Where could Germany launch amphibious assault on Canada?

Doctor What

The other thread on an assault on America got me curious.

Ok--a successful assault on the US is pretty much ASB for so many different reasons that it doesn't bear repeating here.

However --

German U-boats did prowl up and down the St. Lawrence River, sinking quite a few ships. [link]

And Hitler trying to purchase Anticosti Island, located at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, from a wealthy French chocolate-bar manufacturer in 1937. (Needless to say--the Canadian government got quickly involved in the deal and shut it down) [link]

But what if?

So--would a Nazi invasion of Canada be just as ASB as the American version?

Sure - a 2500 mile long supply chain is just as hard for the Nazis to pull off as a 3000 mile one but on the other hand -- there's a lot less population to deal with and a lot less built up infrastructure and defense.

Still think it's ASB but still...

I would like to hear some people's thoughts on this.
 
Jasen777

Jasen777

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Can't happen if Britain is still in the fight. Even then, probably not going to happen... The U.S. would have to be strangely neutral as well.
 

Markus

Banned
Doctor What, you are an evil person! ;)
Still, let´s make the best of it. Finally a chance for the USA to put war plan red into action.

*southpark tune* Invade Canada...
 

CalBear

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Monthly Donor
Somehow, I think the United States might invoke the Monroe Doctrine in this case.

Even without it, Canada would be a pain in the ass. Too much nothing and what is something is fairly defensible. Not great terrain for offense along the coastlines, and some lovely defensive ground.
 

Trebuchet

Well, after the US entry, invading Canada is more or less equivalent to invading the US itself, with all the ASB-ness that implies, plus with the possible added bonus of the stranded German troops freezing in the cold there in Newfoundland or whatever.

If the US wasn't in the war, though... they are now. :) Monroe Doctrine much? FDR would probably quietly pump his fist and secretly thank Hitler for such a boneheaded way of dynamiting US neutrality. So, the US enters the war early, everything ramps up... Japan may not be able to jump America in the Pacific Theater, either, unless the War Department forgets about Japan in the excitement of the new shooting war with the Germans.

If the US is sucked into the war at this date, would we accept Stalin's desperation offer of US troops under US commanders on the Eastern Front when it's made?
 

Mike Stearns

Trebuchet said:
Well, after the US entry, invading Canada is more or less equivalent to invading the US itself, with all the ASB-ness that implies, plus with the possible added bonus of the stranded German troops freezing in the cold there in Newfoundland or whatever.
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Agreed. If the Americans were to recieve word that the Nazis were planning an invasion of Canada, they would automatically assume that Canada was to be the Nazi staging ground for an invasion of the United States and act accordingly.
 

bm79

Canada is near as impossble to invade from the coast as possible. Even if some ASB allows them to capture Newfoundland Island, where do they go from there? Even if Britain is conquered, the logistics are insurmountable. First you'd have to wipe out the Canadian Fleet out of Halifax (which if Britain is conquered will include significant portions of the Home Fleet), then conquer Québec City to even hope to have a viable port on the continent, then fight through easily defensible territory down the St Lawrence Valley to Montréal, which still leaves the highly defensible Ontario Peninsula. No, the Germans barely managed their invasion of Norway, the invasion of Canada is beyond the realm of possibility...
 

Milarqui

For an amphibious assault on Canada, Germany would need to conquer England first, and then either Iceland or Greenland. From there, an attack on Canada would have a better rate of success. As for the point from which they could attack, I'd say that sending the Wehrmacht into Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, while sneaking a few U-boats to attack Quebec City, for example.
 

santosza

She could use Iceland and Greenland to launch a raid onto Canada unless of course she had the UK's cooperation. Actually a USA vs Europe wpuld be cool.
 

Mike Stearns

Milarqui said:
For an amphibious assault on Canada, Germany would need to conquer England first, and then either Iceland or Greenland. From there, an attack on Canada would have a better rate of success. As for the point from which they could attack, I'd say that sending the Wehrmacht into Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, while sneaking a few U-boats to attack Quebec City, for example.
Click to expand...

I agree with the idea of sending U-Boats up the Saint Lawrence River to Quebec City or Montreal. Sink a ship in the right place and you can close the river to shipping traffic. I don't know that I would attack Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, however. You would have a better chance of success by landing along the shores of Hudson Bay. It would be unexpected and by skirting the Greenland coast, you would avoid having to take on the Anglo-Canadian fleet. Land on Manitoba's Hudson Bay coast, drive south and capture Winnipeg. By doing that, you straddle the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is Canada's main, ie only, transcontinental rail and communications link. In addition, by taking Winnipeg, you also take the world's second-largest railway depot, which means that you have access to large amounts of supplies for your invasion force. In addition you also put the Canadian Shield between yourself and your enemy, yet at the same time, you are in a position to strike west into Saskatchewan and Alberta and south in to the United States. The Canadian Shield lies to the east prevents your enemy from striking quickly in that direction, while the flat open terrain of the Canadian Prairies and the Plains States offer room for maneuver and good ground for tank combat. It also puts German bombers within range of Toronto, Hamilton and Oshawa, Canada's industrial heartland.
 
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Xenos

It could happen, if Heligoland was a province of Canada:D The Kriegsmarine is never going to be able to clear the RN or USN out of the Atlantic, let alone both of them combined! Also, even if an invasion was successful (a small force could be delivered by submarines) those supply lines would totally undefendable. So any invasion force will quickly be engulfed and destroyed.
Also, why the hell would Hitler want to invade Canada!?
 

Dave Howery

the Nazis would use their secret fleet of zeppelins to fly over the north pole and attack Canada's weak northern flank...
 
Fearless Leader

Fearless Leader

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Mike Stearns said:
I agree with the idea of sending U-Boats up the Saint Lawrence River to Quebec City or Montreal. Sink a ship in the right place and you can close the river to shipping traffic. I don't know that I would attack Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, however. You would have a better chance of success by landing along the shores of Hudson Bay. It would be unexpected and by skirting the Greenland coast, you would avoid having to take on the Anglo-Canadian fleet. Land on Manitoba's Hudson Bay coast, drive south and capture Winnipeg. By doing that, you straddle the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is Canada's main, ie only, transcontinental rail and communications link. In addition, by taking Winnipeg, you also take the world's second-largest railway depot, which means that you have access to large amounts of supplies for your invasion force. In addition you also put the Canadian Shield between yourself and your enemy, yet at the same time, you are in a position to strike west into Saskatchewan and Alberta and south in to the United States. The Canadian Shield lies to the east prevents your enemy from striking quickly in that direction, while the flat open terrain of the Canadian Prairies and the Plains States offer room for maneuver and good ground for tank combat. It also puts German bombers within range of Toronto, Hamilton and Oshawa, Canada's industrial heartland.
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Not as easy as one might think. There are few if any roads leading from the Hudsons Bay coast to Winnipeg...The lack of infrastructure would surely cause problems.
 

Dutchie

I'm a proud Canuck, but yeah, there's nothing here that would have been of interest to teh Nazis they couldn't have got a lot closer to home. You might as well ask what if they invaded Austalia - bye-bye to those troops, even if they capture some territory and hold out against the spirited response (Canada has been invaded twice: Fenian (Irish-American0 Raiders and American Regulars. Neither was succesful in taking a square inch of territory in the end) they won't be able to be supplied or connected with the larger war effort.

Even Mike Stearns idea of an invasion via Hudson Bay (?! - that's a lot of tundra, bog and bush to beat through long before you get to Winterpeg) would require a huge force (D-Day sized) just to take the one small city from the ornery farmers. And being a major rail hub means there's a lot of ways to get Canadian troops there in a hurry, from both East and West, not to mention South.
 

Mike Stearns

Fearless Leader said:
Not as easy as one might think. There are few if any roads leading from the Hudsons Bay coast to Winnipeg...The lack of infrastructure would surely cause problems.
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I'm not saying that such a plan would be easy to execute, but it does have the advantage of being completely unexpected. I mean, if you suddenly recieved word that the was a large Nazi invasion force was driving southward through Manitoba, your first response would be "what the hell are they doing in Manitoba?"

Don't forget that the Allies were caught completely off guard during the Battle of the Bulge precisely because they assumed that it was beyond the Nazis' logistical capacity to launch a winter offensive and because the senior Allied commanders overesimated the impassibility of the terrain.

The same was true of Pearl Harbour. The Japanese appeared precisely where they weren't expected to be.
 
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Landshark

Simple, they build a 1000 Rattes, drive them into the at the Bay of Biscay, drive across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, down the St Lawrence River and straight into Ottawa.
 
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