One Soldier S Story 1939 1945

This story details the fateful adventures of two Canadian army regiments dispatched to the Pacific to face the Japanese.

This is the story of a seventeen year old boy who ran away from home to join the Canadian Army at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. It describes the fateful adventures of two regiments dispatched to the Pacific to face the Japanese, and the courage of two thousand young soldiers who, when faced with an impossible task thousands of miles from home, behaved with honour and distinction. Though they lost the battle of Hong Kong, they succeeded in showing the world the mettle of which they were made.

Japan's invasion of China in 1937 saw most major campaigns north of the Yangtze River, where Chinese industry was concentrated. The southern theater proved a more difficult challenge for Japan because of its enormous size, diverse terrain, and poor infrastructure, but Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek made a formidable stand that produced a veritable quagmire for a superior opponent--a stalemate much desired by the Allied nations. In the first book to cover this southern theater in detail, David Macri closely examines strategic decisions, campaigns, and operations and shows how they affected Allied grand strategy. Drawing on documents of U.S. and British officials, he reveals for the first time how the Sino-Japanese War served as a "proxy war" for the Allies: by keeping Japan's military resources focused on southern China, they hoped to keep the enemy bogged down in a war of attrition that would prevent them from breaching British and Soviet territory. While the most immediate concern was preserving Siberia and its vast resources from invasion, Macri identifies Hong Kong as the keystone in that proxy war-vital in sustaining Chinese resistance against Japan as it provided the logistical interface between the outside world and battles in Hunan and Kwangtung provinces; a situation that emerged because of its vital rail connection to the city of Changsha. He describes the development of Anglo-Japanese low-intensity conflict at Hong Kong; he then explains the geopolitical significance of Hong Kong and southern China for the period following the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Opening a new window on this rarely studied theater, Macri underscores China's symbolic importance for the Allies, depicting them as unequal partners who fought the Japanese for entirely different reasons-China for restoration of its national sovereignty, the Allies to keep the Japanese preoccupied. And by aiding China's wartime efforts, the Allies further hoped to undermine Japanese propaganda designed to expel Western powers from its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As Macri shows, Hong Kong was not just a sleepy British Colonial outpost on the fringes of the empire but an essential logistical component of the war, and to fully understand broader events Hong Kong must be viewed together with southern China as a single military zone. His account of that forgotten fight is a pioneering work that provides new insight into the origins of the Pacific War.

Co-winner of the 2014-2015 Charles P. Stacey Award Tim Cook, Canada’s leading war historian, ventures deep into World War Two in this epic two-volume story of heroism and horror, of loss and longing, sacrifice and endurance. Written in Cook’s compelling narrative style, this book shows in impressive detail how soldiers, airmen, and sailors fought—the evolving tactics, weapons of war, logistics, and technology. It gauges Canadian effectiveness against the skilled enemy whom they confronted in battlefields from 1939 to 1943, from the sweltering heat of Sicily to the frigid North Atlantic, and from the urban warfare of Ortona to the dark skies over Germany. The Necessary War examines the equally important factors of morale, discipline, and fortitude of the Canadian citizen-soldiers. The war was an engine of transformation for Canada. With a population of fewer than twelve million, Canada embraced its role as an arsenal of democracy, exporting war supplies, feeding its allies, and raising a million-strong armed forces that served and fought in nearly every theatre of war. The nation was mobilized like never before in the fight to preserve the liberal democratic order. The six-year-long exertion caused disruption, provoked nationwide industrialization, ushered in changes to gender roles, exacerbated the tension between English and French, and forged a new sense of Canadian identity. Canadians were willing to bear almost any burden and to pay the ultimate price in the pursuit of victory. As with his award-winning two-volume series on WWI, Tim Cook uses original sources, letters from soldiers, rare documents, and maps of battlefields to illustrate the contributions and sacrifices made by what is often called the greatest generation. Magisterial in its scope, The Necessary War illuminates Canada’s past as never before. From the Western Front to the home front, Canadians served many roles in a war that had to be fought and won.

Why was Canada not preparing for the Second World War when the rest of the world was ready to meet Hitler’s threats? Despite Canada’s active participation in the First World War, which many claimed made Canada a nation, the country was almost defenceless in September 1939 when war was declared again. Larry D. Rose, a long-time journalist and a military specialist, examines the military’s own failures, the hidden agenda of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, and the divisions within Canada leading up to Canada’s entry into the war. He suggests that the lack of preparedness was directly responsible for two of Canada’s costliest military defeats: the battle of Hong Kong and Dieppe.

The scope and scale of Operation Barbarossa—the German invasion of the Soviet Union—make it one of the pivotal events of the Second World War. Yet our understanding of both the military campaign as well as the “war of annihilation” conducted throughout the occupied territories depends overwhelmingly on “top-down” studies. The three million German soldiers who crossed the Soviet border and experienced this war are seldom the focus and are often entirely ignored. Who were these men and how did they see these events? Luther and Stahel, two of the leading experts on Operation Barbarossa, have reconstructed the 1941 campaign entirely through the letters (as well as a few diaries) of more than 200 German soldiers across all areas of the Eastern Front. It is an original perspective on the campaign, one of constant combat, desperate fear, bitter loss, and endless exertions. One learns the importance of comradeship and military training, but also reads the frightening racial and ideological justifications for the war and its violence, which at times lead to unrelenting cruelty and even mass murder. Soldiers of Barbarossa is a unique and sobering account of 1941, which includes hundreds of endnotes by Luther and Stahel providing critical context, corrections, and commentary.

The Proceedings of the Calgary History of Medicine Days represent a series of volumes in the history of medicine and healthcare that publishes the work of young and emerging researchers in the field, hence providing a unique publishing format. The annual Calgary History of Medicine Days Conference, established in 1991, brings together undergraduate and early graduate students from across Canada, the USA, the UK, and Europe to give paper and poster presentations on a wide variety of topics from the history of medicine and healthcare from an interdisciplinary perspective. The History of Medicine Days offers an annual platform for discussions and exchanges between participants over recent research findings, methodological perspectives, or work-in-progress descriptions of ongoing historiographical projects. This book brings together a number of reviewed and edited conference papers, comprising topics from historical medical classics, physicianship and the doctor’s role, military medicine, and disfigured bodies in anatomical and media perspectives. In addition, it includes the papers given by the conference’s internationally renowned keynote speaker, Dr Guel Russel. It further comprises all of the abstracts of the conference for documentation purposes and is well illustrated with diagrams and images pertaining to the history of medicine.

Landmark study of the Canadians' first major operation in Normandy New revelations on the death of German panzer ace Michael Wittmann Handsomely illustrated with maps, photos, and diagrams On August 8, 1944, the Canadian Army launched Operation Totalize, a massive armored and mechanized infantry attack that aimed to break through enemy defenses south of Caen and trap the German Army in Normandy by linking up with Patton's Third Army.