In 2003, Terry Copp, a Professor Emeritus of
history at Wilfrid Laurier University[1]
and one of the Canada's leading military historians, argued in his
Fields of Fire[2]
that the Canadian contribution to the Battle of Normandy had not
been a failure. He also contended that historians have greatly
underestimated the performance of First Canadian Army in that
campaign. Now, in Cinderella Army, he seeks to extend this
argument to the Canadian experience in Northwest Europe from the
conclusion of the Normandy campaign to the end of the war in May
1945.
Copp begins his work at the end the battle of the
Falaise Gap. At this point, after a brief summary of the state of
the various formations of First Canadian Army, he moves on to
chronicle its operations at the divisional and the regimental
levels. These operations included the freeing of the channel ports
of Calais and Boulogne, the clearing of the Scheldt around the vital
port of Antwerp, the capture of Walcheren, the launching of
Operation Veritable in Germany in winter 1945, and the liberation of
the Netherlands to close out the war.
Through an examination of these engagements and
offenses, Professor Copp makes his case that, while the operations
of First Canadian Army were often problematic,[3]
they were still generally well executed. He demonstrates that the
Canadian forces in France and the Low Countries were an effective
instrument of war and, as the smallest army group in the armies of
the Western Allies, played a disproportionate role in the victory
over Nazi Germany. Copp also contends that historians have generally
overrated the German Army's performance against the Canadians. For
example, he observes that elite German units, including parachute
regiments, often suffered heavy losses in their engagements with
Canadian forces.[4]
Moreover, he is critical of the German doctrine of immediate
counterattacks to regain lost territory, since these attacks often
exhausted the only operational reserves available to the Germans,
reserves they would have done better to use in a defensive role. He
adds that these counterattacks became so predictable that the
Western Allies, including the Canadians, deliberately launched
operations to provoke them as opportunities to wear down German
forces.[5]
Throughout this book, Copp stresses the
difficulties that First Canadian Army faced from late summer 1944 to
May 1945. These included a lack of reinforcements for the rifle
battalions to replace losses suffered during the Normandy campaign.
He blames the Canadian high command, which, despite evidence from
the battles of Sicily and Italy, had seriously underestimated the
causalities that First Canadian Army would suffer once it had landed
in France. As a result, the system of providing replacements had not
been improved, and this, combined with the inability of the
Canadians to break up existing formations to meet their manpower
needs, meant that most of their rifle companies were under strength.[6]
Other problems discussed include the issue of battle exhaustion and
how the Canadian Medical Corps addressed it. In addition, Copp
argues that the Canadians were not given enough resources to
complete many of their tasks, most notably the clearing of the
Scheldt in order to open the Belgian port of Antwerp to Allied
shipping. Despite the importance of this port for the supply of the
Allied armies, the commander of 21st Army Group, Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery, did not give the Canadian operations around
Antwerp a high enough priority, owing to his focus on the drive for
the Ruhr, even after the failure of Operation Market Garden in
September 1944. As part of this argument, Copp discusses the
deteriorating relations between Montgomery and Admiral Bertram
Ramsey, who was critical of Montgomery's lack of attention to
Antwerp. As well, Copp criticizes General Dwight Eisenhower for his
unwillingness to be more forceful in his relations with Montgomery,[7]
and Field Marshal Alan Brooke for his intrigues behind the scenes on
behalf of Montgomery.
With this work, Copp has produced an excellent
history of the operations of First Canadian Army. The book's best
feature is its detailed descriptions of the Canadian operations at
the tactical level, the fruit of Copp's extensive examination of
regimental war dairies and other historical documents, along with
his many research trips to the battlefields of 1944–1945. The result
is that the reader gains a thorough understanding of the Canadian
operations in this period. Indeed, Copp's description of the capture
of Boulogne and Calais is particularly good in conveying how skilled
the Canadians were in overcoming various problems to achieve their
objectives. In addition, his detailed analysis shows how offensives
were designed the wear down the German divisions rather than achieve
the rapid and dynamic breakthroughs one almost expects for the
Allies in 1944–1945.
Copp's comprehensive research also yields some
interesting side stories. One example is how it was left to the
commander of the 1st Canadian Parachute Regiment to make sure that
the German town of Wismar stayed out of Soviet hands in May 1945.
Moreover, Copp includes a good discussion of the overall strategic
situation as it affected the Canadians, and well-argued criticisms
of Montgomery and Alan Brooke for their neglect of First Canadian
Army during the clearing of the Scheldt.
Despite the overall high quality of the work, it
does have a few weaknesses. Ironically, one is the meticulous detail
itself that Copp provides about the operations of First Canadian
Army, which can be somewhat overwhelming. Furthermore, a short
section describing the capabilities of the weapons used by the
Canadians would have been most helpful, particularly for readers
without an extensive background in the history of the Second World
War. Likewise, a short glossary of the terms and abbreviations used
in the book would have been useful. There are also some curious
omissions: for example, Copp does not mention the close relationship
between Canadian General Guy Simmons and Field Marshal Montgomery,
which had developed when Simmons served under Montgomery in the
Italian campaign in 1943.[8]
Furthermore, Copp is overly negative in his
assessment of the performance of German Army. While he is certainly
right to criticize the German doctrine of immediate counterattacks,
he overlooks that the German Army was a shadow of its former self
due to the pounding it had taken on the Eastern Front. In addition,
tactically it was facing Western Allies enjoying both complete air
supremacy and superior manpower and equipment. In light of these
difficulties, compounded by the loss of tactical flexibility due to
orders from Hitler and other commanders[9]
forbidding retreat, it was indeed a great accomplishment that the
Germans fought as well as they did on the Western Front in
1944–1945.
A final point is that Copp does not examine in
detail the political crisis that erupted in Canada over the decision
by the government of Prime Minister Mackenzie King to send soldiers
who had been conscripted for home defense to Western Europe in 1944.[10]
This is not a criticism so much an observation, since this work is
very different from most histories of Canada's involvement in the
Second World War, where the problems of conscription and the fears
of a split between English and French Canada are of paramount
importance.
Cinderella Army is an excellent work and a
worthy sequel to Fields of Fire. It is a must read for anyone
interested in Canadian military history and will set the standard
for years to come for books on the history of the First Canadian
Army from the end of the Normandy campaign to the liberation of the
Netherlands.
Queen's University (Kingston, ON)
pcmatt_2000@yahoo.ca
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[1] Professor Copp is also the director of the
Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies
in Waterloo, ON.
[2] Terry Copp, Fields of Fire: The Canadians
in Normandy (Toronto: U Toronto Pr, 2003).
[3] It should be noted that Professor Copp finds
little evidence to support the idea that a "learning curve" was
at work in First Canadian Army in 1944–1945.
[4] E.g., on 10 October at the village of
Hoogerhiede, the 6th Parachute Regiment sustained over 500
causalities in an attempted counterattack against Canadian
units.
[5] Canadian General Guy Simmons called this
approach the "battle of the counter-attacks."
[6] E.g., the British Army was forced to break up
a number of formations in 1944 to make up for losses during the
Normandy campaign.
[7] Not surprisingly, General Eisenhower noted the
problems of coalition warfare: "History testifies to the
ineptitude of coalitions in waging war. Allied failures have
been so numerous and their inexcusable blunders so common that
professional soldiers had long discounted the possibility of
effective allied action unless available resources were so great
as to assure victory by inundation. Even Napoleon's reputation
as a brilliant military leader suffered when students … came to
realize that he always fought against coalitions—and therefore
against divided counsels and diverse political, economic, and
military interests"—Robert Scales, "Trust, Not Technology,
Sustains Coalitions" Parameters (Winter 1998) 4–10.
[8] One work that notes this relationship is C.P.
Stacey, A Date with History: Memoirs of a Canadian Historian
(Toronto: Deneau, 1982). Stacey was the former official
historian of the Canadian Army during and after the Second World
War, and later Professor of History at the University of
Toronto.
[9] Including Field Marshals Walter Model and Gerd
von Rundstedt.
[10] For those not familiar with Canadian history,
the issue of conscription in both World Wars was extremely
controversial due mainly to the opposition of French Canadians
to being forced to fight for the British Empire. Nonetheless, in
both conflicts, heavy battlefield losses and a shortage of
volunteers meant that the governments of the day eventually
introduced conscription. During the Second World War, it was
done gradually. First in 1942, conscription was introduced for
home defense. Then, in fall 1944, a lack of trained replacements
forced the government of Prime Minister King to send 16,000
conscripts to Europe. For more information, see J.L.
Granatstein, Conscription in the Second World War, 1939–1945:
A Study in Political Management (Toronto: Ryerson Pr, 1969)
and R. Douglas Francis, et al., Destinies: Canadian History
since Confederation (Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2000).
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