Dan Snow's History Hit - The Forgotten Ally: Canada

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Tim Cook joined me on the pod to discuss how Canadian contributions are frequently overlooked or diminished in discussions of the War. Most major war histories are written by British or American authors, who give little credit to the Canadians as a separate fighting force.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We've got Tim Cook on the podcast today. I'm very pleased to say he's one of Canada's foremost historians of the First and Second World War. He's written a dozen books, including a three-volume work on Canada in the First World War. He's now smashed out the last of his multi-volume history of Canada in the Second World War. He and I had a chat about why Canada is overlooked as an ally, its contribution in the war, its massive navy by the end of the war, its army that liberated great chunks of Western Europe 1944 to 45, it tends to be forgotten. And actually why it's overlooked in Canada itself, as a Canadian citizen. And it's a great conversation to have. If you want to listen to all the back episodes of this podcast or watch History Hit TV

as we move into a very busy week next week with the 400th anniversary of Mayflower and the 80th anniversary of Battle of Britain. We've got lots of new programs dropping. Then please head over to History Hit TV. It's like Netflix for history, only better really in many ways. And if you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you'll get a month for free and then your second month is one pound, euro or dollar. So please go and check that out. the meantime everyone enjoy tim cook tim great great to have on your podcast it's been it's been too long we've had a long time ago in the flesh but it's great to have you on the podcast now thank you very much yeah great to great to reconnect with you i think it was about 10 years ago in Canada, and you had your book and I had mine, and those were good times.

They were good times, man. And you, since then, have established yourself as Canada's premier historian of the Second World War, well, of 20th century military history, I'd say. What's the latest project? Well, the new book is called The Fight for History, and it's the third volume in my series on the Second World War, Canada and the Second World War. And you might remember 10 years ago, I had a two-volume on the Great War that came out, back-to-back. And I said, never again, Dan. I'm not going to ever write books back-to-back. Well, I did that with the Second World War, and now I've added a third volume. And the title is important, The Fight for History. It's about the memory of the Second World War in Canada. It's about the very strange way that Canada talked about the war, and as I argue in the book, largely left the war uncelebrated, and that's a strange thing. Canada in the Second World War had 1.1 million Canadians in uniform. That's from a

country of 11 million, fought around the globe, on the seas, on land campaigns, in the air, massive production on the home front, standing by Britain from the first week in the war. And yet, this is a war that was rapidly left behind in 1945. You and I have talked about this in the past, but it's so crazy. You'll be glad to know, Tim, I'm holding up the line here. When anyone ever says Britain stood alone, I'm like, the largest country in North America, in the Americas, was on Britain's side from the first week till the last day of the Second World War. Let's not forget that. And actually, I had a chat with someone the other day of the Second World War. Like, let's not forget that. And actually, I had a chat with someone the other day,

and I pointed out, you know, I was talking about Juneau Beach, Canadian beach, and they're like, I didn't know the Canadians had a beach on D-Day. I mean, you know, the impact that the Canadians had in the Second World War is extraordinary. I mean, just give us a sense of how big the Navy got to, for example, by the end of the Second World War. Before the war, Canada, deeply affected by the Depression, poor, not willing to really build up its military. And during the course of the war, goes from a Navy almost non-existent to 100,000 sailors, over 400 warships.

I like to tell Canadians this, that our contributions in the Battle of the Atlantic, absolutely crucial for keeping Britain in the war with food and munitions. By the midpoint of the war, about half of the convoys are being shepherded across by Royal Canadian Navy warships. And of course, there's the Merchant Navy as well. And these are some of the stories you mentioned there, Juneau Beach and the Canadians landing with the British and the Americans and really a key event, as we know, a turning point in the war in Western Europe. And yet Canadians have done a poor job in telling these stories. As I talk about in the book, The Fight for History, after an initial burst of a few journalistic histories, which were bestsellers, Canada moved forward into a period of prosperity. We didn't build the same memorials to the Second World War generation like we did to the Great War. We didn't

write the same books. We didn't have the same novels and plays. And we really fell down on television and film. And we know a film like The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan can have a tremendous impact on the social memory around a conflict. And here, I really argue that this is, for the most part, about 50 years, a self-inflicted wound by Canadians who ignored their own history, or when they focused on it, they focused on defeat and disgrace. My grandpa was on a Royal Canadian Navy. He was one of those men escorting the convoys across the Atlantic back and forward on a Royal Canadian Navy ship. And his personal journey was he never put his medals on again,

never put a uniform on again or a blazer. He left it and moved on with his life. Why do you think there was something peculiarly Canadian about that? Yeah, it's something I've been trying to get at. I think, like you, I've always enjoyed speaking to veterans of any war, of any conflict. The eyewitnesses to history can tell us so much, and so much of that hidden history that doesn't come out in the official records. I love to spend time in the archives and looking through that material. But when I speak to veterans, they can tell me so much.

And I've asked that story. Did when I speak to veterans, they can tell me so much. And I've asked that story. Did you feel like a veteran? You know, you're a 25-year-old guy. You'd spent two years, let's say, in the bow of the Atlantic. What was it like to come home? And of course, they were young people. They were moving forward. In Canada, we enjoyed a great period of prosperity that directly comes out of the Second World War. We went into the Second World War, as I mentioned, as a poor country, suffering from the Depression, the wartime industry and production, putting 1.1 million Canadians in uniform. On the other side of this, Canada emerges as a very different nation. And we were moving forward, not looking backwards.

And yet, unlike other countries, I think of Britain, I think of the United States, that talked about their stories, that presented their history, that engaged in cultural products. Canada didn't do that. So I was trying to figure out why was that? Because it's not that Canadians haven't done that, for instance, for the Great War. The Great War is really a defining moment in Canadian history. The Battle of Vimy Ridge has sometimes been called the birth of the nation. I wrote a book on that. It's too much to say that, but really the Great War and Canada's contribution propels us forward.

And yet we didn't see the Second World War as the birth of a different nation, even though it was. And some of that is the veterans and the stories we told. I think some of it, just to come back to your question, is we have a greater sense now, I think, of post-traumatic stress disorder and the invisible injuries of war and how war imprints itself on people. And I've talked to veterans and many of them, and I write them into the book. They told me they had a hard time talking about the war. They didn't have the words and the grammar. and the people at home also didn't know how to ask those questions. And the argument I make is that it took about 40 to 50 years before those

veterans began to speak en masse about their experiences. I'm just wondering, talking to you now, Tim, whether there's something Canadian, you know, Britain, to a certain extent China, and obviously the USA, it was part of their political, their strategic conversation in the war. You know, either Britain was trying to stave off imperial decline or attempt to kind of reassert itself using its wartime experience on the global stage. The US used its wartime hegemony to sort of build on and go on to dominate the rest of the 20th century. I guess Canadian policymakers, Canadian leaders, Canadian cultural figures, they didn't have any, there was no kind of geopolitical axe to grind for Canada, right? So I guess things just turned more domestic, like how do we boost quality of life and infrastructure and healthcare?

Whereas the Brits, the American, these politicians, they kept using it to prove points and do things. prove points and do things. Yeah. And I talk about that in the book, the way that nations use wars as hinge points in their history to tell their stories, to create foundational myths. If we think of the Americans, as you say, and the hegemonic power that they embrace through the war, it's the good war. It's the war they won. It's a war that changed the modern world. If you think of the Soviet Union or now Russia, of course, the Great Patriotic War resonates in a very powerful way. In Britain, I think very much this idea of the underdog, the lone wolf standing against the Nazis. And as you mentioned on the front end, without the colonies and the dominions behind them, largely written out of the story. So nations use these. I think of Australia and Gallipoli in the First World War and Canada and Vimy in the First World

War. So you're right, there wasn't a compelling story. And on top of that, I argue in the book that the politicians of the day were largely afraid of this history. History has always been divisive. We see that today in the tearing down of monuments and the challenging of accepted stories and the embracing of new stories. This is a good thing. History is always changing. The meaning changes. For the Second World War in Canada,

strangely, there was a desire to leave it behind. It was divisive in some ways, I think in two prominent ways. With French Canada, it wasn't the same conscription crisis like in the Great War. And during the Second World War as well, we had the forced relocation of Japanese Canadians, although that was not a powerful story that resonated in the late 1940s, and it wouldn't come back around until the late 1970s. And yet, I think

you're right. The core point of it is that there wasn't a compelling story that was made to use the war to go forward. And that doesn't happen until much later. And the book's subtitle is called 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering and Remaking Canada's Second World War. And the remaking part, I would argue, is about over the last 25 years where Canadians have finally begun to pay more attention. Well, it's so fascinating. And you'll have had this experience. You go to parts of Holland and particularly on a big anniversary year,

and there's Canadian flags everywhere. And as a Canadian, which for those of you who don't know, I'm also a Canadian passport holder. I don't sound like it, but my mum was Canadian. And as a Canadian, your heart is just fit to burst. You can't believe this. And that's obviously because the Canadians played the lead part in the liberation of those parts of Holland. But it feels like the Dutch remember the Canadian contribution more than the Canadians.

I think you're right. The liberation story still resonates to this day in the Netherlands. Tremendous links between the two countries. And I write about this in the dark period in the book, in the 60s and 70s. And if we think of the anti-war reaction, largely to Vietnam and the rise of youth culture, in Canada, Remembrance Day was almost cancelled. There's debates in 1968 and 69 in major newspapers and in the House of Commons where they're saying, no one is coming out anymore. Nobody cares.

And the Royal Canadian Legion fought very hard against that. Other veterans, historically minded Canadians, and yet it simply did not resonate. And when Canadians fought a war, they thought of peacekeepers. This is another powerful symbol in Canada, one that I'm personally proud of. And yet the peacekeeper symbol is a very easy symbol that ignores the fact that Canada fought in six wars in the 20th century, the South African War,

the Great War, Second World War, Korean War, the Cold War, I suppose, the Gulf War in 1990, the Kosovo Campaign, 10, 11, 12, 14 years in Afghanistan, the 19th and 18th century, as you have written about, of course, deeply Canada's destiny shaped by war. And yet we changed the narrative and we embrace the idea of peacekeepers partially to distinguish ourselves from the Americans. And yet other countries remembered. And the key point here is that when the veterans returned to the Netherlands in 1995, that's a key event. key point here is that when the veterans returned to the Netherlands in 1995, that's a key event, the 50th anniversary marked widely around the world, Canadians woke up to find that thousands upon thousands of French and Dutch were coming out to greet the liberators. And that's a really, that's a significant change point where Canadians realized we had hundreds of thousands of veterans

who we had paid very little attention to, here they were these aged liberators greeted once again by those who they had brought freedom to in 1945. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies

teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week It's so difficult, isn't it, being so close to that lunar pull of American popular culture and how I bet many young Canadians would think about Hollywood movies featuring America, but before their own stories would think about the kind of, you know, the US stories. It's what I write about in the book. And, you know, you've been better than almost anyone at engaging people with history in a public history environment.

I work at the Canadian War Museum. I'm very proud to be there. We have a tremendous impact, about 500,000 visitors a year. I see the value of material culture and film and photographs and getting across stories. And yet, as you say quite correctly, Canada has never told its story on film very well. We have a national film board. We have a CBC, the equivalent to the BBC. And yet these agencies have almost never embarked upon this epic story. And I think it is an epic story. I'm not arguing that we need to create heroic, chest-thumping history, but nor should we run away from our history and nor should

we allow others to tell our history for us. I think that's important. And when I used to teach at university, everyone had seen Saving Private Ryan. Everyone had seen Band of Brothers. If we go back further, I imagine most people of an older generation saw The Longest Day. And I write about those films in the book, The Fight for History, because Canada was involved there. We think of D-Day and the Juno landings and the Royal Canadian Navy involved in Operation Neptune and the Air Force, both bombers and fighters above the battlefield. And yet they're largely written out of those stories. And I'm not naive.

I don't think that Canada can turn around and produce a Steven Spielberg or Tom Hanks to create a $200 million film. And yet we haven't tried very hard. That's part of the argument. And there were parts in this book where I was angry. I was angry that we had neglected the history. I was angry that we'd neglected our veterans. I was angry that we hadn't told our stories and we'd allowed others to tell stories. I uncovered this incredible account.

A veteran told me this about 15 years ago. He said, Tim, you know, when we came back, we tried to build a monument in Ottawa, where I live, the capital in Canada. And I'd never heard of that. And I lived in Ottawa all my life. And I began to research in the archives. And it was true. The Second World War veterans came back.

And we have a national monument, but it's directly linked to the Great War. There's 22 figures passing through an arch. They're all in uniform. And the veterans came back and they wanted their own separate memorial. And the government of the day turned them down. And they came back again 10 years later and there was another fight and they were turned down. So that's the frustrating part that I felt. And I think the good news is that in the last 25 years, there has been a remaking, a re-engagement with this complicated, contested history, and that Canadians have begun to pay more attention to the past. Although sadly, we have 1.1 million, we had 1.1 million veterans.

We're down to fewer than 30,000 now. It is, yeah, it's a sad thing to see that generation go. I mean, Tim, just on Canada's contribution, were there any areas in which Canada contributed an outsized amount? Or was it like adding 20% to British and Imperial armies, you know, across the board, you know, sort of Lancaster bombers, Spitfire pilots, whatever it might be? Or were there certain things that Canadians did really well and were asked to contribute more of? Well, I think it's a great question. And I think often Canadians and British fought together almost to up our side against the American weight and presence. And that seems quite obvious. I think Canada's contribution in the Battle of the Atlantic is absolutely crucial

to understanding the victory there and how we define victory. And victory is not in the defeating of the U-boats, of course. It is in getting the 25,000 vessels across the Atlantic, which I think is the number, to carrying the crucial war supplies. Canada had its own bomber command group, a six group, which was engaged in the massive attacks on German cities. And that has been controversial as well, as we know. I talk about that controversy in the book.

Less about the Canadian role there, but more in just the concept of bombing, which has become a focal point for some to question the good nature of the war. And of course, it was about the only means the Allies had to strike back against Germany up until about the midpoint of the war. And I guess First Canadian Army was Canada's major contribution. At one point, the commander Harry Crear commanded about 460,000 British American Canadian and other allied forces and always fighting with the British and I think the new scholarship that I have written and others make it quite clear if we think of just one one particular point the battle in Normandy where the British and the Canadians were drawing the best and most powerful German armored divisions to them to allow the Americans to break out,

for instance, with Operation Cobra, that Canada did really play a key role. I think the key caveat here that in the book, I'm not arguing that it should only be Canada's story. I'm not even arguing that Canada's story needs to supplant the British or the American story. That's just not the case. Canada contributed mightily to victory, and yet there were other larger armies and navies and air forces. And bad in a sense where we have ignored our own stories and contributions, where we have not done the hard work of presenting the history. And I think, as you know, history is tough work. We live in a modern age, a digital age, an age of instant gratification. It's tough to stop and to sit and reflect upon the past. But I believe that there are lessons here to guide us forward through difficult times.

And at the very least, in the case of this story of Canada's role in the Second World War, this is a moment to be both proud of and to feel great sorrow and grief at the loss, but to see how Canada contributed to what I have written and called the necessary war, a war that had to be won, an enemy that had to be defeated, and one in which Canada did its part. Tim, last question. How do you think, you mentioned prosperity, are there any other ways in which the war did change Canada? Yeah, I think the Second War fundamentally changes Canada. And I, perhaps the most important way, well, there's a number, And perhaps the most important way, well, there's a number, is that Canada becomes much more urbanized. And so the wartime production, of which more than three million Canadians were involved in wartime production, draws in Canadians from rural areas.

And up until the 1941 census, our census is every 10 years, Canada was considered still a rural country. So the war fundamentally changes that. It also divides Canada in a way where, because Britain is largely bankrupted by the war, that we turn to the Americans. I think the Canadian heart remains with the British Empire or Commonwealth for at least another 25 to 30 years. But there will be changes that we never come back from in terms of finance and really becoming a North American nation. There are other changes, but the other one I'll

focus on, I think, is the war, I think, like in Britain, saw massive state intervention in the lives of Canadians to win this very necessary war. And after the war, there was a peace dividend of sorts in the form of a stronger social security net to care for Canadians. And that may be its greatest legacy, in that the government intervention in the lives of Canadians fundamentally changes the nature of the country. And I suppose as a final thought, I think of the 1 million veterans. We had 1.1 million in uniform, 45,000 Canadians were killed in the war, 55,000 wounded badly. And they would move forward throughout the 20th century, building up the Canadian society, building up the economy.

The prosperity of the 20th century is in no small part to the veterans and their families. And that alone, I think, requires us to think about this war as a crucial event in the unfinished project that is Canada. Well, it's an honour to be part of that, a small part of that unfinished project. And you're a big part because you're the man telling it about its past and shaping its future. Tim, very good luck with the book. Tell us what it's called one more time. It's called The Fight for History, 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering and Remaking Canada's Second World War. And thanks very much, Dan, for having me on the show. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying, and I hate it when other podcasts do this,

but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart, which is good, and then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't want to subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't want to buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favour. Thanks.