Milner on Mayne, 'Betrayed: Scandal, Politics, and Canadian Naval Leadership (Studies in Canadian Military History)'
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H-Canada Milner on Mayne, 'Betrayed: Scandal, Politics, and Canadian Naval Leadership (Studies in Canadian Military History)' Review published on Thursday, May 1, 2008 Richard O. Mayne. Betrayed: Scandal, Politics, and Canadian Naval Leadership (Studies in Canadian Military History). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 296 pp. $32.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7748-1296-2. Reviewed by Marc Milner (Department of History, University of New Brunswick) Published on H- Canada (May, 2008) Restoring the Navy in Canadian History The relationship between the army and the government of prime minister Mackenzie King has been a central part of the Canadian historiography of the Second World War for generations. The army's "demands" for more men, for conscription--on two occasions causing major political problems for the government--and the dismissal of General Andy McNaughton in 1943 are stories embedded in the literature of Canada's war effort from 1939 to 1945. Remarkably, the links between the navy and the government have been largely ignored. Just about the only naval event which has garnered any interest outside of the Canadian naval history field itself is the "defeat" of the navy in the Gulf and River St. Lawrence in 1942, which led to the closure of the St. Lawrence system to oceanic shipping late in the year. Attacks by German submariners along the coast occasioned much panic locally, in the media and in Parliament. The fall-out from this was well described by Michael Hadley years ago in U-Boats against Canada (1985), and historians of Canada during the war years who have read Hansard and the press of the era have been aware of this crisis and its important role in Canada's Second World War story for some time. But for a number of reasons, the story of the Silent Service and its relationship with Mackenzie King's government has been absent from the general history of Canada's war experience. Some have written about it, including C. P. Stacey in Arms, Men and Government (the official history of defense policy during the Second World War, published in 1970), this reviewer, and others. But as a rule, "Canadianists" do not read Canadian military history, and the subject has never been thoroughly explored nor has an attempt been made to integrate that story into the larger national one. Richard Mayne's Betrayed takes us a long way towards filling that void. The significance of Mayne's new book lies not simply in a complex and intriguing story well told, but in the fact that the wartime navy was very much a creature of King's government. Mayne plumbs the depths of that linkage. The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) expanded enormously between 1939 and 1945, becoming the third largest navy in the world by the end of the war. Much of the fleet was built in Canada and sustained by Canadian industry. This large expansion program, begun even before the fall of France in June 1940, fulfilled two crucial objectives of King's war effort: the industrialization of Canada, and a contribution to the fighting that would not produce a huge casualty bill. For these two reasons the navy was given a virtual blank check from the start of the war to expand to the limits of Canada's industrial base, its wealth, and its manpower. It was not until late 1943, as the navy Citation: H-Net Reviews. Milner on Mayne, 'Betrayed: Scandal, Politics, and Canadian Naval Leadership (Studies in Canadian Military History)'. H-Canada. 05-20-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3449/reviews/27326/milner-mayne-betrayed-scandal-politics-and-canadian-naval-leadership Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Canada schemed to acquire the final elements of a postwar fleet--especially aircraft carriers--that King began to balk at naval expansion. Although historians have not probed this theme extensively, it is clear that King and his cabinet hoped that Canadians would identify with the navy's efforts and that its role in crucial allied operations would mitigate the urge to deploy the army in combat. In this, King proved sadly mistaken and the navy was unable to save him from embarrassment in 1942 and political crisis in 1943. Mayne's exhaustively researched and crisply written Betrayed is the sorry tale of tensions within the navy and between the RCN and its government during those two crucial years. This struggle culminated in the dismissal of the chief of the naval staff, Rear Admiral Percy Walkers Nelles, at the end of 1943. Mayne's story begins with a discontented reservist named Andrew Maclean. The son of publishing magnate Hugh Maclean and nephew of the founder of Maclean's magazine, Maclean had served in the Royal Navy during the Great War. He joined the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserves (RCNVR) in 1927, and commanded the naval reserve division in Toronto, HMCS York, until 1931. As Mayne describes it, Maclean ran York as his own personal "elite gentlemen's club where the sons of Toronto's rich and powerful would go for their military service" (p. 14). Maclean left the RCNVR to serve in prime minister R. B. Bennett's personal staff, and tried to join the air force in 1939 on the outbreak of war. It is clear that he felt a certain sense of entitlement based on his experience in the Great War and his social standing. When the navy recalled him to active service, Maclean tried to negotiate his status, demanding the rank of commander (the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel), and had his father intervene on his behalf at the highest level. Maclean's ambition might have worked in 1914, but by 1939 the career professionals who ran the RCN had little time for the amateurs of the RCNVR, Maclean included. The regular navy found reservists who were not simply "playing" at being sailors, to be "undisciplined, free thinkers" (p. 17)-- descriptions that fit Maclean to a T. The difference between the average RCNVR and Maclean, however, was that Maclean had powerful political connections and was prepared to use them. Therein lay the rub. Unwanted by the British, which considered him "unsuited for naval service," Maclean proved to be an unruly subordinate in the RCN. He snubbed senior British officials during a brief while posted to a liaison position in the United Kingdom, and when sent back to Canada assumed responsibilities that were not his. Eventually the RCN assigned him duty as "Senior Officer, Fairmiles," in charge of the preparation and oversight of Canada's burgeoning fleet of modest, 112- foot patrol vessels. By the winter of 1942 Maclean was frustrated with having to work under regular force officers who, it seems, knew less about the navy than he did. And so Maclean decided to use both his family and media connections to claw his way out from under the smothering embrace of the naval hierarchy. By the time Andrew Maclean began his petulant assault on the RCN the Germans were attacking Canada's coast for the first time since 1917. Angus L. Macdonald, the naval minister, found himself answering pointed questions in the House about very specific issues of naval planning, command, and operations put to him by the MP from Maclean's home riding in Toronto. Many of these mirrored complaints already raised by Maclean inside the service. Meanwhile,Boating magazine ran an anonymous editorial criticizing the RCN's handling of the Fairmiles. As the battle intensified, Maclean tried to raise other RCNVR in rebellion as well, eventually shaping the struggle as one between gifted amateurs whose contributions were being stifled by uninspired professional naval officers who ran the RCN as their own preserve to the exclusion of men like Maclean. On several Citation: H-Net Reviews. Milner on Mayne, 'Betrayed: Scandal, Politics, and Canadian Naval Leadership (Studies in Canadian Military History)'. H-Canada. 05-20-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3449/reviews/27326/milner-mayne-betrayed-scandal-politics-and-canadian-naval-leadership Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Canada occasions Maclean--still a serving officer--threatened the naval minister that he would go public with the tensions between the RCN and its reservists, and bring a plague down on all their houses. Maclean persisted in this campaign during the German attacks in the River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, when the navy's response was so visibly feeble and when the country clamored for answers as to why Canada's major artery could not be defended. Eventually in October 1942 Maclean was persuaded to retire from the RCN, although that did not mean that this thorn in the navy's side went away. Mayne's recounting of the Maclean episode places the navy and its conduct of the war fully inside Canada's domestic politics during that dreadful year of 1942, but more revelations follow. For Canadian naval historians the greatest of these was the news that other reservists in the fleet who were also part of Canada's social elite joined in the chorus of discontent. In particular, RCNVR officers deeply engaged in battling the wolf packs in the middle of the Atlantic in 1942 provided direct evidence about the state of the war, their ships, and equipment to J. J. Connolly, Macdonald's executive assistant, behind the backs of their naval superiors. At issue was the modernization of the fleet's ships, especially the fitting of the latest radar which could detect U-boats attacking on the surface.