Conscription Crisis of 1944
[1] Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King had been haunted by the way the Conscription Crisis of 1917 had fractured the Liberal Party between its English-Canadian and French-Canadian members.
During the 1930s, Mackenzie King had displayed what the Canadian historian Colonel John A. English called "an abiding aversion to conscription" and "an apparently unshakable conviction in the efficacy of appeasement", regarding another world war as "the ultimate catastrophe" for which no price was too high to avoid.
[6] King feared the civil and political unrest that had occurred during World War I, and also hoped to defeat nationalist Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis.
Historian J. L. Granatstein, in his book The Generals, suggests that a shortage of French-speaking staff trained officers meant that any attempt to create an entire Francophone brigade would have likely ended in failure.
In 1914, the drive to create the 22nd Infantry Battalion (French-Canadian) had necessitated large rallies of French Canadians and political pressure to overcome Minister Sam Hughes' abhorrence of the idea.
Drew, leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, urged the Canadian people to "face the shameful truth", that the two battalions of badly trained men sent to Hong Kong were a sign of the failure of King's policies and of the need for conscription for overseas service.
[23] In Hong Kong, the Canadian Army had lost 290 men, with 487 wounded and the rest held prisoner by the Japanese under horrific conditions, a majority[clarification needed] dying in captivity.
[32] On 27 April 1942, a plebiscite was held on the question, "Are you in favour of releasing the Government from any obligations arising out of any past commitments restricting the methods of raising men for military service?"
[33] The Ligue pour la Défense du Canada united the entire spectrum of political opinion in Quebec; some of its most effective speakers were André Laurendeau, Henri Bourassa, Jean Drapeau and a young Pierre Trudeau.
[34] One rally for the League in Montreal ended with speakers blaming Canada's Jewish community for dragging the country into a war with Nazi Germany that did not concern French-Canadians.
The proposal hardly received any support from French Canadians, especially in Quebec, where anti-conscription groups (including one led by Henri Bourassa, the most vocal opponent of conscription in 1917) convinced 72.9% of voters to oppose the plebiscite.
[28] A number of other Quebec Liberal MPs also left the party in 1942 over the conscription issue, many of whom joined the Bloc populaire canadien when it was formed that fall to campaign against the government.
Bennett sarcastically noted that this was the fourth Christmas in a row that the Canadian Army was sitting in Britain doing nothing, and that the only land battles that Canada had fought to date were Hong Kong and Dieppe, both of which were defeats.
The wargame umpires criticized McNaughton for leaving his headquarters to supervise the building of a bridge while his supply lines were caught up in a huge traffic jam.
Macklin, an officer tasked with "converting" Zombies into "going active", wrote in May 1944 that he experienced almost total failure persuading French-Canadians to do so, adding: "The great majority [of NRMA soldiers in other units] are of non-British origin—German, Italian, and Slavic nationalities predominating.
They are of deplorably low education, know almost nothing of Canadian or British history and in fact are typical European peasants...."[45] Granatstein wrote that the research supported Macklin's conclusions, if not his commentary.
The crisis began on 19 September 1944, when Major Conn Smythe, owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who had been invalided out of the Army following wounds received in France, issued a statement published on the front page in The Globe and Mail.
[53] In response, Defence Minister James Ralston decided to personally investigate reports of major infantry shortages by visiting Northwest Europe and Italy.
[54] Upon his return to Ottawa, he informed the Cabinet that the situation was far worse than he had been led to believe; front-line infantry regiments were so short of manpower that wounded men were being pulled out of hospitals and sent back to the front lines.
[57] Many soldiers were psychologically broken by the bloody fighting during the offensive, falling victim to battle exhaustion and refusing to move, making manpower shortages even worse.
[59] King added that sending any conscripts overseas would be a "criminal thing" that would cause a Canadian civil war, and lead to the United States stepping in to annex Canada.
[63] MacDonald tended to favor enacting conscription if it was necessary to win the war, but he was widely viewed as a possible future Prime Minister and wanted to avoid another 1917-style split in the Liberal Party, making him ambivalent about where he stood.
[65] King noted that Ralston and the other ministers who supported sending the Zombies overseas were all from the right wing of the Liberal Party and had also opposed his plans for a postwar welfare state, which he decided was evidence of a "reactionary conspiracy" to bring him down.
[52] Historian Desmond Morton wrote that King's rationale was legitimate, but the answers were far more complex than a conspiracy of right-wing cabinet ministers working to oust him in conjunction with the military.
[67] When the Cabinet met on the morning of 1 November 1944, King, who had only informed his Quebec lieutenant Louis St. Laurent in advance, suddenly announced that he now accepted Ralston's resignation, which had been submitted back in April 1942.
[69] Though asked to resign as commander of the First Canadian Army in 1943 after his disastrous Operation Spartan wargame performance, General McNaughton was a popular and well-respected war hero (the official story had been that he had retired for health reasons).
Historians Jack Granatstein and Desmond Morton noted that "news of Ralston's sacking put the conscription crisis on the front pages in screaming headlines.
[70] J. L. Ilsley, C. D. Howe, Angus Macdonald, Colin W. G. Gibson, Thomas Crerar, and William Pate Mulock all threatened resignation if King persisted with his current policies.
[70] King added that at once "there came to mind the statement that I had made to Parliament in June [1942] about the action the government would necessarily take if we were agreed that the time had come when conscription was necessary".
"[18] In the federal election on June 11, 1945, Progressive Conservative leader John Bracken proposed conscription for Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan, which badly hurt his chances.
