WI: War Plan Red had happened?

The US Army is smaller and more poorly armed than the British Army at this time, not to mention a fair slice of what forces exist are in Central America, the Caribbean islands and the Philipines, so what sort of offensive is likely to be launched against Canada in the first place?

OTL the US wasn't able to truly equipped to fight WWII until 1943 and that was with FDR starting rearmament as best he could, through arms sales and gifts if nothing better offered, in 1939.

So once the first limited offensive stalls the US is limited to large numbers of infantry reserves called up with whatever rifles can be found.

Meanwhile a restored Anglo-Japanese alliance would mean the US Navy is outnumbered, outgunned AND forced to fight on two fronts. Not good.
 
The US Army is smaller and more poorly armed than the British Army at this time, not to mention a fair slice of what forces exist are in Central America, the Caribbean islands and the Philipines, so what sort of offensive is likely to be launched against Canada in the first place?

OTL the US wasn't able to truly equipped to fight WWII until 1943 and that was with FDR starting rearmament as best he could, through arms sales and gifts if nothing better offered, in 1939.

So once the first limited offensive stalls the US is limited to large numbers of infantry reserves called up with whatever rifles can be found.

Meanwhile a restored Anglo-Japanese alliance would mean the US Navy is outnumbered, outgunned AND forced to fight on two fronts. Not good.

Well, I think everyone would agree that an Anglo-American War post 1900 is nigh impossible. It's completely meaningless to discuss how the OTL military matchup was like, since those militaries were born out of the same geopolitical reality that made war impossible, and the years needed to change that reality are also more than enough to retool industries for war, build warships, train troops, etc.

Debating how the war would go in an ATL where war is possible would need the ATL to be actually specified. For instance someone earlier mentioned the U.S. was too cohesive for its industrial superiority not to win out. But if the war is made possible by a fascist takeover in the U.S. due to the Great Depression, and the new government is seeking external enemies, there goes cohesion. On the other hand, if it's the British that have gone fascist, some of the Dominions may stay neutral, and "liberating Canada" may be a serious proposition with significant support in Canada.
 
Fun Fact: during prohibition, the U.S govt told the Brits that they would have to have their ocean liners be clear of alcohol if they wanted to dock at American ports. The Brits were so angry that parliment considered making it manditory that American ships could only dock in British ports if they had alcohol onboard.

Ultimately it was agreed that U.K ocean liners would drop any liquor they had onboard into the ocean when the ship reached 3 miles from U.S waters.

That is awesome - I'd managed to miss that Prohibition factoid. :)

"We're bound for Valparaiso in a rowboat!"
 

Shackel

Banned
Post Depression, Britain has about 3 years to take America's important naval bases before they are hit by the extreme production.

Now, at the same time, America may actually get Germany as an ally. There WAS a large Nazi-sympathiser group, and Hitler wasn't classified as a genocidal wingbat.
 
Once on another forum I discussed about it in timeline thread where France-Russia (with Alaska) would fight World War against Britain and Germany. One user said that USA will join the war on Entente side and attack due canadian ocupation policy (a'la Boer Wars) in Alaska. He waved "War Plan Red" and said that USA will take all of population centers (he said: 95% of population) in southern Canada. With supporting Quebec separatists, americans will hold Canada. I said that there is no possibilty to hold that big country with that wildernesses. Partisants groups made of few boys with hunt rifles can keep a much higher US forces all over the country. Like in Vietnam, or Afganistan. But he still said: "Population centers are ocupied, there willn't be enough people to made guerilla". And I still don't agree with him.
 
I'm the last guy to be an "America-wanker", but I'd like to shoot down two things that get a complete waive every time this is mentioned:

1. Defense Plan 1 seriously impeding the United States. It's a quixotic effort at best, and what it sounds like in reality is wasting Canada's already meager defensive power in an offensive of questionable utility...you can destroy a couple of bridges and factories, for sure, but I'm not seeing occupying Albany and Buffalo for 24 hours as really achieving much.

2. "The Canadian Vietnam". This just won't happen. It will be more like the Resistances in Western Europe. Canada is *big*, but 95%+ of the country's population is in an easily-occupied (I didn't say captured) strip along the US border. Vietnam could be Vietnam because there was such a huge populace out in the boonies. The Viet Cong didn't have to hide out at Great Slave Lake in subzero temperatures, thousands of miles away from any aid.

I'm not saying that Canada won't put up a valiant effort. I'm just saying that the United States will "win", and soon.
 
Why does everyone assume Canadian rebels will hide in the forest? there are huge tracts of sparsely populated farmland that the US would have no chance of holding. Also Canada has loads of descent forest withing many of it's farm regions and even the cities. How else do you think that almost 400 000 people hid from conscription in 1918?
 
Why does everyone assume Canadian rebels will hide in the forest? there are huge tracts of sparsely populated farmland that the US would have no chance of holding. Also Canada has loads of descent forest withing many of it's farm regions and even the cities. How else do you think that almost 400 000 people hid from conscription in 1918?

The idea of the US invading Canada in the late 30s is ridiculous, but if it does happen, Canada will not be Vietnam. The US most recent experience with insurgency was the Phillipines, where conditions for an insurgency are more favorable than Canada, and the US prevailed. Nastily. Now the US probably isn't going to brutalize the Canadians like they did the Filipinos--they have ties of culture, language, and religion--but for the same reason they aren't going to invade in the first place.

Edit: That said, if the UK has strong control over the Atlantic, insurgents would still be a problem until that control is disrupted.
 
I do see some quebecois fighting americans and other insurgents. Communism and fascism my become popular with rebels too.
 
Pre-1929 the UK has clear air power on their side, as well as having an army ready to move out to defend the most logical point of attack Canada. As a side note the UK may seek out the Japanese as an ally as their alliance ended in 1923. Japan in the war adds a new layer for we can see the Philipines attacked, Hawaii, and most importantly tying up US forces in the area.
 
World War II in OTL was a clear indicator that the former thassolocratic powers of western europe could not match the industrial/military output of the major terrestrial powers USA and USSR. I think the idea that canadian insurgency would pose a serious threat to american occupation and that the united kingdom could maintain intense power projection in the western hemisphere to be as ridiculous as the idea of starting and Anglo-American war in the first place.
Yes i agree that the US wasn't in great shape to start major offensive operations in the 20's and 30's but given a long enough war they could have marshalled their resources like they did in WWII and overwhelmed any British/Canadian opposition.
 
Since both the British Empire and America have their abundant share of AH supernationalist fanboys that think their respective pet countries created the universe by simply being awesome, the only result pitting one group against the other can be... SPACE-TIME COLLAPSE. :eek:

Homesty, the one good thing about this is that pitting Britwank fanboys and Ameriwank fanboys against each other is that they can be immovable object vs. irresistible force, they may argue and flame each other to exhaustion and leave the rest of the forum alone, instead of screwing TLs to death by flame, as it happens when their pet countries are squared against everything else.

I might be tempted to argue that Briwank supernationalists are sometimes even more bullheaded than the Yankee brand. But being myself an hybrid Eurowank/Ameriwank fanboy, my opinion is likely biased. ;):p

Now thats not fair, it's a well known fact that Ben Franklin invented lightning and used it to craft the universe, shortly after George Washington defeated the demonic army Great Britain with nothing but his bare hands. Then the Nazi-Arab-Fucking Pinko alliance was struck down with nuclear weapons.:D:D:D
 

Eurofed

Banned
Now thats not fair, it's a well known fact that Ben Franklin invented lightning and used it to craft the universe, shortly after George Washington defeated the demonic army Great Britain with nothing but his bare hands. Then the Nazi-Arab-Fucking Pinko alliance was struck down with nuclear weapons.:D:D:D

OTOH, it is another well-known fact that when the Evool Euro-Russian-Yankee alliance overrun Canada, India, and the British Isles, Super Wellington, Cyborg Churchill, and Saint Thatcher led their heroically defiant people to

Australia ...

South Africa...

the Moon, where they perfected mass drivers and laser cannons, and used them to reconquer the Earth.

:p;):rolleyes:
 
Don't forget how God-Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte teams up with Kaiser Wilhelm II/Frederick Wilhelm to crush the Evol Britishers (disuniting Europe! The Scoundrels!) once and for all, create an all united, all enlightened, all loving Europe, with absolutely no ethnic/cultural/religious strife whatsoever, and then goes on to rule the world with peace, love, the metric system, and gigantic wedges of Eurocracy, none of which is remotely made/difficult to implement/cripplingly expensive.

Of course, the pesky Russians (how can they be European? They're ruled by evil dictators! Eww!) are effortly swatted aside with peaceful and loving rhetoric/ weights and measures conversion/ Panzer divisions led by someone with a surname at least three metres long.

:p;):rolleyes:

EDIT: Do you get the feeling that this is being driven slightly off topic? (Partly by me.)

DOUBLE EDIT: This was is very, very unlikely. Even if Britain was to go fascist under Moseley (unlikely), it doesn't mean Canada goes fascist. And being fascist doesn't mean that, by law, you have to attack other countries, such as the USA.
 
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I'm the last guy to be an "America-wanker", but I'd like to shoot down two things that get a complete waive every time this is mentioned:

1. Defense Plan 1 seriously impeding the United States.

Define "seriously impede". The purpose of DP1 wasn't to knock the US out of the war, but to cause enough chaos (by ripping up railway lines, blowing up bridges, stealing locomotives, etc.) to delay the American invasion by long enough to allow Britain to ship reinforcements across the Atlantic. Even if it only took a week or two for the Americans to drive out the invaders and bring up enough replacement infrastructure to start their own invasion then DP1 will probably have succeeded.

It's a quixotic effort at best, and what it sounds like in reality is wasting Canada's already meager defensive power in an offensive of questionable utility...you can destroy a couple of bridges and factories, for sure, but I'm not seeing occupying Albany and Buffalo for 24 hours as really achieving much.
"meager defensive power". Time for some numbers perhaps. Joint Plan Red assumes the following forces available in CONUS at the start of mobilisation (M-day):

Regular army - 100,000 men in 9 divisional organisations
National Guard - 175,000 men in 18 divisional organisations
Organised reserve - 118,000 men (of whom 113,000 are officers). The purpose of this formation is to fill out the two bodies above to full war strength and act as cadre for another 33 divisions of fresh conscripts rather than to fight directly.

Note that according to the plan available forces could be moved up to the border by M+4 but they wouldn't be fully mobilised and ready to go until M+60.

On the other side of the border, War Plan Red assumes the following numbers:

Canadian army 52,000
Canadian reserves available after 30 days 68,000 (120,000 in total in 11 divisions)
British expeditionary force available in theatre after 30 days 100,000 (4 infantry divsions and 2 cavalry brigades).
Other Dominions and India - no details here, but War Plan Red estimates total Imperial forces in Canada after 60 days could be 270,000 men (note this is not significantly less than the combined total of US Army/National Guard).

The critical factor here is how soon after M-Day the penny drops and Britain and Canada start mobilising in response. If it's very quick and the flying columns head over the border before the Americans have properly moved up and secured it, then going by the above figures by the time the US are ready to launch an invasion the invaders will be matched in numbers by the Imperial forces in Canada - hardly a recipe for a successful invasion, never mind a swift one. And things get worse after that - with full Imperial mobilisation and ability to reinforce North America (i.e. the worst case scenario for the US) War Plan Red assumes 460,000 Imperial troops ("Some of the colored races however come of good fighting stock, and, under white leadership, can be made into very efficient troops" - presumably a reference to the Indian Army...) in North America after 6 months, 1 million in 9 months and 2.5 million in 77 divisions after 16 months. to be fair, on the other side of the coin Red assumes 2.1 million American troops by M+120 and 4.6 million after two years, but as these figures are dependent on a conscription law coming into effect by M+60 the vast majority of these (especially the M+120 numbers) will be untrained conscripts.

Of course, and to repeat, all of this depends on the RN being able to establish control of the Atlantic (or at least prevent the USN establishing control). If it doesn't, then all bets are off. FWIW, Red seems to assume that the first actual combat operations would involve a British attempt to close the Panama Canal in response to American moves to shift their Pacific fleet into the Atlantic.

I'm not saying that Canada won't put up a valiant effort. I'm just saying that the United States will "win", and soon.
See above. War Plan Red is assuming a total war lasting at least two years. I'm not sure if that fits your definition of soon, but...

Note on sources - all the above is drawn from the excellent article in the Autumn 1988 edition of Military History Quarterly magazine. This is offline as far as I can see, but there is another nice article in the Washington Post here. Favorite quote - "Invading Canada is an old American tradition. Invading Canada successfully is not. ":D
 
Canada in the 1920s also has several hundred thousand men who served in WWI and the rifles to arm them so it won't take long for Canada to field an astonishingly large force suitable for defensive purposes, tens of thousands of whom have more combat experience than anyone the US has available.


Even if Japan doesn't maintain the alliance with Great Britain this still leaves the US forced to divide the fleet while the British can concentrate their fleet in the Atlantic.
 
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