The U.S. Plan to Invade Canada
When
this bizarre story surfaced a few years ago, it reminded us if this
quote, attributed to Warren G. Harding: "I can take care of my enemies
all right. But my damn friends -they're the ones that keep me walking
the floors nights."
NORTHERN EXPOSURE
If
you had to invade another country, how would you do it? Believe it or
not, the United States military spent a lot of time pondering that
question in the late 1920s, when it came up with a plan to invade its
closest neighbor, Canada.
There was certainly a precedent for
the two nations battling it out. The Continental Army invaded Canada
during the American Revolution, and the U.S. Army made repeated
incursions during the War of 1812. In 1839 the state of Maine only
narrowly avoided a shooting war with the province of New Brunswick over a
border dispute. Then, in 1866, about 800 Irish-American members of a
group called the Fenian Brotherhood tried to occupy part of Canada for
the purpose of using it as a bargaining chip to force Great Britain to
grant independence to Ireland (They were quickly driven back across the
U.S. border).
That last invasion had an upside for Canadians: It
convinced the last holdouts in the independent provinces of New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec that they'd be better able
to defend themselves against the
next invasion if they banded together to form the Dominion of Canada, which they did on July 1, 1867.
Canadian soldiers in World War I.
TO THE DRAWING BOARD
Of
course, these skirmishes paled in comparison to World War I, which
raged from 1914 to 1918. That war, which was precipitated by the
assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, caught most of the
belligerents by surprise. It also lasted longer and was far more costly
in blood and treasure than anyone ever dreamed a war could be. None of
the nations that fought in it wanted to be caught off guard again; many
began planning for whatever war might be lurking around the corner. The
American military drafted a whole series of color-coded war plans to
cover just about every conceivable scenario: War Plan Black was a plan
for war with Germany; War Plan Orange dealt with Japan, a rapidly
growing power in the Pacific. Other colors included Green (Mexico), Gold
(France), Brown (The Philippines), and Yellow (China). There was even a
War Plan Indigo, in case the United States eve had to invade Iceland,
and a War Plan White that dealt with civil unrest within America's own
borders.
SEEING RED
War
Plan Red was America's plan for going to war with the British Empire,
in the unlikely event that Britain (code name: Red) decided to
"eliminate [the United States] as an economic and commercial rival."
Since Canada (code name: Crimson) was part of the Empire and shared a
5,527-mile border with the U.S., much of the plan dealt with invading
Canada and knocking it out of action before the British could use it as a
staging ground for attacks on the U.S.
Here's how an invasion of Canada would have gone:
*
The United States (code name: Blue) would attack and occupy halifax,
Nova Scotia, Canada's largest Atlantic port. The attack would deny
Britain access to the rail and road links it would need to land troops
in Canada and disperse than across the country.
* Next, the U.S.
Army would attack across the border along three fronts: Troops would
attack from either Vermont or New York to occupy Montreal and Quebec
City; from Michigan into Ontario; and from North Dakota into Manitoba.
The effects of these attacks would be to seize Canada's industrial
heartland while preventing similar attacks on America, and to further
disrupt the movement of Canadian troops from one part of the country to
another.
* Troops would cross from Washington into British
Columbia and seize Vancouver, Canada's largest Pacific port. The U.S.
Navy would blockade the port of Prince Rupert, 460 miles to the north.
Once
the crisis passed and relations between America, Canada, and Great
Britain returned to normal, the U.S. troops would be withdrawn from
Canadian territory, right? No- "Blue intentions are to hold in
perpetuity all Crimson and Red territory gained," the military planners
wrote. "The policy will be to prepare the provinces and territories of
Crimson and Red to become states and territories of the Blue union upon
the declaration of peace."
THE FOG OF WAR(S)
So
how seriously was the United States considering invading Canada? In all
probability, not very. War Plan Red doesn't go into nearly as much
detail as War Plan Black (Germany) or War Plan Orange (Japan), which
military planners correctly assumed were much more significant threats.
The intent of the other color-coded plans may have been to make war
plans involving Germany and Japan seem less controversial. Why the
subterfuge? After the horrors of World War I, in which nearly ten
million soldiers died, many people concluded that planning for wars only
made them more likely.
The U.S. military didn't feel this way,
of course, and one way they may have gotten around public opinion was to
come up with all kinds of improbable war plans to make the
real
plans more palatable. A public that would not have tolerated the idea
of preparing for war with Germany and Japan would be less alarmed by the
idea of the United States preparing for war with Germany, Japan,
Canada, Iceland, Jamaica, Monaco, and Andorra.
WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE…
Any
sting Canadians might have felt when War Plan Red was declassified in
1974 was offset by the knowledge that Canada had drafted its own plans
for invading the United States, and had done so several years before War
Plan Red was approved in 1930. "Defence Scheme No. 1," as it was
called, was created in 1921 by James Sutherland "Buster" Brown, Canada's
director of military operations and intelligence. In many respects it
was the opposite of War Plan Red: In the event that an American attack
was imminent, Canadian forces would strike first, attacking and
occupying key cities such as Albany, Minneapolis, and Seattle.
Unlike
with War Plan Red, these cities wouldn't be annexed or even occupied
for any longer than was absolutely necessary. The idea was to knock the
U.S. off balance, then retreat back into Canada, blowing up bridges and
destroying roads and railroads along the way in the hope of delaying the
inevitable American counterattack until British reinforcements arrived.
The plan received mixed reviews from the Canadian military: One general
called it a "fantastic desperate plan that just might have worked";
other officers thought Brown was nuts. It remained on the books until
1928, when it was scrapped as impractical.
In his illustrations, Norman Rockwell showed American life, both 
