Canada S Great War 1914 1918

Canada’s Great War, 1914-1918: How Canada Helped Save the British Empire and Became a North American Nation describes the major role that Canada played in helping the British Empire win the greatest war in history—and, somewhat surprisingly, resulted in Canada’s closer integration not with the British Empire but with its continental neighbor, the United States. When Britain declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in August 1914, Canada was automatically committed as well because of its status as a Dominion in the British Empire. Despite not having a say in the matter, most Canadians enthusiastically embraced the war effort in order to defend the Empire and its values. In Canada’s Great War, 1914-1918, historian Brian Douglas Tennyson argues that Canada’s participation in the war weakened its relationship with Britain by stimulating a greater sense of Canadian identity, while at the same time bringing it much closer to the United States, especially after the latter entered the war. Their wartime cooperation strengthened their relationship, which had been delicate and often strained in the nineteenth century. This was reflected in the greater integration of their economies and the greater acceptance in Canada of American cultural products such as books, magazines, radio broadcasting and movies, and was symbolized by the astonishing American response to the Halifax explosion in December 1917. By the end of the war, Canadians were emerging as a North American people, no longer fearing close ties to the United States, even as they maintained their ties to the British Commonwealth. Canada’s Great War, 1914-1918 will interest not only Canadians unaware of how greatly their nation’s participation in the First World War reshaped its relationship with Britain and the United States, but also Americans unacquainted with the magnitude of Canada’s involvement in the war and how that contribution drew the two nations closer together.

Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson's Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 was first published by the Department of National Defence in 1962 as the official history of the Canadian Army’s involvement in the First World War. Immediately after the war ended Colonel A. Fortescue Duguid made a first attempt to write an official history of the war, but the ill-fated project produced only the first of an anticipated eight volumes. Decades later, G.W.L. Nicholson - already the author of an official history of the Second World War - was commissioned to write a new official history of the First. Illustrated with numerous photographs and full-colour maps, Nicholson’s text offers an authoritative account of the war effort, while also discussing politics on the home front, including debates around conscription in 1917. With a new critical introduction by Mark Osborne Humphries that traces the development of Nicholson’s text and analyzes its legacy, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919 is an essential resource for both professional historians and military history enthusiasts.

Montreal at War tells the story of how citizens in Canada's largest city responded to the challenges of the First World War. Drawing from newspapers, journals, government reports, and archival records, Terry Copp - one of Canada's leading military historians - raises important questions about how the Canadian war experience has been interpreted, and the ways in which hindsight has privileged some voices over others. Painting a picture of life in Montreal during the first years of the twentieth century, Montreal at War addresses responses to the outbreak of war in Europe and the process of raising an army for service overseas. It details the shock of intense combat and heavy casualties, studies the mobilization of volunteers, and follows the experience of battalions from Montreal to the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The crisis of conscription is described in the context of national and local developments, and great attention is paid to the experiences of both the army overseas and civilians at home. Challenging long-held assumptions, Montreal at War aims to understand the war experience as it unfolded, approaching history from the perspective of those who lived through it.

The first comprehensive history of Canadians in WWI in forty years, and already hailed as the definitive work on Canadians in the Great War, At the Sharp End covers the harrowing early battles of 1914—16. Tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, died before the generals and soldiers found a way to break the terrible stalemate of the front. Based on eyewitness accounts detailed in the letters of ordinary soldiers, Cook describes the horrible struggle, first to survive in battle, and then to drive the Germans back. At the Sharp End provides both an intimate look at the Canadian men in the trenches and an authoritative account of the slow evolution in tactics, weapons, and advancement. Featuring never-before-published photographs, letters, diaries, and maps, this recounting of the Great War through the soldiers' eyes is moving, engaging, and thoroughly engrossing.

Shock Troops follows the Canadian fighting forces during the titanic battles of Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele, and the Hundred Days campaign. Through the eyes of the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches on the Western Front, and based on newly uncovered Canadian, British, and German archival sources, Cook builds on Volume I of his national bestseller, At the Sharp End. The Canadian fighting forces never lost a battle during the final 2 years of the war, and although they paid a terrible price in the killing fields of the Great War, they were indeed, as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George exclaimed, the shock troops of the Empire.

This military history examines the blunders, heroism, battles and suffering of World War I, as well as the effects of the war years on ordinary Canadians at home.