Canadian Official Historians and the Writing of the World Wars Tim Cook

Canadian Official Historians and the Writing of the World Wars Tim Cook BA Hons (Trent), War Studies (RMC) This thesis is submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities and Social Sciences UNSW@ADFA 2005 Acknowledgements Sir Winston Churchill described the act of writing a book as to surviving a long and debilitating illness. As with all illnesses, the afflicted are forced to rely heavily on many to see them through their suffering. Thanks must go to my joint supervisors, Dr. Jeffrey Grey and Dr. Steve Harris. Dr. Grey agreed to supervise the thesis having only met me briefly at a conference. With the unenviable task of working with a student more than 10,000 kilometres away, he was harassed by far too many lengthy emails emanating from Canada. He allowed me to carve out the thesis topic and research with little constraints, but eventually reined me in and helped tighten and cut down the thesis to an acceptable length. Closer to home, Dr. Harris has offered significant support over several years, leading back to my first book, to which he provided careful editorial and historical advice. He has supported a host of other historians over the last two decades, and is the finest public historian working in Canada. His expertise at balancing the trials of writing official history and managing ongoing crises at the Directorate of History and Heritage are a model for other historians in public institutions, and he took this dissertation on as one more burden. I am a far better historian for having known him. Since I am a ground-pounder at heart and most of my previous academic writing has been on Canada and the Great War, I turned to two friends and colleagues for insight into Canada’s naval history. At the National Archives, Rob Fisher, who worked for several years as a naval historian at DHist, allowed me to pick his brain over Subway lunches on matters of official history and the Royal Canadian Navy. Rob also sold to me the three army official volumes for a mere $75, and that can not go unmentioned. It was also my pleasure to work with Dr. Roger Sarty at the Canadian War Museum. Despite holding together the CWM new building project for the two years we worked together, he always had time for his staff, and freely shared his love of history as he puffed on his pipe. I peppered him mercilessly on questions of official history, the Second World War, and all manner of salacious gossip. He obliged. At one stage in writing this dissertation, I thought I would list all of the historians over the years who have influenced my work. That proved impossible, but there is a convivial relationship among most military historians in the country, perhaps due to a perceived siege mentality, and the sharing of ideas at conferences has remained an important staple for my own development as an historian. And most important is the annual conference at Sir Wilfrid Laurier, hosted by Mike Bechthold and Terry Copp, both of whom have done so much for military history in this country through their ongoing editorialship of Canadian Military History. Without them and their journal, the profession would not be the same today. At the Canadian War Museum, I have been lucky to work with gifted colleagues and brilliant historians. Since my arrival, Dr. Cameron Pulsifer and Dr. Peter MacLeod have been good friends and colleague, and together, I think, have read almost everything (other than this dissertation) that I’ve published in the last couple of years, from half a dozen articles to book reviews. Their knowledge is imposing and I have profited from their generosity and editorial skills. This dissertation was written while engaged in the satisfying work of conceptualizing and implementing the new permanent galleries for the CWM. This has been a once in a life- time opportunity, and the thrill of building a new museum for all Canadians was never dulled despite a sometimes crushing workload. My colleagues in the Historical Section at the CWM have provided support and friendship, and while most only knew vaguely that I was working on “something”, they were an important emotional crutch throughout this project. I have learned much from Dr. Dean Oliver, Dr. Serge Durflinger, Glenn Ogden, Martin Auger, Patricia Grimshaw, Dr. Laura Brandon, Dr. Amber Lloyd- Langsten, Andrew Burtch, and Ryan Touhey. My parents instilled in me a love for history. It took a little while for it to catch fire, but it has been burning ever since. While both are accomplished historians in their own right, and I have profited specifically from my father’s patient and expert editing skills over the years, it is their generosity and love as parents that have had the greatest impact. As a soon to be father, too, I better understand the challenge of balancing a professional career and a family. My parents did both with a loving generosity that my brother, Graham, and I still find amazing. As in so much in this life, this book is partly dedicated to them. But none of this would be possible without Sarah. She has been my best friend, my confident, and fellow traveler on this path. One can not finish a work of this magnitude on nights and weekends without an unfair burden of life’s more mundane aspects falling to one’ partner. Yet Sarah, too, was working on her own part-time dissertation. She also had to deal with pregnancy and a sometimes absent-minded husband. But through all of this she was there at every stage, sharing my excitement and urging me forward, even if it was only through a wry smile and a hug. This work is dedicated to her. Table of Contents Introduction: Writing the World Wars 1 Chapter I: Documenting War & Forging Reputations, 1914-1918 11 Chapter II: The War of Reputations, 1918-1939 52 Chapter III: Clio in the Service of Mars, 1939-1945 98 Chapter IV: History Wars and War History, 1945-1948 153 Chapter V: Official History, Contested Memory, 1948-1960 205 Chapter VI: The Canon of World War History, 1960-2000 254 Conclusion: An Ongoing Dialogue 323 Bibliography: 332 Introduction Writing the World Wars The World Wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 weave through Canada’s history, stitching together myriad experiences to form the tapestry of identity and culture. There have been few aspects of Canadian society that have not been shaped by the World Wars, from politics to the family, from the role of the government to the formation of social policy. The loss of more than 102,000 dead caused incalculable grief. Yet in their aftermath Canada emerged a nation transformed. This dissertation is less concerned with Canada’s involvement in the World Wars, than with how historians have interpreted those events. An analysis of key historians and their works reveals historical themes underpinning how memory and narrative of the World Wars has been constructed within historical writing. The emphasis is on enduring contributions that formed, fashioned or challenged the canon of Canadian World War writing. Due to the deep scars of the World Wars in Quebec, the wars are viewed and taught quite differently in that province. In fact, Canada’s military history is largely ignored there, and almost all the academic World War writing remains by English- speaking historians. It has been the official historians of the Department of National Defence who, for much of the twentieth century, have controlled the historical writing of the World Wars and that military history has been narrowly defined as the history of military operations. Training, administrating and operational war-fighting remained the focus. Only recently have academic military historians pushed the discipline of military history to explore the 2 impact of the World Wars on Canadian society. Nonetheless, it remains the publications by A.F. Duguid, C.P. Stacey, Gilbert Tucker, Fred Hitchins, Joseph Schull, and more recent official historians that provide the central narrative when analysing the writing on Canada’s World Wars. While this dissertation is not an institutional history of the Department of National Defence’s historical sections, the prominent role of official military history in influencing the canon of World War writing requires that significant space be devoted to exploring these historians, their duties, and their works. Official histories can be defined as those authorized by an institution, group or person, and where that same agent agrees to financially support the project. As well, it generally means that full access is given to records. These unique histories do not, however, automatically equate into hagiography, although that can be the case. “Official but not history,” was Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s famous assessment of the British Great War official histories.1 Liddell Hart’s flippant remark was too clever by half, but most academic historians would agree in principle about the flawed nature of official histories. “Beset by PR, puffery, and self-promotion,” wrote historian Christopher Moore, “we distrust all official statements and wonder almost instinctively about the real story concealed beneath any authorized version of events.”2 Official history has the added burden of being closely associated with military history, which, as we shall see, has always had an uneasy relationship with academic history. The official histories propelled the study of the World Wars in Canada, and for this reason they must be analysed beyond the simple derision of glib statements. The official historians were indeed petitioned and pressured as the chroniclers of the nation’s 1 David French, “‘Official but not History’? Sir James Edmonds and the Official History of the Great War.” RUSI Journal 133.1 (March 1986) 58-63.

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