauseam
about Cosablanca than Chaz Maina.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
I mean it helps that it's my favorite movie.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
Yeah, that helps.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
So the other thing I wanted to tell you about
was I got some mail yesterday. Oh. I have been waiting.
Some listeners and viewers may know this. I have been
waiting for an inordinate period of time thanks to the
United States Postal Service or some service records to come
from a researcher in Saint Louis at the National Archives.

(03:05):
Norman Richards is my man. I got the connection through
John McManus, So shout out to John and to Kevin
for that hookup. But I'm holding now for the first
time the service records of Stevenson, father and son from
the Columbia Race Riot project. I have finally got these

(03:28):
in hand and I didn't know that official government documents
could be this exciting. Ide pages in and I was like,
oh my god, this changes everything. This is amazing. So
I yeah, I'm excited to take it back to finishing
the Second World War chapter of that. And you know,

(03:52):
since we're just talking about things going on in my life,
this will show you the kind of depravity. So I
started building something. I see, Ah, it's one one Field
hospital and Arnham, you know, because why not. So working
on that as we speak. And a big shout out

(04:14):
to a friend of the show, podcast listener and just
all around great, great mate and talent and beautiful talented sculptor,
Paul Hicks. Paul has been a long time listener and
we were always good to to see some of his work.
Those are his airborne Arnham Heroes figures from Impress Miniatures.

(04:37):
But we're not here to talk about Arnham. Well it
could happen. We're not here to talk about We are
actually here to talk about airborne operations because there's a
little bit of that that factors into this. But we
have a special guest today joining us is Mike Beckfault,
who holds a pH d in history from the Universe

(05:00):
be a New South Wales and Canberra, Australia. Mike is
an author and editor of eight different books and several
several articles. A lot of his research has to do
with airpower in the Air War. But the reason we
have him on today is to talk about Canada at
war in Canada at war in the Second World. So

(05:22):
we're going to bring Mike on here, and there he is.
He has appeared.

Speaker 7 (05:29):
Hey guys, thanks for having me here. I'm really pleased.
I've been a longtime listener of your show, a big fan,
and it's wonderful to be here in person with you today.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
It is always great.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
To hear that it's so weird, you know, because it's
like we have fans, we have people that listen to
us talk like we we really just good, you know,
in the height of COVID to fill the gap, you know,
So it's it's good to hear that.

Speaker 7 (05:51):
Well, it's been a through COVID. I mean, you know
what COVID was like, and I discovered all sorts of
great podcasts and yours is one of them. And I mean,
I think it's the Boo Hickey history that that really
got me. It's like there's always shit history out there
got to be called out.

Speaker 8 (06:08):
So good on you guys for doing that.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Look at that though your segment is now internationally renown.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
I hope you did it.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
You did it. You You've broken through the.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
Final barrier, you lucky bastard.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
So Mike, let let's kind of dive in, you know,
let's not beat around the bush on this, and you
know we'll have we'll have a bit of a commercial
break here in a couple of minutes. But not to worry.
Let's talk a bit about overall big general picture of
Canada's role in the Second World War, because it's not
as though Canada enters the war completely on its own.

(06:46):
It is kind of considered part of you know, Al
Murray and James Holland have called it Duke right dominion,
UK and Empire and plus right Duke plus. So how
does can to fit into that picture and how does
Canada really come to evolve on the on the stage
during the Second World War?

Speaker 7 (07:07):
Yeah, for sure. So, I mean we can look back
to the First World War and Canada had a big
role on the Western Front, six hundred thousand troops almost
six hundred or sorry, sixty thousand war dead and Canada
made a name for itself there, but Canada was still
part of the British Empire at that point, So when
Britain declared war in nineteen fourteen, Canada was automatically and

(07:29):
at war at that point. By nineteen thirty nine, however,
that had completely changed. The Treaty of Westminster had brought
our sovereigntry soauegntry home, and Canada had to make its
own decision to join the war. So on the third
of September, when Britain declared war against Germany, Canada wasn't
automatically at war. Our parliament met and a week later

(07:53):
Canada declared war and joined the war on its own accord.
We didn't have to, but Canada looks overseas. I mean,
our people are of French and British stock, and what
happens in Europe is really important to us. And we
knew that this was a crusade against evils, so Canadians

(08:13):
volunteered to go. And I think that's a really important point.
Some what are the numbers? Population was about one point
five million in nineteen forty one. Over a million Canadians
put on uniforms, both men and women during the course
of the war, and the vast majority of them were volunteers.

(08:35):
We can talk a little bit later about conscription or
the draft as you call it, but only a very
small number of Canadians that got into combat were drafted.
The vast majority were volunteers. They saw what was going
on overseas, they knew this was terrible, and they were
willing to put their lives on hold and possibly give
the greatest sacrifice possible to make things right. And large

(08:58):
numbers of Canadians did that.

Speaker 6 (09:01):
That's incredibly interesting that, you know Canada, you know they,
like you said, when when Britain Declaire's War, you know,
Canada's not immediately drawn into the conflict. And that's incredibly
interesting to me because you know, they're Canada's southern neighbors.
The United States is still, you know, debating this idea
between intervention and isolationism, and you have FDR who's campaigning

(09:24):
in the election of nineteen forty.

Speaker 4 (09:26):
You know that, you know, we are not going to
get into this conflict.

Speaker 6 (09:28):
You know, that's Europe's problem, you know, Europe's war, you know,
and obviously that that all changes for the United States.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
And December of nineteen forty one.

Speaker 6 (09:35):
But you know so, so Mike, can you can you
kind of tell our listeners a little bit, you know,
Canada's role in the early years of the Second World War.

Speaker 8 (09:43):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 7 (09:44):
I think I think all of your listeners have heard
about the Britain alone. I mean that period when France
has fallen May June nineteen forty and all of a sudden,
it's Britain standing alone against Hitler's Nazi Germany. And I
think that's a little bit disingenuos and I think a
lot of British historians have recognized that, but it's still
something that's held pretty closely. Yes, Britain was alone, but

(10:07):
I'll use air quotes on that because it was the
British Commonwealth, and the British Commonwealth was a pretty massive,
powerful organization, as Duke alludes to. It's Canada, it's Australia,
it's South Africa, it's India, and there's a lot of
personnel there, there's a lot of industrial capacity, and Canada

(10:28):
was a big part of that. And so it was
Britain and the Commonwealth countries alone against Germany, which is
very much different than Britain alone. So I think that's
a big part of it. Canada mobilized right away. We
sent a division over to England in nineteen thirty nine
and sent to a second one by nineteen forty, but

(10:51):
it took a long time for Canada to get into
combat a lot of the time. We actually sent a
brigade over to France that was there before the fall
and June, but never got into any combat and ended
up evacuating not from Dunkirk but from further south Sherburg
and I think Brest, and losing a lot of their
artillery and trucks and so forth, but made all the

(11:13):
people made it back to England. The first time Canadians
were in combat was in major combat, was not in
Europe at all, but in the Pacific. After the Japanese
attack Pearl Harbor, we sent a brigade, two divisions and
a or sorry, two regiments and brigade headquarters to Hong

(11:36):
Kong as sort of a signal to the Japanese of hey,
don't mess with the British Empire there. Well, they don't
know how that went. Every single one of the Canadians
that went to Hong Kong were either killed or captured
and spent the rest of the war in prison camp.
But that was sort of the first big combat that

(11:56):
Canadians had. A Canadian sergeant Major Osborne was awarded the
Victoria Cross for what he was doing, and in fact,
the brigade commander was killed fighting the Japanese right outside
his headquarters. The battle came to his headquarters and he
went outside to a defendant and was killed in the process.
So you can't say that there weren't brave acts taking place.

(12:21):
The first real major combat for the Canadians in Northwest
Europe was of course at de App, the infamous raid
in August nineteen forty two. David O'Keefe has done a
fantastic job of giving us a new idea. Are you
familiar with his work? So David O'Keeffe has shown that

(12:43):
perhaps one of the main reasons for attacking Depp was
to capture an Enigma for wrote or Enigma machine, and
that was a big motivation for the thing. As we
all know, it failed. Of the five thousand Canadians that
went to or almost a little less than nine hundred

(13:04):
ended up dying that day. Another twenty five hundred went
into prisoner of war camps and were lost for the
rest of the war. And it was a big, a
big disaster, there's no other way to call it. A
lot of people look at it and say, oh, well,
this is the British. They sent the Canadians to do
what they wouldn't commit their own troops to do. And
I think that's that's boulder dash, that's bouhicky history, if

(13:28):
you want to term it. That the Canadians were demanding
to be used at that point in the war. They'd
been in when for the better part of three years
doing nothing, and they wanted to get into the fight.
And so the everyone from the commanders on down the
Prime Minister Mackenzie King wanted the Canadians in the fight
and we're quite happy to go to Depp wished it

(13:49):
to come better.

Speaker 8 (13:49):
But that's that's what happened.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
It does seem like Dupp kind of gets the the
Either you believe Indie up in one of two ways, right,
It's either it was a two terrible offul slaughter that
did nothing, or there was a terrible offal slaughter that
showed the Allies what they had to do to nail
amphibious assaults. And neither of those really hold a bucket
of water at the end of the day.

Speaker 7 (14:14):
Yeah. Absolutely, there's a lot that's been written on D
Day and trying to link the two operations. This went
wrong at DEPP and it was fixed for D Day,
So some people try to draw a straight line between
those failures and forty two and the later successes in
forty four, and on the surface it makes sense, I
mean the use of heavy bombers, the lack of cruisers

(14:41):
and battleships providing preparatory fire armored vehicles on the beaches,
things like that, better signals. Definitely, these things failed at
deep and were fixed by D Day. But the thing is,
there was two whole years in between those two operations, right,
consider all of the other amphibious operations that took place

(15:03):
torch Husky, Sicily, Salerno, n Zio, not to mention everything
that's going on in the Pacific. So there's there's connections there,
but they're not straight lines. And it wasn't a if
then kind of proposition. So, yes, things were learned at DEPP.
Perhaps they should have been known before, but they were
certainly reinforced in its failure. But D Day didn't succeed

(15:27):
because DEEPP failed.

Speaker 6 (15:28):
That's oh yeah, And I was actually reading up a
little bit about the raid at de App and I
actually learned that there's, funnily enough, a Louisiana connection to
the raid at de App. I learned, and this is
something I didn't know beforehand, but the first American that
was killed in action by German forces on the ground
was a US Army ranger by the name of Lieutenant

(15:51):
Edward Louis delu and he was from Franklin, Louisiana.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
There were about fifty Army rangers or so that were attacked.

Speaker 6 (15:59):
To Canadian units, and he was one of the first
to you know, to buy on the on the American
saw it anyway, you know.

Speaker 4 (16:06):
So it's kind of unique to make that connection, you know.

Speaker 7 (16:09):
Yeah, there's a there's a bunch of good American connections
to d App. The B seventeens of eighth Air Force
had just arrived in England at this point and we're
beginning to mount raids over the continent on the nineteenth
of August nineteen forty two. B seventeens were a key

(16:29):
part of the air power being used to support de App,
and they were sent to attack a number of German
air bases. The British were very fearful that those daylight
bombers were going to get slaughtered, so they tasked their
best fighter squadron to protect them. And at the time
it happened to be UH four or six RCAF squadrons

(16:51):
flying the latest mark of the spitfire. Because we're not
going to lose our Americans now, we need to keep
safe in the fight, so to speak. And like you mentioned,
there were about fifty US Army rangers that it took
place in it with both Canadian and British commando units,
and three of them were killed on that day. And
I don't know if you have it easily accessible, but

(17:13):
the photo of Depp that I showed you is a
really interesting photo from that perspective. It's one of the
most famous images that we see of the devastation on
the main beach at Depp. There it is there you
can see a burning landing craft. In the back you
can see two of the Churchill tanks that landed on
the beaches. And if you look at the two soldiers

(17:35):
lying there, the soldier in the foreground is a Canadian soldier,
but if you look at the guy in behind, you
can see that he's got I don't know what they're called,
the putties or things on his leggings over his boots.
That's one of the American rangers, one of the three
Americans killed on.

Speaker 8 (17:52):
The nineteenth of August. He just happens to be laying there.

Speaker 7 (17:55):
And this is a photo that was taken by the
Germans shortly after the battle.

Speaker 8 (18:00):
It concluded.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
I'm gonna just put another picture in right here, just
because of the flashes are helpful. But while we're talking
a little bit, and you know, we took our DP detour,
we did that, did that thing where we started on
a topic and then ran with it. So one thing
that's really interesting about the the jury of Canada into

(18:26):
the war and the US has continued isolation, is that
the volunteers that come out of the US that say,
you know what, I want to go fight. I want
to go fight now. There's just like this little you
could almost think of it like a rat line out
of the US and into Canada and from Canada into
the RAF squadron. So many of those guys that end
up flying with the RAF and the Battle of Britain

(18:47):
who were Americans come in or through a Canadian training squadron.
They get their hours in Canada, they fly in Canada,
and then they come over and we could talk a
lot about US involvement, but that's not.

Speaker 4 (18:58):
What we're here.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
We're here to talk about Canadians, by God. So they're
on the surface, they feel very very similar to a
normal British Army right, and readers of John Buckley's book
Monty's Men will know what I mean and that they
they wear a very similar uniform, they carry very similar equipment,
they have a very similar similar regimental and battalion size breakdown,

(19:22):
and things generally kind of look and feel like the
British Army. But they operate and they operate under the
British Army, but they operate on a different level as
as as their own, almost as an independent branch within
this umbrella. You want to talk at all about that.

Speaker 7 (19:42):
Yeah, absolutely, Canadian forces were integrated into the British Army
or the Royal Air Force. We weren't independent. It wasn't
like we were Canadian troops under our own direct command.
We were Canadian troops serving under British command. That being said,

(20:02):
it was clear that we were Canadian troops that they
had reference to the government in Canada, and if at
any time something was said that they didn't want to
do or wasn't right, then the Canadian commander, whether it
be Harry Kruerr, who was the commander of First Canadian
Army through the entire campaign, or someone else, had the

(20:22):
right to say, sort of pull that national command authority
card and said, respectfully, sir, repectfully Montgomery, we're not going
to do that. And Career I didn't have to play
that card very often, but he always knew he had
it in his back pocket, as did Montgomery. I think
the one time it actually came up had to do
with Depp in nineteen forty four, when the Battle of

(20:46):
Normandy was over, the pursued up into the Channel ports
and ultimately into the Shelt was taking place, and the
Canadian second Division, who had landed it at Depp in
nineteen forty two, had been tasked to it in September
nineteen forty four. They accomplished this and there was going
to be a series of ceremonies in the city to

(21:07):
honor the sacrifice of the Canadians two years earlier, and
Career are as the senior Canadian commander said, I need
to be there with my boys for this, and he
went there and Montgomery lost his shit about it because
he was having a command conference and said, Corey, you're
not doing that. You're going to get your urse up
to my command meeting and your presence there is not

(21:34):
We're not arguing about it. You're coming here, and Career said, respectfully,
so or no, I'm going, and if you want to
refer this up to higher levels, I'm happy to do that.
And Montgomery said, oh no, no, you're right, We'll just
carry on.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
Monty not wanting to rock the boat.

Speaker 8 (21:52):
Yep.

Speaker 7 (21:53):
And I think, I mean, we all know who Monty is.
Monty I think is one of these great figures in history.
Absolutely a great general, a great commander, did great things.
But he was flawed. He wasn't a people person. He
wasn't going to command by his charisma. He was going
to command by his ability to get stuff done. And

(22:17):
people followed him in spite of the fact that he
was a cranky, onerous type of commanders.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
So yeah, gee, bo, I can't imagine why I like him? Yeah, no, no,
no reason, similarity. Yeah, I am just a loss for
words for why. So Mike, we we kind of talked
about it a little bit earlier, but Canada at Dunkirk
obviously Dunkirk is you know, this is a daring rescue

(22:48):
mission because in its originality, you know, you've got Churchill
and his war cabinet. They're like, well, I think this
would be a success if we say thirty thousand men
and all of a sudden, you know, and daring escape.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
You know, we're able to save over three hundred thousand.
So what's Canada's role in this?

Speaker 6 (23:05):
Because you know, we're always talking about the British, you know,
when it comes to Dunkirk. Very few people you know,
maybe know that Canadian forces are at Dunkirk, or even
the Belgians for that matter.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
I have to throw all the caveat in there too.
Don't forget about the French that could sacrifice that the
British can get away exactly exactly.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
So what is Canada's role in Dunkirk?

Speaker 7 (23:24):
Yeah, the Canadians weren't really at at Dunkirk in large numbers.
The Canadians that had been committed to France evacuated further south,
like from Cherbourg and Breast I believe, so there weren't
formed bodies of Canadian troops there. I think there were
Royal Canadian Navy units in the English Channel that were

(23:45):
helping to secure the convoys. But probably the biggest Canadian impact,
his name is slipping me right now, was the commander
on the the dock that was controlling all the ships
coming in and the men going out. He was not
named in the famous Dunkirk movie from a few years ago,

(24:06):
but the character, the main character, was definitely based on
his actions on the groin and he was really a
key figure in making sure that things were organized and
didn't devolve into chaos, so that it was an organized
shuttle of men onto the boats and away from the

(24:26):
shores like that. And this I can't remember his name
right now. It starts with the sea. Anyway, it'll come.

Speaker 4 (24:32):
To me later.

Speaker 7 (24:33):
He ended up dying. He took one of the last
boats out and I think it was strafed by the
Luftwaffa and he ended up drowning or something like that.
But it was like a really quite remarkable story.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah, so we see the evacuation from France and then
there's really the struggle through North Africa and Mediterranean. Canadians
obviously involved in the Canadian the Mediterranean campaigns up through
Italy and then the re entry into Northwest Europe, which
is really kind of where we wanted to shift in
this episode. Focus a little bit on a the Normandy campaign,

(25:10):
but then take us through you know, September and into
December of nineteen forty four, where the Canadians and Canadian
Army is And I think one of the things that
fascinates me about this is when you watch the anniversary coverage,
or you're flipping through the latest and Greatest YouTube history

(25:33):
sensation or you know, Netflix has yet another in a
series of you know, b roll footage thrown together with
talking heads when they talk about D Day. In the
popular narrative, it's Americans. It's British, that's really it. And
generally in the US, it's just Americans. Everybody else is

(25:54):
kind of had a loss. Oh yeah, there's some there's
some other beaches, a sword and Old down that way,
but really everything's at Omaha Beach and everything's the first
twenty minutes of saving Private Ryan and nothing, nothing else
really matters. And maybe as the paratrooper hanging from Saint
Mary Glease which didn't happen, thanks Marty, or you know,

(26:16):
whatever have you. Nobody ever talked about what's happening on
the other beaches Golden Sword, but then there's Juno, which
becomes a totally other kind of an anomaly all by itself.
So let's talk maybe build up and how they what
happens once they get there.

Speaker 7 (26:35):
Yeah, if you don't know Mark Milner's work, I'm going
to give it a little plug here. But Mark is
one of the best Canadian historians writing on Normandy right now.
He's his book Stopping the Panzers is absolutely essential reading
to understand the Canadian's role in Normandy. And he's got
a new book coming out, i think in April, on

(26:56):
the Normandy Campaign, and it's really interesting because if you
read the title and read the publisher's blurb on it,
it doesn't mention Canada at all. But it's kind of
a gorilla history of the Canadians in Normandy where Mark
is sort of telling this big, overall story of Normandy
and putting the Canadians right in the center of it.
So I think it's going to be a really essential

(27:16):
book to to come out, and I'm really looking forward to.

Speaker 8 (27:19):
To reading it.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
You're right on the money with with Mike's books, because
they I've got the stopping the Panzers. It's granted it's
in the storage unit, but it's great because what it
helps you do is place, you know, here's all, here's
everything that the Germans have to throw at the Allies
in Hitler's you know, attempt to throw the Allies back

(27:42):
to the to the beaches and back into the Channel.
And here's what a band of you know, Allied troops
Canadians have done to basically just grind them down and
destroy whole units. I mean, you think about Panzer Mayor
and even twelve as Ass just watched their numbers completely

(28:06):
dwindle in the face of really the can we call
them unsung heroes?

Speaker 4 (28:11):
Bo?

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Is that too cliche? Yeah? Unrecognized? Maybe?

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Well maybe maybe by you know, over perrap modest Yeah, looked, Yeah,
I am.

Speaker 7 (28:25):
This is a big thing for me because I think
Canadian historians in general have been far too reticent about
blowing our own horn over the years. I think it's
been better in later years. More recently, Mark Milner, Terry Copp,
Jack Granitstein and some others have have done a good
job of showing what the Canadians actually accomplished in Normandy,

(28:48):
But for far too long, we sort of downplayed our
role even the official history the victory campaign. Victory campaign
by CP Stacy was more interested in talking about our foibles,
our failures than in our successes. Jack English, who's written
a fantastic book on the Canadians in Normandy that originally

(29:12):
came out I think the main title was the Canadians
in Normandy Failure in High Command, and then it was
re released with the main title Failure and High Command,
The Canadians and Normanity that really looked at those issues
with kind of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Speaker 8 (29:28):
I mean.

Speaker 7 (29:28):
The fact is the Canadians were some of the most
effective troops in Normandy, right from the sixth of June
when they landed on the beaches at Bernier, Corsal and
Central Band and got further inland than any other Allied
troops by the end of that first day of combat,
right through the battles at Brettville, Brettville, Nori and Puteau

(29:52):
where they stopped twelve SS cold in a series of
counter attacks, then through the to capture Khan, and then
all those big battles south of Cohn Operations Totalize and tractable,
and then onto the Fleas Gap and the closing of that,
and the Canadians were right there second and while third

(30:14):
Division that landed on D Day and Second Division which
came in a month later, had some of the most
days in combat of any Allied units during the entire
Normandy campaign. Basically, the Canadians were sent into combat and
they stayed in combat, whereas the Americans and the British
had more troops and a little more latitude to move
forces in and out of combat to bring them back

(30:36):
and give them a bit of a rest time to
recuperate and regenerate before throwing them back into the cauldron,
Whereas the Canadians, once they were committed to the battle,
seemed to stay there much longer and as a result,
proportionately took as high casualties as any unit that was,
any formation that was fighting in Normandy.

Speaker 6 (30:55):
I was going to ask you, I was like, so,
what exactly are the Canadians facing on Juno Beach?

Speaker 4 (31:00):
You know, what is their resistance casualty rates?

Speaker 8 (31:03):
You know?

Speaker 4 (31:04):
Except this is definitely worth bringing up.

Speaker 7 (31:06):
Yeah, yeah, And I mean that's a really key question because,
as you mentioned, the Folcus is always on Omaha Bloody Omaha,
where the first and twenty ninth divisions got very roughly
treated by the Germans. I would say that, and it's
really tough to do the numbers because we don't have
a really accurate number of American casualties at Omaha, nor

(31:29):
do we have a really clear casualty count for the
Canadians on Juno. I can tell you that three hundred
and fifty nine Canadian soldiers were killed on on d Day.
Three hundred and forty of them landed on Juno. The
others were members of first Canadian paira battalion that parachuted
with six they're born. But I can't tell you how

(31:49):
many died on the beaches. That's a twenty four hour toll,
so it includes those who died in the landings, those
who died sort of securing the beach hole, but also
then the fighting for the rest of the day, So
we don't have a sense of how many died sort
of getting ashore and staying ashore. But I would argue
that the fighting on Juno Beach was every bed as

(32:11):
intense as anything that happened at that Omaha. I mean,
of course, Bolster Mayor had two German strong points on
each side, of the Seoul River that were mounted around
concrete bunkers with eighty eight millimeter, fifty millimeters seventy five
millimeter guns. There was copious amounts of barbed wire and

(32:33):
mines and mortars and machine guns and lots of artillery
that were dropping their stuff on the Canadians as they
came ashore. So it was a nasty fight. There was
no point where there was a consideration of having to
lift the division off the beach, as was contemplated at Omaha,
but it was nasty fighting. The Queen's own rifles which

(32:56):
landed at Barnier the highest casualties of any Adian regiment
that landed on D Day, and they had a tough
job there. Landing craft came down in front of the
strong point instead of on either side of it because
of the way the tides drifted, and one of the
company sergeant major is a guy named Charlie Martin, has
this really remarkable description of what it was like to

(33:18):
land in the first way. And I think we've all
grown up on saving Private Ryan, and we know that
opening scene and the chaos and the quantity of everything
that landed there. Charlie Martin's D Day was a very
different experience. He said that all of the Canadian landing
craft were spaced out about one hundred yards apart, so
that meant that he could just see each one about

(33:40):
one hundred yards to his left and one hundred yards
to his right. And when the landing craft touched down
and the bio went down, he said that it seemed
like it was him and his thirty pals storming Nazi
Germany all by themselves. That it was a very lonely experience.
It wasn't this mass chaos, and that until later they

(34:00):
weren't seeing a lot of other people around, and so
they had to go on and get their job done
and stone storm those defenses and capture their dejectives and
make it work so very different. I love that when
Saving Private Ryan first came out, there was a Canadian
newspaper article, and I think this really captures what I
was saying about Canadians not telling her own story very well.

(34:23):
He said that if Saving Private Ryan had been a
Canadian story, the Private Ryan would have been killed on
the shore, the landing craft would have been sunk, his
men would have been squished by a tiger tank, and
every single one of the rescue crew would have been killed,
and sadly, I think that's pretty accurate.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
I don't know, it's not funny.

Speaker 8 (34:47):
Oh, it absolutely is funny.

Speaker 6 (34:49):
It is it is, and that's I don't know, why
do you think that is. You know, that's sort of
the self deprecation there.

Speaker 7 (34:58):
I think it's part of Canadian name in general. George Stanley,
who was one of our first military historians, wrote a
book in the nineteen fifties and he called it a
military history of an unmilitary people. And I think that's
a very fair description of who we are. We're not
a martial nation. We're not going out and conquering other countries.

(35:24):
We'll go to war and we'll do a really good
job of it when it's needed, but we're going to
help others. We're not going to build a Canadian empire
or conquer for the sake of conquer. We sort of
answer the call when the call is made for generally
very good reasons. I mean, there's this image of Canadians
as peacekeepers. I don't know if you see that in

(35:45):
the US, but one of our own big images of
Canadians is of that blue helmeted peacekeeper. During the Cold War,
that were sent to keep the warring parties apart and
to stop war, not to make war, so to speak.
It's part of our makeup. But I mean, the Canadian
story in Normandy is one to be proud of, one

(36:06):
to be celebrated. One of the great stories that I've
written about has to do with the stand of the
seventh Canadian Infantry Brigade on the seventh to the tenth
of June, right after D Day. Mark Milner's book makes
really clear that Canadian third Division when they came ashore
on D Day, was seen as in many cases the

(36:27):
fire brigade for the entire Allied landings, because planners beforehand
had done a map reki of Normandy. They'd looked at
the terrain, they'd look at German abilities, and they thought
that if the Germans are going to launch a major
armored counter attack, there's only one place they can do it,
and that was to the west of Kahn, right up
through what became the Canadian sector. So the Canadians were

(36:50):
sent in loaded for bear. They had extra artillery units,
they had extra anti tank units, they had lots of
resources to prepare them to be tank killers. And that's
exactly what seventh Brigade did over a three day span
when twelfth SS was was launched at them, and in
a series of really quite disjointed counter attacks, every single

(37:14):
one of them was defeated in detail by the Canadians,
to a point where the Germans had to sort of
go running away with their tail between their legs because
they couldn't get done what they were expecting to do.
There's a great quote from you mentioned panzer Meyer earlier.

Speaker 8 (37:29):
Kurt Meyer.

Speaker 7 (37:30):
He said when he first saw the landings, oh, we're
going to throw those little fish back into the sea.
Well it turns out those little fish had some pretty
damn big teeth.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
In one of the I guess one of the there's
a lot of tragic moments in the Normandy campaign, right.
You think about the massacre at or Dorsy Glan, right,
which is immortalized forever by Lawrence Olivier's introduction to a
world of war. But there's an equal, I think, disturbing
a trust that takes place regarding Canadian prisoners of war,

(38:05):
and it is twelve U s Ass It is yeah,
and you know that that episode where these men are
just they're shot dead and then they're run over by
tanks and all that does I mean in my reading,
and my reading is based off of him Cook's two
volume kind of look at it, but it seems as

(38:26):
though all it does is increase the kind of fire
in the belly of the Canadian soldiers to say, you
know what, fine, if you're going to do that, then
we'll fight harder, we'll fight more ruthlessly, and don't even
bother trying to surrender, because we'll finish this thing with
the kid gloves off.

Speaker 8 (38:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (38:47):
No, absolutely, I'm sure your listeners are quite familiar with
the Melbury mass here during the Battled Worlds, where lots
of American troops were executed. But in one case, they
were put in a field and trucks backed up and
they threw the tailgate open and machine guns were there
and they gunned them.

Speaker 8 (39:05):
Where they stood.

Speaker 7 (39:06):
Well, that's the exact thing that was happening to Canadians
by twelfth SS in Normandy. As early as the seventh
of June, there was a pitched battle between the Canadians
and twelfth SS, and a lot of histories will say
that the Germans won the day because they ended up
holding the battlefield at the end of the day. But

(39:27):
if you look at the battle in detail, it's quite
clear that it was no better than a draw, and
the Germans took lotses.

Speaker 8 (39:32):
They were as.

Speaker 7 (39:33):
Heavy as anything the Canadians took. But at one point
during the battle, the Germans were taking Canadian prisoners, putting
them in the middle of the road and running them
over with their tanks. They were executing them rather than
helping wounded soldiers. And what was even worse, there was
large numbers of Canadian soldiers that were disarmed, walked behind

(39:54):
the front, interrogated and then executed. Probably the most famous
incident happened in the Abbe Darden, which is an old
church that is still there, and you can visit the
garden today and see where the Canadians were executed.

Speaker 8 (40:08):
There's a plaque on.

Speaker 7 (40:09):
The wall with its eighteen or or twenty photographs of
the men that were murdered. In total, the twelfth SS
killed one hundred and fifty two Canadians in Normandy like
that's an absolute massive war crime. Kurt Meyer was tried
for these crimes, the only German that was tried by

(40:29):
the Canadians. He was found guilty and he was ordered
to be executed at some point his sentence was commuted
to life in prison. Spent a big portion of it
a few years anyway in New Brunswick in Canada, was subsequently,
during sort of the Reprochement in the nineteen fifties, sent

(40:51):
back to prison in Germany, where he was subsequently released
and sort of was an ironic footnote to the story.
He ended up becoming a beer and liquor distributor and
ended up serving the Canadians who are based in Germany
during the Cold War, which is really more than a
little ironic.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
That story about aved Arden. It stands out, you know.
But I think I told you about this. Uh, listeners
and viewers will know. I'm a miniature war gamer and
I had been doing I had set up a game
at a local store before I moved back. Actually, and

(41:33):
this guy comes and he is, who are the forces?
And uh, you know, ah, seventh seventh Canadians and I've
got some armor here, but the Germans will be twelve
asas and oh, I want to play those guys. And
I'm always a little always a little suspicious when someone
gets excited about playing SS. It's it's that it's reenacting SS. Anything.

(41:56):
It just makes me uncomfortable. Instantly, the red alarm, the
red flags go up. You know, we started playing whatever
and you know, rolling dice and he goes, you know,
these these guys are really brave in it. I was like, yeah,
you know, they're the only SS unit that was cleared
of all their war crimes. It was like, that is

(42:17):
just hat f. That's just nonsense. And you know we
went down the rabbit hole and you know, he packed
up and he left. But you know, I just anyways,
I think on that note, let's do a quick little
commercial break, uh, and we'll come back and we'll continue

(42:40):
the campaign for Northwest Europe alongside our Canadian allies.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
BO.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
How's that sound works? Good?

Speaker 8 (42:49):
All right?

Speaker 3 (42:50):
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(43:11):
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(45:14):
you watch it on YouTube, you don't have to deal
with the break. Isn't that great? We have more to
talk about with Canada or Mike Bechdel, So Mike, let's
talk a little bit. You know, we've kind of talked
a little bit about Normandy, and you know, one of
the things that so often gets overlooked, and I'm very,

(45:35):
very very glad to see that more recent studies of
the Normandy campaign have said, yeah, I know, it wasn't
just June six or even just ten days. It was
there's a seventy seven day battle and really you could
round that up to ninety and say that, you know,
ninety days worth of fighting actually finish this campaign. And
then what happens, right, because we're enough with this kind

(45:57):
of all right, well, where you get to normal? And
then from again the American perspective, there's Normandy. There's this
little interruption called Market Garden, which is a little blip
on the American radar unless you're a sick all like
someone here and then all of a sudden, it's a
Battle of Baldy and the war's over.

Speaker 7 (46:15):
Yeah, I mean, the morale and the Allied armies at
the end of the Normandy campaign couldn't have been higher.
They had defeated the Germans quicker than they had expected.
They had sent them running, fleeing back to Germany. They
were running. They weren't standing except for small rear guards
on the Sene River and other river lines as they

(46:36):
flowed north back through France into Belgium and ultimately into
the Netherlands and Germany. And from their perspective in the
late summer of nineteen forty four, they were they couldn't
be faulted for thinking the war might be over by Christmas,
that they've won this thing. They'd defeated the Germans in
Normandy and all was good. And so there was this

(46:57):
period of the pursuit where the Germans were running back,
the Allies were chasing them, and the Canadians were right
in the middle of this. And probably one of the
most remarkable things happened during this phase. On the fourth
of September, the port of Antwerp was captured intact, and
that was an absolutely huge accomplishment. Antwerp was one of,

(47:19):
if not the largest port in Western Europe, an absolutely
crucial cog in the logistical support that the Allied armies
would need going forward, and here they had captured it
one hundred percent intact. The Germans had run away so quickly,
and the Allies had had the support of the Belgian
White Brigade that they hadn't had time to sink block

(47:39):
ships in the channels. They hadn't blown up the docks
or the cranes or anything else like that. Here was
one hundred percent working port. Problem was, and of course
there's always an asterisk. It was at the end of
a fifty mile long estuary in from the North Sea
along the Shelt River, and the Germans held both banks
of that what they would come to term as Fortress

(48:01):
North Sheldt, which is Walkern Island and the Beveland Peninsula,
and Fortress South Shelt, which became known as the Breskins Pocket.
So they held it. The entire fifteenth German Army was
trapped in there, anywhere between eighty and one hundred thousand men,
and it was going to take some serious fighting to
get out and get those troops.

Speaker 8 (48:23):
Out of there.

Speaker 7 (48:24):
So Montgomery handed that task to First Canadian Army. Now,
first they had to complete the capture of the channel
ports Boulogne and Calais, as well as Capri Greene, which
is where some of those big cross channel coastal gun
batteries were. And then they were to turn their attention
towards opening the Shelt Estuary and the port of Antwerp. Now,

(48:47):
while this was happening, Monty was focused on another little
operation that was taking place, as you've alluded to, Operation
Market Garden, which commenced in mid September, and that was
really the complete and utter focus of Montgomery during this period,
probably with good reason. I mean, it was the kind
of operation that if it had succeeded, it may have

(49:09):
shortened the war. It was a gamble. I know, there's
a lot of naysayers about the operation out there saying
it was too bold, a gamble, it was too much.
They shouldn't have tried it. I think absolutely they should
have tried it, because if it had succeeded, you never
know how that would have impacted the war. And it
came within a hair's width of being successful. As we know,

(49:31):
First Airborne was stopped in Arnham that bridge too far.
But then for the next month British Second Army thirty
Corps Americans who had landed at Nimegen and it's the
other bridge, hind Oven, thank you. They were fighting in

(49:51):
this this salient that had developed and just fighting tooth
and nail to hold on. And sort of the background
of this as well, that fight things taking place in
late September and into early October. That's when the Canadians
are being tasked to open Antwerp. I would argue that
the opening of Antwerp once Market Garden had failed, was

(50:11):
the absolute number one priority of the Allied armies in
Northwest Europe. But Montgomery didn't see it that way. He
didn't give the Canadians priority until almost mid October, and
it took a pretty big prodding from Admiral Bertram Ramsey,
who was the senior naval British naval commander in the theater,
to say, hey, we need this port. The Canadians need

(50:33):
more support. But until that happened, the Canadians were fighting
really under strength against a German army that was really
well supplied. Most of those eighty thousand troops had escaped
from the pocket by this point they had gone across
the Shelter Estuary from Breskins to Walkern Island and then
down the Beeveland Isna and escaped from the pocket, and

(50:56):
not a little point. They were then being fed basically
as they escaped into the Market Garden battle and attacks
against Salien. But there was two very strong divisions that
were left, one in each of the two fortresses, and
they were very well supplied. They had all of the weapons,
lots of twenty millimeter and forty milimeters anti aircraft guns

(51:17):
and more ammunition than they could every leak use because
it was all being left behind by the escaping troops
and they had to defend. And they were given a
kith and kin rule by Hitler and the German commander Eberding,
saying you shall not surrender, you shall not retreat. If
you do, we will take it out on your family
back home in Germany. And so that's a pretty big

(51:40):
motivating factor to keep the troops fighting at the point
when maybe they are ready to not do so. But
it took a month of hard fighting. The Canadian battles
started well in the Shelt this Breascins pocket on the
sixth of October with a real daring attack across the
Leopold and then I was followed up with an amphibious landing

(52:03):
in the rear of the pocket on the ninth of October.
All the while, and this is third Division, while second
Division advancing up north of Antwerp through some nasty battles
and wandsdrecked and then ultimately up the beveland Ismus and
towards Walprint. And it took the better part of a
month to get this done. And I would argue that

(52:24):
the Canadian campaign in the Shelt is possibly our most
important fight of the entire Second World War because it
was dominantly a Canadian operation. Of course, there was RAF support,
a lot of RAF support, and British units were brought
in for the ultimate capture of Walkerne Island.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
Especially John would tell you that there's Americans involved too.

Speaker 7 (52:48):
The Americans came in a little bit later. The one
o fourth Timberland Division came in and helped. This was
once Montgomery took the handcuffs off the Canadian and started
giving them the resources they needed. One o fourth was
was fed into the battle and also fought north of
Antwerp towards Burgen up Zoom and farther north that way

(53:10):
under Canadian command during this battle.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
Well, I know we talked with we talked with John
about the shel. Remember that was kind of like a
I guess a PostScript to our Market Garden, which you
can check out it's on a little playlist right right
here on YouTube. But one of the things that we
talked about there is that really the Shelt and the

(53:37):
port at Antwerp signify what the war really how you
win and lose a war, right if you're focused on
you're not focused on supply, and you're not focused on
getting your troops food and ammunition and the things that
they need to stay in the fight. By securing a
port back Antwerp and then capitalizing on its availability to

(53:59):
feed these advance as to armies. I mean, when we
go back to Market Garden, the whole reason for trying
to hurry up and in the war, and the whole
reason for making this big, deep plunge is to try
and relax the supply lines, which you're still running in
stuff from the beaches in Normandy across France, through Belgium
and into Holland. This solves all of your problems and

(54:21):
it's amazing to me that a soldiers general like Montgomery
couldn't see that. Now I look at that, I did it.
I criticized the great man. You're welcome, dear listener. I
can be I can still wear the historian hat.

Speaker 8 (54:41):
See.

Speaker 7 (54:42):
I think I'm well placed between the two of you here,
because I think Montgomery was a great general with some
pretty substantial flaws, and he got more right than he
got wrong. But he didn't make every decision in the
right direction.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Boju just likes to be the contrarian. To me, That's
all it is.

Speaker 4 (55:01):
That's part of my job. It's it's in the friendship
agreement that we signed at Port Hudson that one time.

Speaker 7 (55:06):
You know, it wouldn't be fun if everybody agreed all
the time, wouldn't it Exactly?

Speaker 6 (55:11):
I man, I tell my students that all the time.
I'm like, you know, okay, we understand the basics, you know,
we we know right, we know that D Day happened
on June sixth, nineteen forty four. But when you start
getting into the weeds of it all, you know, that's
where the fun starts. And they don't grant these are
you know, freshman sophomore, you know, students and depending on

(55:32):
what semester it is. I can sometimes get my juniors
and seniors into a higher level course, so they're a
little bit different. But for my intro level students, let's
be honest, they really don't give a shit about what
I'm talking about anyway, But I try to get them involved.

Speaker 4 (55:47):
What you do because you have to and you love
me at least, I said, I don't. Well, that's about
what Tequila would say that one.

Speaker 7 (55:56):
That's one of my pet peeves. It's like people talk
about revine and as history as if it's a slur,
and my feeling is, if you're not revising history, what
the hell are you doing? I mean exactly, if you've
got nothing new to say, if you've got nothing new
to add, if you're not able to revise the story
we've already heard, then you may as well, I don't know,
go be a plumber or something else.

Speaker 6 (56:19):
It's like, you know, at one point in time, we
thought that the Earth was the center of the universe,
So I guess it's, you know, revision.

Speaker 4 (56:24):
Of science to say that we're not.

Speaker 6 (56:27):
Like, yeah, well Mike, you uh, you would we we
had we had talked about the.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
Twelve s S and there was a little bit of
boohicky behind some of that.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
So history all up.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 6 (56:49):
So booky is something that is just absolutely roughish, something
that is just completely you know.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
Surrounded in mythos. What is something that you want to dispel?

Speaker 7 (56:59):
Now, twelfth SS is not a fucking elite division.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
The listener can't see is that they're throwing my hands
up and I'm shouting for joys.

Speaker 7 (57:18):
Was a competent division at times and a absolutely terrible
division at other times. I think they were well equipped.
They had the best equipment, they had the best tanks,
they had the sexy black uniforms, and I think people
fixate on that far too often. Their commanders were a

(57:42):
mixed bag. Some were very good, many were not the
same with their troops. And I think the one thing
that often doesn't get looked at with twelfth SS is
that attacking in Normandy was very difficult. Defending was relatively easy,
and anytime anybody attacking, they had a lot of trouble
doing it. The Canadians were very good at attacking, sort

(58:05):
of a bite and hold approach. Lots of artillery, limited
projectives drenched the zone. Go in, take it, bring your
forces up and do it. The Germans never understood that.
The Germans, as Meyer himself said, thought we were just
Russians in a different uniform and that all you had
to do was to blast some artillery, run your panzers

(58:29):
in and they would go running away. Like I guess
his experience with the Russians were and that wasn't the
Canadian experience. And during those battles from the seventh to
the tenth, the Germans found out the hard way that
the Canadians were very good soldiers who did things the
right way. They used their artillery if they got surrounded
by tanks, they knew that tanks couldn't do much to

(58:50):
infantry up close, so they just went to ground, brought
up the piat, used the piat and took out the tanks,
or even used sticky bombs. There we go, oh in
Market Bridge too far. They would go and take sticky
bombs and put them physically on the side of the
tank to take them out. And the Germans lost a

(59:12):
lot of tanks at during their attacks on Brettville. Noorian Puto.
One of my favorite favorite stories has to do with
a single Canadian Sherman tank a firefly that took out
five panthers in a matter of minutes. When the Germans
tried to launch an armored attack on Norion Boisson and

(59:32):
they went streaming across a field and a Canadian well,
a Canadian four Canadian Sherman's happened to be in exactly
the right place, and in a matter of minutes, basically
one Sherman firefly destroyed five Panthers as fast as they
could reload the gun, and another one or two panthers
were destroyed by the other tanks, and that German counter
attack was absolutely destroyed. And Germans had no idea what

(59:56):
was going on. At first, they thought they'd just run
over land mines and wasn't. Later they figured out what
it actually happened. So the Canadians were really good soldiers.
And I would say that if you had to put
an average German soldier against an average Canadian soldier, it
wasn't even close. The Canadians were better soldiers. They were
better trained, they were better motivated, they were better led,

(01:00:18):
and they were just much better. So my boo hicky
is ss were not elite.

Speaker 4 (01:00:23):
You mean, it wasn't the right way to go.

Speaker 8 (01:00:28):
So much.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
For Yeah, now there was another a little bit of
boo Hicky. We had talked about back in the very
beginning before we even hit record, and I think that
has to do a little bit with where Canada sits
in the memory and the legacy of the war. And
we've kind of talked about it a little bit, and

(01:00:51):
that from an American perspective, it's it's the Americans. Occasionally
you'll find somebody that says, oh, it's the Americans. In
the British there's a really really big group of people,
and I just I can't understand this one. With the
obsession with the Russians and the Soviets, I just I'm sorry,
I can't do that. It's the lover of Western democracy.

(01:01:12):
I can't do that. And then there's the Canadians. And
it seems when you look at the you know, the
anniversary footage, like we talked about, we have these conversations
about current events, current world events, Canada gets left out
of the picture, and you get talking heads and politicians
that say things like, well, you know, America had to

(01:01:33):
foot the bill, and America did this, and America did that.
Forgetting the fact that I would say that I don't know,
I don't know who could have said anything like that.
But for you know, six years, we've got British, Canadian, French, Belgian, Polish, American,

(01:01:54):
Aullied Western powers throwing themselves against the German army to
defeat this you know, this evil monster, and then today
to not get any recognition for it.

Speaker 7 (01:02:07):
I just yeah, I've got two thoughts on that. The
first is that Canada was a middle power in the
Second World War. There's no way to say that we
weren't one of the big boys, but it is fair
to say that we punched well about our weight.

Speaker 8 (01:02:23):
I mean.

Speaker 7 (01:02:25):
A little over a million people and one hundred thousand
and sorry, eleven million people and a million people in uniform.
Canada did its part and then some. We had an
important role to play in the war. If I had
to say I said the Shelter campaign was our most
important campaign, I would say the British Commonwealth Air Training Program,

(01:02:47):
which took place in Canada, where we trained British Empire pilots, aircrew, bombardiers,
navigators during the war, was probably our most important contribution
during the war. Some one hundred and thirty thousand airmen
were trained during the colasure of the war and were
absolutely crucial in feeding the Allied Air forces Bomber Command

(01:03:09):
and Fighter Command and Second Tactical Air Force and everything
like that. And that doesn't even get into the role
of Canadian industry played during the war. Everything the Americans built,
almost everything Canadian factories were building. We built some four
hundred the equivalent of a liberty ship, millions of sorry,

(01:03:32):
hundreds of thousands of trucks, thousands of tanks, thousands of aircraft.
The hell Driver, the Curtis hell Driver used by the
US Navy. Nearly a thousand of those were built in
Canada for the US Navy. Like the economic input of
Canada was absolutely crucial, as were the raw materials. We had, iron, oil, aluminum,

(01:03:56):
farm products, you name it. We were providing those to
the Allies, lend lea's to the Soviets, stuff like that.
Absolutely essential to the overall Allied war effort, and very
little of that gets talked about.

Speaker 6 (01:04:12):
It's a lot easier to train your pilots when you
don't have measurements flying around.

Speaker 7 (01:04:16):
Absolutely we had the space, but I mean we went
from having a very limited air industry in Canada in
nineteen thirty nine to having dozens of airfields hundreds of
schools built up right from coast to coast, especially in
the prairies where it was just wide open flat land,

(01:04:36):
ideal for training pilots. But it was an absolutely crucial contribution.
And then I guess the other point, and maybe this
is a good way to close it. You mentioned Tim
Cook earlier. Tim is one of our great Canadian historians
right now. He's the chief historian at the Canadian War
Museum up in Ottawa, a good friend of mine, and

(01:04:57):
he's just written a book called The Good Ally, And
I don't know if we could have a more timely book,
but it looks at Canadian and US relations during the
Second World War and how close they were. He looks
at it on the home front, relations between our Prime
Minister Mackenzie King and your president FDR. He looks at

(01:05:18):
it on an industrial cooperation, he looks on it on
economic cooperation, he looks at it on battlefield cooperation. And
he's not telling just a positive story. There were certainly
ups and downs during the war, but for two sovereign nations,
I'm not sure there's any example of two sovereign nations
working better together and more closely together. For the prosecution

(01:05:42):
of the Second World War than happened between Canada and
the US during the Second World War. And it's an
absolutely amazing story and I highly recommend his book to
all of your people. I think, yeah, I think that's
a pretty good way to end that. Got any more questions.

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
We actually don't have. I don't have any more questions.
Both of you have any more questions, but we do
have a member question. This one comes from our dear
friend and I think mutual friend, Norma Graham. And it
actually it's actually Norma who inspired a lot of the
discussions that we've had here, you know, her constant kind
of prodding it at the you know, at US, what

(01:06:24):
about Canada? What about Canada? What about Canada? And so
all the love in the world to Norma. Her question
for you, Mike is what does Mike think was so
special or extraordinary about Canadians in the war?

Speaker 7 (01:06:40):
Well, thanks very much for the question. Thanks Norma. I'm
I'm a big fan of Norma. Norma is a librarian.
I'm not sure that she's retired yet, but in semi retirement,
and she's just decided to go back to school to
do her master's in history. So I was really keen
and eager to learn and everything I respect about that normally,

(01:07:01):
that's a great question. I think a lot of what
I've been talking about already today addresses that question. But
I think the biggest thing is the fact that the
vast majority of Canadians were volunteers. I mean, here is
this war that is taking place overseas is not an
immediate threat to Canada. There's no chance that the war
is going to come to Canada in the near term.

(01:07:24):
I don't think there's any chance that we were ever
going to be conquered or taken over by the Germans
or the Japanese, even despite the fears that were revealed
in the press at the time, Canada could have safely
set out the war and been none the worse for it.
But we didn't. We jumped into the war right from

(01:07:45):
almost day one, and the vast majority of Canadians who
fought overseas, whether it be in Europe or in Africa
or the Pacific, were volunteers. That These were men and
women who gave up everything in their lives, left their families,
left their jobs, went into a situation where they didn't

(01:08:08):
know if they were even going to come home because
it was the right thing to do because Western society
was being challenged. Most didn't know about the Jews at
the time, but it was clear that bad things were
happening in Germany and bad things would continue to happen
if the Germans weren't stopped, if the Japanese weren't stopped.

(01:08:30):
So Canadians answered the call. They volunteered in large numbers
to go and get the job done. As distasteful as
it might be.

Speaker 4 (01:08:40):
I always make the joke. You know.

Speaker 6 (01:08:41):
It's sure as hell beats my nine to five. You know,
I might as well go across the pond with some
natzi ass, you know. And I always make the joke.
I said, you know, my biological clock is ticking, my
male urge to go volunteer somewhere and go dial to
European dattlefields.

Speaker 4 (01:08:57):
It's ticking. I'm getting older, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:09:00):
Uh, but no, I think you're I think you're incredibly
uh incredibly right.

Speaker 4 (01:09:04):
Hit the hammer on the mail have.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Bear well, you see the banner, You go ahead and
do it. I've well, I.

Speaker 6 (01:09:11):
Have to ask our guest first, because it's just what
we do. Politely, Mike. We have the segment on the
show called what's in your cup? So we have to
ask what you know what? This is probably the question
I've most been looking forward to today. And uh, yeah,
I have a pint of Bow's Lug Tread, a local Canadian.
I'm not quite trying to call it a micro brewery.

Speaker 7 (01:09:33):
It's a small brewery in eastern Ontario, up between Ottawa
and sort of halfway between Ottawa and Montreal. And this
is a loggered ale and it's one of my favorite
pints or none right now. It's just a really delightful drink.

Speaker 6 (01:09:51):
Well, by the way, my address is one whatever you
want to send that beer to me? The show notes, Yeah, Joey,
what do you got?

Speaker 4 (01:10:02):
Man?

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
As usual, I'll continue to let you down.

Speaker 8 (01:10:10):
A little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
This time, I didn't want to feel like it was oh,
it just brewed a cup of tea, So it was tea,
but I muddled up some blueberries and some blackberries and
it's just a big mug of antioxidants.

Speaker 6 (01:10:25):
While I'm on the other end of the spectrum, one's
got tea, one's got beer. And I said, let me
go to the hard stuff. As you probably learned in
our past episode with chas Mana, my my youngest brother,
Brady works at a place called Total Wine, which is
an alcoholics dream, except that alcoholics go to meetings and

(01:10:47):
I have yet to go to one. But he brought
uh it's actually a gift for my wife, but uh,
it's called and they had to bring it, you know,
to show you know, everybody too. It's called Elvis Midnight
Snack and it's a peanut butter, banana and bacon flavored whiskey.
I was so scared to try this because I'm like,
I like all three of those things. I love peanut butter,

(01:11:10):
I like bananas, and I like bacon. But sometimes when
you squish all of those ingredients together, it doesn't always hit.

Speaker 4 (01:11:17):
It's kind of like fruitcake. You know, Fruit's good. Cake
is great. You know something in the middle fruitcake.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
Is you know, kind of second time this week you've
use that.

Speaker 6 (01:11:26):
Is But it's true though, and it shows my disdain
for fruitcake. Don't don't don't send me that mean beer instead.
But you know what, this has a lot of banana
flavoring in it. I'm not sure what to think about it,
but I mean I drank it all you know what
was in my cup? So you know what mad bad.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
Fair enough. Well, Mike, this has been great and just
so listeners and viewers, now, where can they find some
more resources? Where can they get in touch with you?
And you know, where can they fall along with your work?

Speaker 8 (01:12:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (01:12:00):
For sure, I'm mostly on Blue Sky now. It's Mike
dash spect told at Blue Sky whatever that stuff is
posting there a fair bit. My big monograph is a
history of Raymond Caulli Shaw called Flying the Victory. That's
out and later this fall I've got an edited collection

(01:12:22):
coming out from Naval Institute Press on airpower in the
Normandy campaign, which I'm looking forward to seeing the light
of day.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):
Awesome, and I know I think I can speak for
about we're looking forward to seeing that too.

Speaker 7 (01:12:36):
Bo.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
Always a pleasure. Mike, thanks so much for coming on
and for all of you sitting at home listening and watching.
We'll catch you next time.

Speaker 4 (01:12:46):
Cheers everybody.

Speaker 8 (01:12:47):
Thanks guys.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Whole crew, that whole crew, talking about whole crew and
reminding the total crew a history pod cast going back
to the past.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
With ritlest cast. It might leave you a gass Are
you biting inspired?

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
But you'll never get tired of whole crew, That whole crew.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Top scholars on show with Joey and Boo. That's cold crew,
whole crew,