On War & Society

The Italian Campaign during the Second World War remains a subject of controversy—whether it was "Normandy's Long Right Flank" or a costly stalemate continues to be debated by historians to modern day. Terry Copp, director emeritus of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, believes he has found a new multinational approach to studying the Italian Campaign as he zeroes in on the late 1943/early 1944 Allied assault on the Axis Winter Line. The Winter Line was the site of many famous battles that have since become important national icons, including Ortona, Orsogna, the Rapido River and Monte Cassino. Terry insists to properly comprehend the campaign historians should look past the national narratives and address the combat operations across the entire peninsula.

Jewish people are traditionally depicted as victims in the Second World War literature. This should come as no surprise, as six million Jews were killed at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Ellin Bessner, in her new book Double Threat, insists that at least in the case of Jewish Canadians, they were not just victims of the war but also active players in the eventual victory of the Allies against Germany and the Axis powers during the Second World War. Canadian Jews enlisted at the same proportional rates as the rest of Canada and served valiantly and bravely in the face of an enemy that not only wanted to see them defeated in battle but exterminated from the face of the earth.

References

Irving Abella and Harold Troper. None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933–1948. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983.

Ellin Bessner. Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military and World War II. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

Sometimes we find Canadians in the most unlikely of places. During the Second World War, within the crews of airmen responsible for breaching the Ruhr dams of Nazi Germany, there were thirty Canadians. In 1943, these men, along with about a hundred others, took to the skies in May 1943 aboard nineteen Lancaster Bombers to drop the now infamous bouncing bombs that would devastate enemy power plants, factories and German infrastructure after blowing up several dams. Now known as the Dam Busters, in this interview, Ted Barris discusses the deeds of these Canadian airmen and legacies they left behind.

Ted Barris is a journalist and award-winning author of 18 books. He lived in Oxbow, Ontario.

References

Ted Barris. Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid on Nazi Germany (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2018).

As the Second World War fades from living memory, D-Day, the Allied operation whose success led to the liberation of France and the rest of Western Europe from Axis forces, continues to serve as a microcosm for the preservation of democratic values in the world today. For those who fought, D-Day has important lessons to teach about how the past is remembered and what stories we tell to future generations. In this On War and Society Special Episode, guest host Kyle Pritchard talks with producer Elliott Halpern to discuss a new documentary airing on History, formerly the History Channel, on June 1st, 2019 at 9 pm. "D-Day in 14 Stories" blends first-hand accounts with re-enactments and animated renderings of the landings and is exclusively narrated by veterans and witnesses of the Allied Invasion of Normandy. To commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the landings next month, "D-Day in 14 Stories" offers a varied account of the strategic and personal challenges veterans and others faced.

Elliott Halpern is an Emmy-award winning producer. He is the owner and creative director of yap films and has produced, written and directed many outstanding feature length films for television. He has previously produced Canad's War in Colour (2005), Vimy Ridge: Heaven to Hell (2007) and Black Watch Snipers (2016). References Elliott Halpern, D-Day in 14 Stories. Documentary. Directed by Jamie Kastner. Toronto: History, Yap Films, June 2019.

The contribution of nurses to attend to the wounded was essential to military care and recovery during the First World War. Less noted is the role of the middle class and educated, though largely unqualified, women who assisted in filling in the gaps at overburdened hospitals and convalescent homes as voluntary nurses. In this episode, guest host Kyle Pritchard sits down with Linda Quiney to discuss her research on the Canadian Voluntary Aid Detachment in her new book, This Small Army of Women. Women drawn to voluntary medical service sought a mixed sense of camaraderie, patriotism and adventure. Yet many experienced difficult and mundane work as a result of hostility from professional nurses and doctors who doubted their abilities. While some continued in emerging disciplines like physiotherapy and dietetics after they returned to Canada, others found it difficult to continue in the medical field. Whether they married or continued on in another career, Linda suggests that the majority of women went back to their lives with fond memories of their time in service.

Linda Quiney is a historian and serves as an affiliate with the Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry at the University of British Columbia. She is also the author of a number of articles and chapters on Canadian and Newfoundland women's wartime voluntary work in support of the military medical services with the St. John Ambulance and Canadian Red Cross.

References

Ian Miller, Our Glory and Our Grief: Torontonians and the Great War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Linda Quiney, This Small Army of Women. Vancouver: University of UBC Press, 2017.

Sometimes we forget that the field of war and society encompasses so much more than Canada. Many of the guests we've had on our show study the history of war and society in Canada, but in this episode, Wilson Bell speaks about the Soviet Gulag system during the Second World War and his new book, Stalin's Gulag at War.

Wilson Bell is an associate professor of history at Thompson Rivers University. He is the author of numerous articles on the Gulag, and his first book, Stalin's Gulag at War, was published in 2018 with the University of Toronto Press.

References

Wilson T. Bell, Stalin's Gulag at War: Forced Labour, Mass Death, and Soviet Victory during the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018).

Shell shock has become a stand-in for the experience of all soldiers of the First World War. And it has also become one of the most popular topics of inquiry for historians of the First World War. Mark Humphries, associate professor history at Wilfrid Laurier University and Director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies, has contributed another addition to the ever-growing literature on the topic with his new book on shell shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Looking at the experience of doctors and patients as well as the medical management system that developed overseas, he investigates how shell shock was managed and mismanaged and how the search for a solution remained elusive.

References

Mark Osborne Humphries, A Weary Road: Shell Shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

We know a lot about the urban experience during the First World War in Canada but far less about the rural equivalent. Canadian historians sometimes assume––and quite wrongly––that the urban Canadian experience of the war can stand in for the rural. But it can't. Jonathan Vance's new book A Township at War shows that the conventional narrative of the First World War in Canada did not match that of East Flamborough from 1914 to 1918. Prohibition, conscription, suffrage, enemy alien internment––these are the issues encountered time and again when writing about the First World War. But in a small rural southern Ontario community, these were not the pressing issues of the day. The issues were starkly different.

Jonathan F. Vance is a Distinguished University Professor and J.B. Smallman Chair in the Department of History at Western University where he teaches military history, Canadian history and social memory. He is the author of many books and articles, including Death So Noble (1997), Unlikely Soldiers (2008), Maple Leaf Empire (2011) and A Township at War (2018).

References

Vance, Jonathan. Death so Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997.

------. A Township at War. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018.

Since the late 1990s, Canadian historian Tim Cook has carved out a niche in the field of First World War history. In his two-volume social history of the war, he spoke of a soldiers' culture, which bound Canadians together on the battlefields and helped them cope with the immense stress and strain of war from 1914 to 1918. This year, published with Allen Lane, Tim released The Secret History of Soldiers, a book dedicated solely to this soldiers' culture that has become his most significant contribution to our understanding of the First World War in Canada.

Tim speaks of a few of the aspects of this soldiers' culture, including swearing, slang and material objects. At the end of the war, this culture did not necessarily disappear. In Legion halls and reunions, veterans recreated this culture in a civilian world, however temporary it might have been.

Tim Cook is the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum. He is the author of 11 books, including Shock Troops, Vimy and most recently, The Secret History of Soldiers. Among many others, he is the recipient of the RBC Taylor Prize, J.W. Dafoe Prize (twice), Ottawa Book Award (twice) and the C.P. Stacey Award (twice). He was recently awarded the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Governor General's History Award for Popular Media. He is a Member of the Order of Canada.

References

Tim Cook. "Battles of the Imagined Past: Canada's Great War and Memory." Canadian Historical Review 95, no. 3 (2014): 417–26.

------. The Secret History of Soldiers: How Canadians Survived the Great War. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2018.

------. Vimy: The Battle and the Legend. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2017.

Mark Humphries. "Between Commemoration and History: The Historiography of the Canadian Corps and Military Overseas." Canadian Historical Review 95, no. 3 (2014): 384–97.

Amy Shaw. "Expanding the Narrative: A First World War with Women, Children, and Grief." Canadian Historical Review 95, no. 3 (2014): 398­–406.

Jonathan F. Vance. Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997.

Tim Cook loves to write. As many Canadian historians will attest, Tim is one of the most prolific writers in the profession––both in terms of volume and content. Since 1998, Tim has published a dozen books on the First and Second World Wars, greatly advancing our knowledge of both. But how does he do it? In this month's episode, Tim discusses the process of researching and writing, as well as his new book, The Secret History of Soldiers, published with Allen Lane this year. In a jaw-dropping statement, Tim revealed how many words he writes per week.

Tim Cook is the First World War historian at the Canadian War Museum. He has published a dozen books on the history of the First and Second World Wars and is the recipient of many awards for his writing including the RBC Taylor Prize, the J.W. Dafoe Prize (twice) and the C.P. Stacey Prize (twice). He was recently awarded the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Governor General's History Award for Popular Media. Tim is a Member of the Order of Canada.

References

Tim Cook. At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1914–1916. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2007.

------. Clio's Warriors: Canadian Historians and the Writing of the World Wars. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006.

------. Fight to the Finish: Canadians Fighting the Second World War, 1944–1945. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2015.

------. "'More a Medicine than a Beverage': 'Demon Rum' and the Canadian Trench Soldier of the First World War," Canadian Military History 9, no. 1 (2000): 6–22.

------. The Necessary War: Canadians Fighting the Second World War, 1939­–1943. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2014.

------. No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.

------. The Secret History of Soldiers: How Canadians Survived the Great War. Toronto: Allen Lane, 2018.

------. Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008.

------. "The Top Ten Most Important Books of Canadian Military History." Canadian Military History 18, no. 4 (2009): 65–74.

Richard Holmes. Firing Line. London: Cape, 1985.

Desmond Morton. When Your Number's Up: The Canadian Soldier in the Great War. Toronto: Random House, 1993.

Bill Rawling. Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914–1918. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.