Part 8 - The Greatest War
As countries fought the Great Depression in the 1930s, the rise of political movements that advocated racial supremacy and aggressive militarism was an unfortunate part of the conversation. While the efforts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the United States and those who imitated or were inspired by them (including Thomas Crerar and William Lyon Mackenzie King in Canada) did much to recover from the problems without destroying political systems, the greatest single problem that grew out of the 1930s was the rise of fascism. Benito Mussolini's Italy was the first personification of this, but it was the creation and rapid rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s from having to use conspiracies and violence to achieve goals in 1933 to rising his country into being a world power by 1939. Eager to avoid war, nations around the world appeased many of Hitler's demands, but by 1939 and after his betrayal of the Munich Agreement nobody was fooled any more, and Canada, having antagonized Hitler on numerous occasions (particularly in Canada's open disdain for fascism and Canada's taking in vast numbers of Jews from Germany), was one of the first to accept what by 1939 everyone knew was coming. Having been building up the Royal Canadian Navy since the early 1930s and building the Royal Canadian Air Force and Canadian Army during the same time period, Canada was rather better prepared for war than many nations, though the extent to which the Western Allies had to catch up would become apparent rather rapidly following the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, when Hitler's Wehrmacht stormed into Poland, with Josef Stalin's Red Army coming the other way. While the Poles fought bravely, they simply had little chance of stopping either side and it showed.
The British Commonwealth didn't take long to declare war on the nazis, and Canada was one of the first to do this, and while World War I had largely been seen as a European conflict, Canada had little difficulty recruiting soldiers this time. Indeed, among the most willing to fight were Canada's vocal minorities - the Asians of the West Coast, Native Canadians and, of course, Jewish Canadians, the latter of whom felt that the Allies' victory in this conflict was a matter of survival of their entire religion. (How true this was would prove to be true by the end of the war, when the horrors of the Holocaust would be fully known.) The Royal Canadian Navy was rapidly organized to fight, and the first convoys departed Halifax just six days after the declaration of war on September 10, 1939. While Britain's pre-war plans had originally planned for Canada to primarily be a supplier of materials and food to Britain, the Royal Canadian Navy's ready to fight nature was obvious early on. The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan was the first real contribution to the war, but Britain's original feelings that it could handle Hitler on its own did not stop the Canadians from being prepared. Britain's view that it could supply Canada with what it needed for weapons hadn't been believed by Canada for a long time for a variety of reasons, and co-operations had resulted in the development of the Ram tank, and with the Canadian Army and their Australian counterparts having taught each other much about their tank designs saw both Canada and Australia preparing their medium tank design, called the Ram II in Canada and the Thunderbolt in Australia, for production by mid-1940. Canada's navy rapidly also got to work building numerous smaller vessels, and the development of the Orca-class submarines, a modified variant of the American Gato-class fleet submarine, also began in earnest. By June 1940, Canada's Montreal-class cruisers and Orca-class submarines were complete, and they began to operate as their own units, working with the RN but taking orders from Ottawa and Halifax rather than the Admiralty. This included battlecruiser HMCS Canada, which escorted its first convoy in October 1939 and would see plenty of use from then on.
While the early war had been focused on preparations for war, Hitler struck and struck hard on May 10, 1940, invading the Netherlands and Belgium in an attempt to circumvent the fortified Maginot Line built by the French. The Netherlands fell in just eight days while Belgium held on for three weeks, but the German assault was next to impossible for the armies stationed in northern France to stop. The blitzkrieg was indeed at the time impossible to stop, and the encirclement of the majority of the British and French armies at Dunkirk resulted in them having to be evacuated, though as a result they left behind nearly the entirety of their equipment, vindicating the Canadian position the Britain's military needs would make it impossible to supply the Commonwealth effectively. Dunkirk was, however, the first action for HMCS Canada, as well as heavy cruisers Ontario and Quebec and light cruiser Vancouver, as they were in the area - while the British initially demanded they be part of the evacuation, Canada denied this and instead sent them, along with destroyers Iroquois, Athabaskan, Huron, Haida and Cayuga, to cover the landings. This made them enemies of the Luftwaffe, and they indeed took a vicious beating from the Luftwaffe and elements of the Kriegsmarine (and losing Athabaskan to a German torpedo boat), the Canadian ships did their job, undoubtedly saving thousands of lives, and they were actively supported by the RAF, which did their level best to support both the evacuations and those supporting it. All of the Canadian vessels shot out two complete loads of ammunition in the process, and Canada insisted on the removal of as many of the French rear guard as possible, saving thousands more lives in the process.
The Royal Canadian Navy's dogged support of the evacuation at Dunkirk when the Royal Navy couldn't do so caused an uproar in Britain, and it was no surprise to anybody that the Canadian vessels were repaired - all had been damaged, in the case of heavy cruiser Ontario and destroyers Haida and Huron quite seriously - by British dockyards at British expense. But the die was cast - the Royal Canadian Navy was now being taken seriously, and Dunkirk ended debates about the desire of the Canadians to run their own show. While they would always co-operate with the Admiralty, it was no surprise that the Canadians would run their own Navy for the war - and they would prove good at it. Perhaps more importantly, Canada's loud public call that France fight on was indeed heard, and while Francois Darlan was unable to stop his country from falling, he was not about to take orders from Marshal Petain, and he ordered the French Navy to get to British ports, fighting the Germans if necessary. That call was heard at Oran, Mars el Kabir and Toulon, and on July 9, the French Navy was on the move, having to battle their way past the Germans in multiple cases and losing several vessels, including old battleship Bretagne and heavy cruiser Dupleix, to German attacks. Despite this, the Free French Navy's fighting on made sure that the Vichy regime was viewed at illegitimate by the world. But the damaged vessels, however, couldn't be repaired in British shipyards owing to desires of the Royal Navy to get working for the seemingly-inevitable invasion of Britain itself.
So they sailed across the Atlantic instead.
The desire to fight on still very much burned in the French, particularly as Darlan and de Gaulle were calling for vicious resistance against the Nazis and their Italian allies. Unable to find sufficient docks in Britain, a large portion of the fleet, commanded by Darlan himself aboard battleship Strasbourg, sailed out of the Firth of Clyde with the Canadian fleet leading the way on September 21, arriving in Halifax on October 6 and then fanning out, with damaged ships going to shipbuilders in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The biggest job of the war here went to Ontario Shipbuilding and Marine in Whitby, Ontario, whose "Massive Dock", meant for the construction of large lake freighters, was cleared out in preparation for the arrival of incomplete French battleship Jean Bart, which the Canadian dockyard workers finished building in just 14 months, allowing the battleship to commission on December 23, 1941, at Toronto. The French Navy soon had a base of operations established for it by the Canadians in Halifax, and understanding that their facilities depended on it, they were soon co-operating with the Canadians as much as the British.
By the end of the summer of 1940, Canadian industrial capacity was fully turned towards war, and it showed. Conscription never proved to be necessary even in the darkest depths of the war, in large part because by 1943 the Axis powers had come to fear the Canadian armed forces. Whether it was producing weapons or supplies, Canada's involvement in the war was huge, and by the time that President Roosevelt called on America to be the "Arsenal of Democracy", Canada was already doing just fine at that. The Ram II and Canadian-improved versions of the Churchill heavy tank were in production by late 1941, and Canada's expertise in diesel engines produced the Reynard-Napier, Robinson and Massey-Harris diesel engine designs which powered pretty much all Canadian armored fighting vehicles during the war. Canada's Navy built hundreds of smaller vessels - ranging from destroyers and submarines to frigates and corvettes for escort duty, and their fleet also sported three light carriers (Warrior, Vampire and Triumph) and a large seaplane carrier similar in design to the massive French Commandant Teste (Terra Nova). All would see extensive action during the war, and the Royal Canadian Navy would be the point force the Battle of the Atlantic - indeed, Vice Admiral Leonard Murray would be the commander in chief of the Northwest Atlantic theatre for almost the entire war, commanding British, French and American units as well as his own. The French Fleet soon also established their own facilities in Quebec, and the relationship between France and Canada would be dramatically changed by the War.
The replacement of Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister by Winston Churchill on May 10, 1940, was a sign to the Allies that Britain wasn't gonna surrender. Hitler made more than one public offer to end the war, but the British rejected these outright, pointing out that Hitler's word was worthless. The Battle of Britain was a turning point in the war, as the stubborn defiance of the Royal Air Force (which included No. 1, No. 3 and No. 9 Squadrons of the RCAF) in defending Britain ultimately put a halt to Operation Sealion, the planned German invasion of Britain. Despite the best efforts of the RN, they were clearly over-extended by 1941 and the Kriegsmarine, in particular the U-boat fleet, was doing serious damage to the convoys of supplies, causing major logistical issues for the Allies. The RCN in particular worked their tails off to fix this, but it took time to get success, despite radar-equipped patrol aircraft that by early 1941 were ranging far and wide from Newfoundland and Iceland in an attempt to chase down U-boats before they struck. However, the Germans still saw the best way of destroying a convoy was to use surface ships, and the Germans' use of pocket battleship Admiral Scheer to attack convoy HX 84 on November 5, 1940, was a sign that there was a need for bigger ships in the convoys, a problem for the Allies, but one which HMCS Canada and French battleships Strasbourg, Dunkerque and Richelieu, along with old British battleships Ramilies and Malaya, were able to accomplish. That, however, pushed the Germans to up the ante again, sending out battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to fight back. The latter paid for that on February 25, 1941, when she sought to attack a convoy but was ambushed by HMCS Canada and cruisers Quebec, Colbert, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa, which pounded the Gneisenau to pieces but suffered serious damage to Montreal and Ottawa as a result.
In May, the Kriegsmarine went to the extremes, sending out battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to support the Scharnhorst. The British found out about this as the fleet attempted to go around Iceland, and British battleships Hood and Prince of Wales intercepted the two, but this did not go well - Hood was sunk by a magazine explosion and Prince of Wales took serious damage, forcing her to withdraw. That victory forced movements by convoys, even as Churchill's infuriated demand to "Sink the Bismarck!" was answered by the Royal Navy. But Hitler's fleet had a second goal - having seen the patrol planes cause havoc for the U-boats - which was by May 1941 becoming a serious problem - the battleships sailed towards Newfoundland, intent on shelling St. John's and the great air base at Gander. The RCN didn't take long to figure this out, and HMCS Canada and FS Richelieu raced out of Halifax in an attempt to intercept it, along with RCAF bombers, which also raced to Newfoundland. Despite this, Bismarck and Tirpitz did indeed shell St. John's on May 25, 1941, doing serious damage to the city itself - but encountering plenty of unwelcome surprises, as destroyers Assiniboine, Gatineau and Kainai roared out of St. John's in an attempt to attack the battleships - all three were lost, but not before they put a pair of torpedoes into Prinz Eugen and shells into Bismarck - and coastal artillery units of the Royal Newfoundland Artillery, which scored 155mm hits on Prinz Eugen and Tirpitz. The shelling claimed over 650 lives in St. John's before the German battleships were attacked by RCAF bombers, which caused them to run. The bombers damaged both battleships and left Prinz Eugen dead in the water, which allowed destroyer Niagara and frigates Prince Rupert and Stone Town to finish the cruiser off with torpedoes.
The dead of St. John's left the RCN absolutely livid, and HMCS Canada and her cruiser escorts along with French battleship Richelieu and cruiser Algerie, along with the Commandant Teste, were quick to join the battle. Their actions in St. John's didn't make finding the battleships hard, and British heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, which had been attempting to shadow the German battleships, quickly joined up with the Canadian fleet even as Prince of Wales was joined by battleships Rodney and King George V and aircraft carrier Ark Royal in the Home Fleet's vengeful pursuit of the German big guns. Knowing what was coming, the Germans quickly broke into the Atlantic, but the damage to Tirpitz allowed the British and Canadian-French battle groups to chase the two battleships down. On June 3, the two ships were spotted by Ark Royal's aircraft, followed not long after by Commandant Teste's seaplanes. The co-operation, however, started there - Ark Royal launched an air strike on the two battleships, but the approaching battle groups forced the Germans to try to escape the pincer movement. The knowledge of Force H's heading for the scene resulted in a second air strike, this one damaging the Bismarck's steering gear to such a degree that she could not maneuver effectively. knowing what that meant, the Germans held their ground, waiting for the assault. The final battle of the two ships on June 6, 1941, was the bar fight everyone expected it to be - Canada and Richelieu approached from the West, while Rodney and King George V came in from the east, both sides also bringing in their cruisers. Both German battleships, damaged but still functional, took sides, with Bismarck taking on Rodney and King George V while Tirpitz took on Canada and Richelieu. It didn't work well for either one - one of Canada's first salvos destroyed Tirpitz' forward control post, and despite the danger of the battleship's 15-inch guns, Quebec, Algerie, Vancouver and Ottawa went right in with their big guns, with the cruisers also shooting torpedoes. Richelieu's guns put the rear turrets of the Tirpitz out of action, while two of Vancouver's torpedoes put a monster hole in the battleship's starboard side which quickly caused flooding problems. Despite this, Tirpitz fought hard, landing 15-inch shots on the faceplate of Canada's B turret (which disabled the turret though didn't destroy it) and the Richelieu's starboard secondary battery (which blew it to pieces and caused extensive fire damage) before at least twenty big shell hits and dozens of smaller hits, as well as at least five torpedoes from the cruisers as well as destroyers Salish, Abenaki and Tuscarora and frigate Springhill finished off the mighty German battleship. Bismarck didn't fare any better - Rodney and King George V shelled Bismarck to pieces before Norfolk and Dorsetshire put the coup de grace torpedoes into Bismarck.
The loss of the biggest elements of the German surface fleet enraged Hitler and proved a huge boost for the Allies, at a time when the Battle of the Atlantic was shifting in their favor. Canada and Richelieu were given a heroes' welcome when they arrived back in Halifax, even though both needed repairs at that point. The destruction of the two most dangerous elements of the Kriegsmarine, combined with the losses of Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, made sure that the HMCS Canada was a famous ship. "Canada Cannot Be Stopped!" Read the headline in the Toronto Star on June 9, 1941, the day after the Canadian Admiralty had announced that Bismarck and Tirpitz were indeed sunk, while the Toronto Telegram read out "Take That, Hitler!" The Montreal Gazette was no less estatic, saying "The Nazi Navy thought they could take on the might of Canada, France and Britain. They thought they could shell Newfoundland with impunity. They thought they were invincible. They were wrong. And now they are history. One hopes Hitler will soon face the same fate." The French Navy's men in Canada, who had fought hard in the Battle of the Atlantic and wanted vindication, definitely got it as a result. The RN and RCN by this point were learning how to beat the U-boats, even as Canadian shipyards built ships plenty rapidly enough to replace those lost to U-boats.
The entry of the United States into the war was initially a good thing for the U-boats, as the Americans initially were unable to provide enough escorts to protect all of its ships, including in coastal areas. The Germans took advantage of this, but the Royal Canadian Navy, already well connected with the United States Navy, was quick to pass tactics and information on, even if many of the American senior officers didn't always use it. Canadian officers were so good at organizing shipping movements that they were working with the Americans almost from when the war broke out, and by the summer of 1941 they were almost entirely handling convoy organizing and movements. Between improving tactics and weapons, in particular the breaking of the Enigma naval code and the development of ASDIC, Leigh Lights and Hedgehog- and Squid-type depth-charge throwers, and the better tactics, the Royal Canadian Navy by the summer of 1942 had the upper hand on the U-boats, and when combined with the German surface fleet's losses - made worse when Scharnhorst attempted the Channel Dash and got blasted by British shore batteries, followed by RAF bombers finishing her off, on August 16, 1942 - made sure that the big guns weren't needed in the Atlantic. While the French Navy's vessels went to fight the Italians and Germans in the Mediterranean in the spring of 1942, HMCS Canada was dispatched to the Pacific to assist the Americans, who after the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought them into the war found themselves somewhat shorthanded in the Pacific Ocean.
October 1942 was the high-point for U-boat attacks, but by this point there were sufficient fleet destroyers and frigates, both from the United States and Canada, to not only protect all of the Convoys but also aggressively go U-boat hunting, and the introduction of ASW-equipped B-24s into both the Canadian and American navies in June 1942 added to the problems. By this point RCN crews were aces at U-boat hunting, to the point that the pack tactics of the Germans were turned against them by Canadian frigates, who hunted U-boats in packs and were frequently able to break up packs of the German submarines. By the summer of 1943, the Kriegsmarine was well aware that they had lost the Battle of the Atlantic, and with their U-boats being attacked shortly after departing their bases in occupied France (even before the U-boat base at St. Nazaire, along with much of the rest of the city, was leveled by American firebombing in June 1943), the Germans spent the rest of the war on the back foot, and the convoys kept on rolling.
While the BCATP proved to be highly successful, the Royal Canadian Navy soon had exploits for days and the moving of supplies in huge amounts was obvious (and Canada added to the Allies' supply advantages when the Trans-Canada Pipeline was completed in May 1944, allowing direct oil shipments from Western Canada to Quebec City, Halifax and Saint John) and contributed to the massive growth in Canadian industrial capacity, By the summer of 1942 Mackenzie King was agitating for the Canadians to get involved in ground action, and as Canada had ten complete divisions ready to go (including the complete First Canadian Army based in Britain from July 1942 onwards) and the developments of the Atlantic Charter (which Canada was a signatory to) made sure British plans to wear the Germans down would indeed bear fruit. As the Americans tooled up for combat, at Churchill's suggestion (and Mackenzie King's agreement), the Second Canadian Army's airmobile and seaborne units were the response to Japan's invasion of the Aleutians in June 1942 - and the first actions of the famed 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, a unit made up nearly entirely of Asian-Canadian servicemen, who fought viciously and in the process ended early American concerns that Asian Canadians would not be entirely loyal to Canada. (Indeed, after the war former Japanese intelligence officers would make it clear that they found recruiting agents from Canadian Nisei and Sansei populations all but impossible and from first-generation immigrants little easier, stating categorically "they were loyal to America and Canada".) Indeed, in the aftermath of Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans, more than a few headed for Canada, taking advantage of a provision that those Asian Americans willing to join the Canadian Army would them and their families be allowed into Canada. The men of the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders would earn a Victoria Cross and numerous other bravery awards in the Aleutians, and gave a stiff message to the Japanese - we are here and we don't like you any more than the Americans.
In North Africa, the success of Operation Crusader against the Italians led to the deployment of Erwin Rommel's famed Afrikakorps, but Rommel's best efforts were unable to sever the Suez Canal (Rommel's strategic objective) and led to the British-led Commonwealth forces (including Australian, New Zealander, South African and Rhodesian units) fighting back against the Afrikakorps, a problem for the Germans made worse once American reinforcements came to the scene. The Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942 made sure that the German position was untenable, and the Free French forces in Algeria ended up pincering the Germans and Italians, as well as wounding Rommel himself. The Axis Powers retreated from Africa in April 1943, which almost immediately resulted in plans to invade Italy itself and go after what Churchill called "The soft underbelly of Europe".
Before that, however, the Canadians got into the act again, once again supported by the Free French in the Dieppe Raid. Despite the relatively close proximity between Britain and occupied France, the original plan of using the raid to draw out the Luftwaffe into a fighter battle against the RAF was seen as idiocy by the Canadians, and they insisted on taking the initiative. The Free French forces, led by Darlan and De Gaulle, were soon in on it, and the decision to raid Dieppe saw the Canadians and Free French get the initiative, and despite the reservations of the Royal Navy, Free French battleships Strasbourg and Lorraine and Canadian heavy cruisers Ontario and Quebec and light cruisers Montreal and Toronto were assigned to support the operation. This proved a crucial advantage, as the big guns shelled Dieppe to pieces before the troops arrived, shelling which drew the Luftwaffe out - just as the RAF and RCAF wanted - and Canadian units didn't land in Dieppe until both the ships had shelled everything they could, and after the RAF and RCAF engaged the Luftwaffe units that answered the Raid, a complete group of RCAF Avro Lancaster bombers flattened pretty much everything else that the battleships and cruisers hadn't hit. Dieppe was still a costly operation, but it sent a message to Canada that they were gonna get into the action in Europe. The arrival of Canadian Lancasters and B-24 Liberators also put the RCAF into the RAF's plans for bombing occupied France and Germany. Indeed, the Royal Canadian Air Force would by the end of the war be the fourth-largest air force in the world (behind the USAF, Soviet Air Force and RAF) and would inflict huge damage on Germany from 1942 onwards using their bombers, though losses in the process were substantial. Dieppe was only held for less than twelve hours, but the Raid was despite this considered successful, though it also taught many lessons to the Allies, particularly Canada.
After the losses of Bismarck and Tirpitz all but eliminated Germany's surface fleet threat and after the Americans awful losses at Pearl Harbor, HMCS Canada was dispatched to the Pacific, and recognizing that the Americans in the Pacific could use a boost, the Canada made a fairly short stop in Seattle before heading to San Francisco to met up with USS North Carolina, and the two battleships and their units sailed to Pearl Harbor together, where HMCS Canada was the first foreign vessel to render honours to the lost USS Arizona and was very much appreciated by the Americans, with the sailors there saying Canada's arrival was "The greatest support another land could possibly give us." Canada and cruiser Vancouver - whose crew was majority made up of Native and Asian Canadians who nonetheless developed an excellent rapport with the Americans - sailed with North Carolina and aircraft carriers Enterprise, Wasp and Hornet, joining Australian heavy cruiser Canberra - which HMCS Canada rescued from the Japanese when her crew refused to give her up during the Battle of Savo Island - as the Commonwealth support for the Americans in the Pacific. (Once repairs were completed, HMS Prince of Wales and the survivors of the ABDA force, namely HMS York, HMS Exeter, HMAS Perth and USS Houston, also joined this fleet.)
Canada took a torpedo hit from I-19 (as did North Carolina and Hornet) but while damage was extensive, it was not enough to put the ship out of the fight, a similar situation to the North Carolina. With the support in the Pacific and with the Canadians planning to be an integral part of the operations against Sicily (and with the Americans' damaged battleships coming back into the fleet), HMCS Canada along with Vancouver headed back to the Atlantic, with Rear Admiral Willis Lee, the Americans' senior battleship commander in the Pacific, commenting in his memoirs "I was sad to see the Canada head back to the Atlantic. We never had any issues with her....she taught a lot of our battleship gunners about how to do their jobs. She was capable, agile and strong, a true fighting ship and worthy of any man's command and any man's respect."
Ottawa, which had had an election in the spring of 1942 which had overwhelmingly supported massive action against the Axis Powers on all sides, had been pushing for over a year for a major operation of their own, and while the Canadians had done well at Dieppe, Mackenzie King and Crerar proposed the First Canadian Army be the point force for the invasion of Sicily, allowing British units to recuperate some. This was supported by the Americans, in large part because General Eisenhower and his Canadian counterpart, General Andrew McNaughton, had become intimately aware of what both sides were capable of, and McNaughton correctly felt he could provide tons of naval fire support. The entire Canadian heavy gun fleet - battlecruiser Canada, heavy cruisers Ontario and Quebec and light cruisers Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and the newly-commissioned Seattle - was assembled at Halifax with the goal of supporting the invasion of Sicily, allowing McNaughton to fulfill his promises to Eisenhower. The result was that when Operation Husky began on July 9, 1943, it did so with the Americans and Canadians co-operating and with the Canadians not under British overall command. Operation Husky would up achieving the goals assigned to it, and it showed what the Canadian light cruisers could do in vivid fashion, as the German Hermann Goring Panzer Division and several Italian tank units were engaged by HMCS Vancouver and HMCS Seattle, both of the eighteen-gun light cruisers spitting fire at such a rate that Allied aircraft initially assumed she had been hit by shore batteries but really devastating both divisions. USS Boise was also sent there to support the landings, but Boise's commandering officer made a point of radioing to his superiors "The Canadians already blew those Panzers to hell." While the Germans and Italians were able to evacuate sizable numbers of troops, equipment and supplies from Sicily to Calabria, the result was still the Allies gaining firm control of Sicily, and the huge First Canadian Army had done their job beautifully. The operation also led to Mussolini's arrest and the capitulation of Italy to the Allies, and gave increasing confidence that the Allies would indeed be victorious, particularly as the Nazis and the Red Army fought viciously on the Eastern Front - but in one of his greatest miscalculations, Hitler cancelled the operations at Kursk to rush men back to contain Italy after its switching sides, and initial neutrality didn't last long after the Germans attacked Italian units, causing a civil war, and the Italian Navy asked to join the Allies after their attempt to move to Malta for internment resulted in them being attacked by the Luftwaffe, sinking battleship Roma in the process.
Italy's being occupied by the Germans caused more than a few to change sides, and after refits, Free Italian units were soon involved in the war. Battleships Vittorio Veneto and Italia were soon covering Allied units during their fight up through Italy in the fall of 1943, with the Free Italian battleships being instrumental in the Americans' success in the amphibious landing at Anzio, assisting the Americans' ability to hold off the Axis counterattacks on their positions and allowing the Americans to use the Anzio perimeter to make mayhem behind the Gustav Line, a move which resulted in the fall of the Gustav Line as the Germans count themselves having to both defend the line against Canadian, British and American units as well as the Anzio perimeter, while all the while Canadian and American air strikes and naval gunfire support made their lives hard. Backed up by the Americans' actions and British support, the First Canadian Army punched through the Gustav Line on the Adriatic Side in February 1944, forcing the Germans to retreat, but as they did that the perimeter at Anzio fell as well, resulting in nearly the entirety of the German Tenth Army being encircled by the Allied Forces. Canadian, American and Free Italian units entered Rome on June 4, 1944, and through 1944 the First Canadian Army largely took over responsibility for the Italian Front as British and American units (as well as more than a few Canadian units) were redeployed for the invasion of Normandy. Joining the Italian fight was, however, a motley collection of reinforcements - Australian, New Zealander, South African, Free French and Free Italian reinforcements were also joined by those from India, Brazil and Mexico, and they had no difficulty supporting the uniits already on the scene. Despite multiple attmpts by the Germans to punch holes in what they thought were weak units, the Latin American and Indian units proved to be anything but weak, and units like the American 442nd Regimental Combat Team (nearly all made up of West Coast Asian Americans) and the Canadian First Rocky Mountain Regiment (over half of whose members were Plains Native Canadians and whose commanding officer was a descendant of one of the leaders of the Rebellion of 1885) combined with the Latin Americans and Indians to make Hitler's racial theories look pretty stupid.
With the home front all but unassailable, the Second Canadian Army was sent to Britain in November 1943, and as the Army included almost all of the units who had covered themselves in glory in World War I, Hitler soon took a real hard look at them. The Canadians, ably assisted by Canadian Security and Intelligence Service officers, began to use this repute to their advantage, creating phantom plans of attacks everywhere from the Netherlands to the Balkans. The Free French helped this, taking advantage of Allied naval and air superiority to make mayhem in several different places along the French coast, from bombing German positions across the Channel to having the French battleships and heavy cruisers shell the German base at St. Nazaire on May 16-17, 1944. The repeated attacks on France's Western Coast, in particular the ports of Brest and St. Nazaire, forced Hitler's commanders to move units away from the Channel, their thinking being that the closeness of Britain to invasion zones would make logistics difficult if the Luftwaffe's bombers could attack the supply bases in the south of England. With Allied naval superiority, they thought, attacking from sea would be easier to create secure supply lines.
Of course, this is exactly what the Allies wanted Hitler to think.
Operation Overlord kicked off on June 6, 1944, after months of preparations and with the Second Canadian Army having responsibility for Omaha Beach. German resistance was vicious, but yet again, the Canadians could call upon help - their landing craft and assault vehicles had been equipped with artillery and anti-tank weapons, and the introduction of the Carl Gustav 84mm reciolless rifle to the Canadians was a huge help when dealing with Panzers. In addition to that, HMCS Canada was in the channel along with British battleships Nelson and Rodney and American battleships New York and Texas, providing accurate battleship fire support, which the Germans attempted to answer with field artillery. The Germans even resorted to firing V-2s at the landing force. The Allies didn't quite reach their objectives, but they were successful in punching through the Atlantic Wall, and Operation Dragoon's launch on June 27 helped matters, as it forces the Germans to send forces to southern France to stop the invasion there. (They weren't successful at that, either.) The foothold held, however, and gradually grew, resulting in the taking of the port of Cherbourg on June 26 and, after a long battle, Caen on July 19. A counterattack by the German Seventh Army ended up beign encircled in the Falaise pocket, resulting in massive German losses and their retreat across the Seine River, with Paris liberated on August 16 and the Germans abandoning positions beyond the Seine on August 28. The Allies now had a foothold in Europe.
The now three-front war was nothing short of disastrous from the Nazis. Already losing ground to the Red Army in the East, Hitler's generals couldn't hope to hang on with a war coming in from the West as well. The units that had invaded France from the south rapidly moved up the Rhone Valley, only encountering difficult resistance when they ran into German forces in the fortified Vosges Mountains. The British 11th Armored Division took Antwerp on September 4, but with the troops holed up in the Scheldt Estuary, they couldn't use Antwerp for supply purposes. Enter the Second Canadian Army and elements of the First Canadian Army, who were assisted by a handful of other nations' units in the Battle of the Scheldt. The Breskens pocket and Walcheren Island were held in force by the Nazis, but yet again HMCS Canada ably backed up their brothers on land and made life a bitch for the Nazis, particualrly on the island, while Canadian attack aircraft first handled air defense units and field artillery, allowing Lancaster and Liberator bombers to make life even harder for them, and that was before Canada's artillery units, led by the famed Royal Newfoundland Artillery, made sure German field guns couldn't do their jobs well at all. The Estuary was cleared by early November, and with German resistance fading and Canadian naval gunfire support proving a key advantage, the Canadians set about liberating the Netherlands. This did, however, get a lot easier with Operation Market Garden - the First Canadian Army's fast-moving units were sent to support this, figuring the Germans would respond, effectively committing the First Canadian Army to make Market Garden a success - and thanks to rapid responses from the Army along with British reinforcements, a varitable flood of Ram III, Churchill and Sherman tanks roared through the cities of Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, sweeping German units there out of the way and relieving the Allied First Airborne units that undertook the first part of the operation. The Germans reacted fast, though, forcing a bitter battle between the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions against four crack Canadian Army armored regiments, the Canadians able to hold their ground. Supply from Antwerp helped with this, and the Canadians soon had plenty of reinforcements. Within weeks, however, the Battle of the Bulge forced everyone involved to hold off on offensive operations to hold back the massive German counterattack. The attack was indeed driven off, but at a ghastly cost to the Americans.
The Battle of the Bulge was Hitler's last hope at going on the offensive, and it showed. 1945 was spent for the Allies shredding the Third Reich, with the Canadians primarily handling the job of clearing out the Netherlands. Facing huge numbers of starving people during the "Hungry Winter", the Canadians made a point of both delivering food to civilians and also giving up many of their own rations and blankets to Dutch civilians. Even as the war waged on, food air drops were made to places across the Netherlands, with the Germans agreeing not to shoot at transport planes doing this. By the time the First Canadian Army completed the liberation of the Netherlands in March 1945, thousands had been claimed by starvation but many, many more had been saved by the efforts of the Allies, and when the Netherlands fell, the Canadians treated their prisoners by division - those who had helped the food supply were treated much more gently than others who hadn't done so.
With the war all but over on the Western Front in naval terms, the big guns of the Royal Canadian Navy were all dispatched to the Pacific in January 1945, traveling through the Panama Canal and having a break in Vancouver in early February before sailing out on February 21, joining the planned battle for Okinawa. The new force, named Task Force 54.1 by the Americans before it arrived at Okinawa, was immense - the Royal Canadian Navy's battlecruiser Canada, heavy cruisers Ontario and Quebec, light cruisers Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Seattle, light carriers Warrior, Vampire and Triumph and seaplane carriers Terra Nova, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were joined by British battleship Prince of Wales and French battleship Jean Bart and heavy cruisers Colbert and Suffren - and capable, with all of the ships involved having seen more than a little bit of service. Joining the British Pacific Fleet for Okinawa, the Americans initially assigned the BPF the job of neutralizing the Sakishima Islands, but with the discovery of Yamato departing in an attempt to defend Okinawa, the gun ships were sent to assist Admiral Morton Deyo, resulting in a fleet of twelve battleships and battlecruisers - Canada, Prince of Wales and Jean Bart joining American battleships Massachusetts, Indiana, New Jersey, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Missouri and battlecruisers Alaska and Guam, along with HMAS Australia - and knowing of a near-total lack of air support and the fleet's effective anti-aircraft gunnery, the American admirals focused their air attacks on Okinawa to support the troops there, leaving Yamato and her small number of escorts to face down the Allied gun fleet. Outnumbered eleven to one - and that was just the big guns, and Allied cruisers were willing to fight alongside the big guns despite the threat of Yamato's 460mm guns - on the morning on August 9, Yamato and her escorts were discovered by the fleet. Nobody is sure who shot first - differing reports said Missouri, Canada and Prince of Wales all shot first - but Yamato ran headlong into a huge fleet. Yamato's huge guns fired on the battleships, only hitting Jean Bart and Indiana - and those hits, while damaging, weren't even close to fatal - while Yamato got absolutely hammered by battleships, while heavy cruisers Baltimore, Ontario and Colbert finished off light cruiser Yahagi (after one of British Columbia's seaplanes put a torpedo into Yahagi's engine room, leaving her dead in the water) and the shells falling like raindrops made sure the destroyers didn't get off any easier. In a particularly ironic measure, Yamato was finished by a massive magazine detonation of her forward magazines, most likely caused by New Jersey, Wisconsin, Missouri, Australia or Canada as they used speed and maneuverability to loop around the by-then stricken Yamato. Operation Ten-Go finished, the fleet headed back up to support the troops on Okinawa, who the Allies were finding out weren't gonna budge unless blown off, and facing the biggest possible fear - kamikaze attacks.
Kamikazes resulted in the British Pacific Fleet being sent closer in, as the armored flight decks of British carriers and the tougher armor of some BPF vessels made them less vulnerable to kamikaze damage, a fact proven both right and wrong by carriers Victorious and Illustrious which both took awful kamikaze damage. Indeed, the suicide pilots of the Japanese resulted in the largest Canadian warship loss of the war, as three kamikaze hits in short order ultimately doomed heavy cruiser Ontario, which sank west of Okinawa on April 19, 1945. Canada also suffered, as her commanding officer, Captain Mark Redlen, was killed by a kamikaze hit on April 24. Despite the losses - and nearly all of the big gun ships did take damage from kamikazes - they never left the battle lines, and the Marines on Okinawa were more than a little grateful for the help. The awful battle for Okinawa - the number of dead from the battle topped 200,000 in both sides' fighters and civilians and left the island nearly barren - convinced the Allies that the atomic bombs, by then nearly complete, had to be used. The gun fleet would after Okinawa be sent out for shellings of the Japanese mainland - Canada, Australia, King George V and Prince of Wales fired the last shots ever taken in anger by Commonwealth battleships in shelling Hamamatsu on August 10, 1945 - but the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 broke Japan's will to fight, and they surrendered on August 15.
The sailing of the fleets into Sagami Bay on August 26 and then Tokyo Bay on September 1 was indeed a sign that the war was over, and it said much that the commander of the BPF, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Bruce Fraser, who accepted Japan's surrender on behalf of the British, chose to do so from the deck of HMCS Canada rather than one of his own ships, with the documents of surrender here also signed by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Leonard Warren Murray of the Royal Canadian Navy, Percy Nelles and Leonard Murray having been made five-star Admirals for their efforts during the war. V-J Day in Canada wound up being one of the great days in Canadian history, and indeed the British Pacific Fleet chose to sail as one unit, first to escort troops to take back Hong Kong and Singapore, then to Sydney and then eventually to Vancouver, where they arrived on November 3, 1945, to the greetings of Prime Minister King and British Columbia Premier John Hart.
World War II was over, and Canada had come through it, though far from unscarred. 62,800 Canadians died in the war, with over 100,000 wounded or injuried during it, and the country's cost running to very nearly $40 Billion. Despite the massive costs, it had however resulted in vast changes in the country itself. The lack of a need for conscription proved beneficial to Canada's unity, avoiding many of the awful divisions of the First World War. Even more than previous World Wars had, Canada's total disregard for ethnic background, race or skin colour in their recruiting and assignment of men proved beneficial in countless ways, and Canada's own armed forces were only too happy to play up the fact that many units of the Canadian Army with an incredible reputation - the mostly Asian-Canadian Seaforth Highlanders, the French-speaking 22nd Regiment of Canada, the almost entirely Native Canadian raised Six Nations Warriors Regiments, the mostly Jewish 1st Royal Toronto Armored Regiment - were made up of visible minorities. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were often as not assigned security duties in cleared areas, doing this to great effect in Italy, northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Canada's industrial infrastructure was completely rebuilt as a result of the War, and expanded dramatically beyond its 1920s highs. Industrial production requirements created the genesis of Canada's own major aerospace and vehicle making industries which would see much use after the war, while the shipyards built for the war in many cases would find civilian uses once the war finished.
OOC: Thoughts?