June 6 +79 Years

 

Juno Beach Centre, Courseulles-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, on its twentieth anniversary.

History of Canada and the American Civil War

Filmmaker and writer Julian Sher, who had a lively piece in the April-May 2023 Canada's History on a Canadian corner of the American Civil War, has also had a series of articles in the Globe and Mail on a similar topic.  He's a little more confrontational in the newspaper pieces, which expose Canadian complicity in the Confederacy's pro-slavery secessionist campaign.

He does makes a strong case for the pro-slavery views and support for the Confederacy of more than a few prominent Canadians. But I thought the series a little one-sided (as an editor titled it: "The American Civil War was Canada's Fight Too. And We Were on the Wrong Side."   It did seem to skimp on coverage of serious reasons why British North America had concerns about a heavily-armed United States with strong and enduring annexationist views regarding the provinces to the north. (He does acknowledge there were abundant Canadian supporters of the Northern cause, if briefly.)

So I was pleased to see a couple of letters to the editor making precisely this point, one signed by Alan McCullough of Ottawa, a friend of this blog. 

Sher's most vivid story of a Canadian Confederate ally concerns prominent Torontonian George Denison, who spared no effort to support the south and the cause of slavery.  Good to see the DBC Denison entry has this covered well, and notes that Denison's southern loyalties ruined his chances for military preferment in Canada. (There's still a Denison Avenue in downtown Toronto.)

History of shooting your generals

In Simon Sebag Montefiore's chatty/horrifying biography Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar from 2003, built largely from the remarkable wealth of first-person anecdote and memoir that survives from Stalin and his circles, there's a brief account of the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland in October 1939. The comparisons to Putin's invasion of Ukraine are striking.

The plan was to reduce Finland to a Soviet satellite state, as had just been done to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In this case, however, the Finns did not surrender, and an invasion was required. Ten to twelve days were allotted to the task: five Soviet armies attacking across an 800-mile frontier.  

It went much like Putin's strike at Kyiv in February 2022: "the ingenious Finns were slaughtering the Russians." By mid-December Stalin had lost about 25,000 men. His divisions ran out of food and ammunition, and either scattered or froze where they were. Finally in March 1940, a truce was reached in which the Finns conceded territory but preserved their independence. The Soviet Union lost over 125,000 troops. "The Red Army was good for nothing," Stalin later told Churchill and Roosevelt.

Remember all those senior advisors to Putin, who died by "falling out of windows" after the strike on Kyiv collapsed? During the "Winter War" in Finland, Stalin had a similar response but was more direct about it.

Mekhlis arrived in Suomussalmi to find chaotic scenes which he made worse. He confirmed the losses and shot the whole command. The sentence of shooting was performed publicly.

This is the horrifying part of Montefiore's book: the scale of Stalin's endless slaughter, which does indeed seem to put Putin's killings in the shade. And Stalin's went on for decades, in peace as in war. Montefiore makes the case that it was a matter of policy for Stalin that executing vast numbers of people really did motivate the survivors. Even with the German army at the gates of Moscow, Stalin was killing his own troops almost as fast as the Germans were.

There is a myth that the only time Stalin ceased the war against his own people was during 1941 and 1942, but during this period 994,000 servicemen were condemned, and 157,000 shot, more than fifteen divisions.  

By 1942, Stalin began to grasp he should leave military and logistical planning to his generals, and the Soviet Union began to turn the tide against Germany. There's not much evidence for Putin and Pregoryn having learned this, but it might yet start to happen. But unlike Putin, Stalin had an enormous flow of American armaments on his side, not against him.

History of Memorials

Last week, about the time my Twitter feed was including reminders of the anniversary of the start of the First World War, we were driving along quiet country backroads on Manitoulin Island (you should go) and came across the site of a local township's 1920s war memorial, which has gradually become the island's "Memorial Corner"  -- including, across the street from the usual memorial, this extensive tribute to women's services in the twentieth century wars -- something I'd never seen before. 

No matter how small the community, anywhere, the lists of names from the First World War are always long, and the one here includes a notable number of Odjigs and Migwans and other names from Manitoulin's substantial Anishnaabe communities.

1914 in 2022

In 2015, when the centenary of the First World War was still in the news, I blogged about a book that argued Britain had prepared an elaborate non-military strategy by which to kneecap Germany if a European war started. In Planning Armageddon, historian Nicholas Lambert set out a British plan to use Britain's immense influence over what then existed of a global financial network.  Germany would be frozen out of all financial transactions, and its ability to wage war would quickly be stifled without Britain having to engage either its navy or army.

But when war actually started, the barons of the London financial world blanched at the prospect of having to close down most of the system that they lived on.  They convinced the government the financial system was too important to be risked in war. So Britain sent an expeditionary force to be annihilated in Flanders instead.

Is it knowledge of the slaughter of the trenches, or awareness of the nuclear threat, that permitted the Euro-American financial system  to be marshalled against Russia in 2022, instead of NATO's air forces and armoured divisions?  

Here's the original post from 2015. I never read much of Lambert's book, but it comes back to me now.  

History of Ukraine; history of Russia... AND history of USA (updated)

Still flying! Slava Ukraini!

A couple of days ago the most hopeful thing I could think was that Mr Putin's seizure of Ukraine could very well be the beginning of his own downfall -- on the theory that Russia is not capable of garrisoning Ukraine, and Belarus, and Chechnya, and Kazakhstan, and all the other places simultaneously. Also that the more the Russian people see of Ukraine, the more they would decide to be like Ukrainians than like Russians.

Now I wonder if a Russian failure to speedily subdue Ukraine -- or dare one hope, fail entirely -- will bring the same result even more speedily.

Also, it does feel like the first Twitter war, doesn't it? I don't follow Twitter very extensively, but what it offers seems more immediate that anything the news networks have been offering. (Not that I follow them too closely either, so could be wrong all round)

Update, February 28:  Is this crisis also becoming a win for President Biden? 

In February the White House did three things very loudly. One, it began declaring that Russia was absolutely about to invade Ukraine. Two, it declared no American troops would be involved. Three, it declared the US would support Ukraine.

All three exposed Biden to criticism. One: Nonsense, Putin ain't crazy, and armoured divisions don't roll across Europe any more.  Two: Weakness! Biden's unilateral disarmament represents American weakness! Three: Ineffectual. All aid short of help, typical.

All three policies now look good. One: 'nuff said.  Two: Americans reasonably appreciate their troops not being thrown into every war.  Also: thermonuclear war is worth avoiding. Also, looks like American troops may not be needed. Three: the support that the American-led coalition is giving Ukraine is really helping Ukraine, is really devastating Russia, and is really uniting and toughening the western alliance.  

Of course, all three successes are built on the successes of Ukraine in mounting such effective and inspirational resistance to the invasion. (Though it's not over!) Still, the Biden administration seems to have read the situation accurately, anticipated wisely, and publicly placed itself in all the right positions.

Isn't it reassuring that there seems to be a non-crazy person in the White House, calmly executing a long strategy that actually works? (Caveat: American politics/media being what it is, don't expect this analysis to become widely held in the United States!)  

Update, March 4.  I saw a Twitter -- unsaved, now gone -- that said, more or less: "Can't believe it's taken me six year to get a Ph.D and now everyone on twitter has got one in Eastern European geopolitics in four days."  After I stopped laughing, I thought it was worth remembering.  

Image:  Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Wartime films and records for November 11

 
Ancestry.ca announces that until Remembrance Day it is making available free substantial collections of Canadian Second World War records, images, and newsreels.

Leading up to Remembrance Day, Ancestry Canada is providing free access to new and existing Canadian World War II record collections. These new collections include 2,500 images and more than 100 newsreels depicting scenes from combat and routine life during WWII.

For the first time, the collections are indexed, making it easier for Canadians to directly search visual war footage by name and connect these visual records to family trees on Ancestry. The footage in the collections provides a unique perspective into how our ancestors lived and experienced the war.

They will doubtless want some kind of trial membership in exchange for the access, and then they will market subscriptions to you mercilessly. I admit I have become hooked on the ease of researching the basic life details of just about anybody through Ancestry, but it can be accessed via public or academic libraries for occasional use.   

Update, same day: Also, the Canadian War Museum has a lot of online and onsite Remembrance Day programming to offer.  No subscription there.

HIroshima at 75

Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. History News Network has complied an extensive reading list -- "Hiroshima: What People Think Now" -- on scholarly and journalist opinion about the necessity and the strategic effectiveness (and hence, to some extent, the morality) of the bombing. No consensus, let us say.

It's pretty clear, I think, that the simple "Hiroshima = Japanese Surrender" equation does not stand up well.  But the argument that, well, Japan might have surrendered even without the atomic bomb, is not very satisfying either, and hardly takes seriously the dilemma of those who made the atomic decisions. 

I find myself kind of sympathetic to an American blogger Kevin Drum, who wrote yesterday:

In some sense, the real answer here is probably unknowable. Two events happened at nearly the same time, and they were closely followed by a third. Figuring out conclusively what caused what may simply not be possible.

Something not often drawn into this discussion is the long-term impact of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In August 1945, there was still some sense, even in the Japanese high command, that the destruction of Hiroshima was not much different in kind that the destruction of Dresden or Tokyo by conventional bombing. It took, maybe, gradual understanding of and empathy for the actual horrors of nuclear warfare, and the experience of the Japanese cities and their survivors, to create a global reluctance to actually use nuclear weapons again -- a reluctance that has lasted 75 years so far.

Assume no atom bombing and a quick Japanese surrender ending the war.  Without the image of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how much greater the likelihood that some Cold War Strangelove would have gone ahead with use of tactical nuclear weaponry, or the hydrogen bomb, or the Doomsday Machine?

Is it acceptable to think that the destruction of those cities spared the rest of us from unknowable horrors? Deep waters.

Remembrance

Further to the musings below about the freedom to think thoughts that may not be officially Canadian, I note Geoff Read's post about Remembrance Day, at Active History today:

[T]he assertion that the cenotaph symbolizes all Canadians who have sacrificed “in the cause of peace and freedom—past, present, and future,” serves to legitimate not just Canadian participation in World War One, but all Canadian military actions since then. Accordingly, it behooves us to think critically about the notion that the over 66,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders who died in the Great War sacrificed themselves for the cause of freedom.

Whatever you are remembering, take a moment at 11:00 this morning.

I was looking today at the Toronto poppy map, the one that puts a poppy on every Toronto home with a casualty from either World War or Korea.  For the Second World War alone, there's a poppy next door, one just down the block, one around the corner, one across the back fence....

Image: from Wikipedia.

History of Pelee Island (with update)

Mostly swamp once, and the battlefield was off to the left, somehow

The blogger has been travelling more and posting less lately, and anyway these are the dog days when nobody's history blog seems very active (or generating many hits, either, 'tseems)

But a small gleaning from the travel:

I learned (who knew?) that there was actually a battle on and for Pelee Island in Lake Erie once. It was not in the War of 1812 but during the 1838 skirmishes that followed the rebellions of 1837. Where your sympathies lie may depend on your view of those conflicts, but the British and Canadian forces drove their rivals off the island and back to the US of A.  It was winter. All troops on both sides got to the island on foot across the ice. Most of the battle was fought on the ice rather than on the land.  Casualties included "fell through, drowned."

Also much of Pelee Island was originally marsh and swamp.  Its modern shape and size are the result of extensive diking and draining in the late 19th century, and the pumps are still running to keep (most of) it that way.

Which suggests: there is pretty much nowhere that people won't fight over if they get the chance.  And there has always been remarkable enthusiasm for creating new land, even when there is lots of the old stuff available not far away and seemingly more conveniently situated.

As you may guess, Pelee Island Heritage Centre is a pretty terrific local history museum where we spent quite a while the other day.We were the only people there but it's a quiet island. Crowds were larger at the winery tour, but not by so much.

Update, August 16:  Chris Raible comments:

Chris, you are, alas, not alone in not realizing how many Rebellion battles were fought along the Upper Canada/United States border in 1838, that is after defeats of December 1837. Navy Island set the pattern for several incursions that followed that winter/spring- invade an Upper Canadian island in order to establish a base on British territory that could be fairly easily defended and also fairly easily supplied from the US.

In addition to Navy Island in the Niagara River there were invasions of Bois Blank and Fighting Island in the Detroit River, Hickory Island in the St. Lawrence, and, as you noted, Pelee Island. They were not fighting to create "new land" but to establish launching points for larger battles on the mainland. All failed and the next wave of invasions (summer and fall of 1838) were full land invasions - Short Hill (Niagara Peninsula), the Windmill (near Brockville), and Windsor - all intended to stir up the local population and re-ignite the fires of Rebellion.

All these border incursions - dubbed "Patriot Wars" by their participants and sympathizers - were disastrous, largely because they were not supported, but were firmly discouraged, by the American government that had no interest in another war with Great Britain. They did, however, demonstrate that, in the border states of Michigan, Ohio, New York and Vermont, there was strong American support for the Canadian cause. You undoubtedly know that many rebellion participants were sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen's Land. You may not know that of  those who actually made the full trip - that is, who did not escape or be legally released en route - none were December 1837 rebels but rather men captured in failed 1838 raids - and most of these were not Upper Canadians, but Americans. Thanks, Chris, for reminding us all that there is much more to the whole Rebellion story than the debacle at Montgomery's Tavern.

A Remembrance

Right about now, the Law Society of Upper Canada is holding a ceremony to call to the bar posthumously all the law students who enlisted for service in the First World War and never returned: sixty of them, no less.

Law Times covers the event and lawyer Patrick Shea, who did the research to find who they all were

How's the war(s) going?

If you are still following the War of 1812+200, it's still out there. The British have just opened their siege of Fort Erie, Upper Canada, still held by the Americans despite their recent reverses on the Niagara Peninsula. The White House is soon to burn. Peace negotiations have recently begun at Ghent in Belgium.

That other war much in the news lately will go quiet for Canadians for a while. Now that we are through August 4, 1914+100, the war doesn't really start for Canadians until next spring, with the second Battle of Ypres and the first massive Canadian casualties.

Not so for the Europeans. In August 1914, the French army lost about 75,000 killed, more than Canada would lose in the entire war, and the other European powers were not far behind. That's just the western front, with all kinds of conflict in the Balkans, the Russian front, and even Togoland, occupied by Britain and France in August 1914. As they say, war has always been a reliable way of teaching young men geography.

How to remember the First World War

Cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead was Robert Graves's way:

Armistice night hysteria did not touch our camp much, though some of the Canadians stationed there went down to Rhyl to celebrate in true overseas style. The news sent me out walking alone along the dyke above the marshes of Rhuddlan (an ancient battlefield, the Flodden of Wales), cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead

                                                                                --- from Goodbye to All That.

 

Maclean's: What if they did the First World War over, and nobody came?

Wouldn't that be the best possible outcome?

Maclean's doesn't think so.  In the current issue but not online, Peter Shawn Taylor offers "Could We Do It Again?", a paranoid screed about the heroic way that hundreds of thousands of Canadians loyally volunteered to be sent off to the slaughter -- and about how Canadians today lack the discipline and moral fibre to do the same thing again.

Any attempt to put Canada's effort in the Great War in modern perspective runs headlong into the uncomfortable question of whether we still retain that apparently boundless capacity for suffering and commitment we displayed from 1914 to 1918.  Would Canadians today answer a call to duty for a national project the size, scope, and duration of the Great War?

Kids today!

Taylor interviewed several leading historians  -- Tim Cook, Jonathan Vance, Don Drummond, John English, Jack Granatstein -- and while interviewees don't get to control what an interviewer makes of their comments, it is discouraging that none of them moved Taylor to any consideration of the notion that for Canadians to have refused to provide unlimited amounts of cannon fodder to a self-defeating participation in Europe's dynastic struggles would have been A GOOD THING.

The best he can get is John Manley, "rare eminence grise of Canadian politics," confidently predicting that kids aren't so bad and really could be roused to serve in a great national cause. But surely "Could we refuse to do it this time?" would be a better question to be asking .

Is a salute to Ready, Aye, Ready really going to be the theme of Canada's WW1 centenary? Maclean's believes it should be. Andrew Cohen seems to buy in.

Image: The Independent

Update, July 31:  Russ Chamberlayne comments:

Judging by what appeared in the Calgary Herald in August 1914, the opening of World War I elicited horror in a substantial part of the population. The Herald published poetry (a literary form long missing from opinion pages) with the most evocative titles and texts. The poem "The Wail of the Mothers" repeated the line, "Oh, give me back my son!" Elsewhere in the Herald's August pages, another poem — titled "Peace!" — began with these lines:

Great God of Peace and Love, how long shall man
Shed blood of man for paltry pomp of power,
And earth be rife with warfare, and the land
Filled with the tears of widowed hearts, that cry
To Thee in bitter agony for aid?

The paper also printed the brooding "War From Its Inglorious Side." It contained lines such as: "I was conceived in passion, hatred, envy and greed, born in the morning of antiquity, and have a genealogy whose every page drips with the red blood of murdered innocence. I lay waste the green fields and still the hand of industry."...

Remember that these clear-sighted cris de coeur were published before the reality of
slaughter became apparent. How many of us would be that perceptive and passionate
today?

Germani on WW 1

Canadian Journal of History offers temporary free online access to a review of five recent books (including Margaret MacMillan's) on the First World War by Ian Germani of U Regina.
(h/t H-Canada)

Who is pro-First World War?

The Toronto Sun has a headline today: "NDP MP stands firm on anti-First World War blog post".

Is someone out there pro-First World War? "Hey that would be a great idea. Let's have another First World War."

The "anti-WW1" blog post in question regrets "the thousands of poor bastards who got themselves massacred for a hill" (my translation). "Il n’y a que le « sacrifice » et la « bravoure » à célébrer." 

I'm with Prime Minister Borden on this one.He called the First World War "the suicide of civilization."  And that was before it even got started. Pretty amazing there are people who have had 99 years to think about it, and still seem to be chafing for another one.

Vimy96, Ancestry, and a new HistoryBlog

Canadian artillery at Vimy (Wikipedia: Vimy Ridge)

Tomorrow being the 99th 96th (sorry)anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge, Ancestry.ca is offering free access to its records relevant to the First World War for the next few days.

And here with the details about it is a new to me HistoryBlog: DavidCarrigg.ca  Carrigg is a Vancouver journalist particularly interested in Australian and Canadian experiences of the First World War -- having had ancestors in both armies. He has been blogging steadily for a while on many aspects of WW1 history.

Dieppe August 19, 1942

It is good that every few years we get a new book or film about the ill-fated Dieppe raid of seventy years ago today. It If Canadians don't study it, few others will do it for us.

The latest big book is Dennis O'Keefe's Dieppe Decoded, to be published next year and being promoted currently. New books on Dieppe often need a new angle, often announcing the real reason for the raid was a deep secret only now to be revealed.  O'Keefe's book seems to be in this category.  Seemingly it takes the view that Dieppe, like most of the rest of the war in some theories, was really driven by secret intelligence, Bletchley Park, and the Enigma machine. The Man called Intrepid is not mentioned, but Ian Fleming is.

On the whole I prefer the traditional explanation:  the Allies wanted to reassure Stalin by some action on the Second Front, or at least showing the difficulties facing a Second Front in 1942. And they wanted to test the possibilities of seizing a defended French port, even temporarily.  As the late John Keegan once argued, the main lesson learned from Dieppe was not to try anything like that again.

I've been intermittently following the daily blogging at World War II Day-by-Day. Its interest is in its dailyness: tracking all the various parts of the conflict as they rise and fall and interact.  So the Guadalcanal battle was shaping up in the Pacific. The siege of Leningrad and battles in the Caucasus were raging. Desperate efforts to provision Malta were continuing. There was the continuous steady attrition of bombers over Germany and of merchant ships and submarines all over the world. Suddenly, today, in the midst of all that, Dieppe explodes.  Reading newspapers in the 1940s must have been a harrowing experience.

Not compared to what guys like the assault forces at Dieppe faced, however.

More names for the Ridgeway memorial

Peter Vronsky, the author of Ridgeway: the American Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle that Made Canada, has redone the calculations and now offers a tally of not nine but thirty-one fatal casualties of the June 2, 1866 battle near Fort Erie, Ontario, between Canadian volunteers and American-Irish Fenians.  The larger number comes from adding deaths from disease and wounds consequent on the battle.

Vronsky says

The next step is to now see to it that the 31 Canadians who fell in defending Canada against a hostile invasion, are recognized for their service by enrolling their names into the National Books of Remembrance, identifying their current resting places, and securing their graves National War Grave status in perpetuity.

Part of the argument of Vronsky's book is that the Ridgeway soldiers were the first killed in action serving Canada under Canadian command -- "the baptism of the Canadian army."

Image: a contemporary representation but not an accurate one, from the Ridgeway battle website, 

War of 1812 live Twitter feed loaded and ready to fire

Canadianist and historyblogger Andrew Smith, now teaching in the UK, announces a day-by-day Twitter feed of the events of the War of 1812 (+200 years).

Andrew reports: 

Over the next three years, a team of undergraduates working under my direction will be live tweeting the War of 1812, plus 200. Events will be reported exactly 200 years to the day after they took place….  Our tweets will include links to digitised primary sources related to the event being discussed. (For instance, on 18 June 2012 we will send out a tweet to a scanned image of President Madison’s formal declaration of war against Britain). The aim is to get readers to explore that vast number of primary sources that have been placed online in the last decade. Most of the online primary sources we will link to are materials from US, British, and Canadian archives.

Andrew hopes the twitter feed will help bring “the great wealth of online primary sources about the war to the attention of the public” (and also give some undergraduates experience in digital public history, “while putting some cash into their pockets.”) 

The twitter feed will be @Warof1812Live. The related blog, Warof1812Live is here. Having looked into this kind of project myself and flinched from the amount of work required, I'm delighted to see Andrew applying his organizational skills to this.  I wish his team well and I'll be looking in.

The war starts June 18. Keep your powder dry.


Update, May 30:  Charles Levi tells me that the Archives of Ontario has begun to tweet from the 1812-era diary of Ely Playter, York-area farmer and militiaman @elyplayter1812

[Image: Wikipedia via Warof1812Live.]