The Baby Boom

Baby's being held at a Hospital

 Baby boom

The end of World War Two sparked a baby boom in many countries around the world but mostly in North America. As men came back from the war, they wanted to start making family's starting the post World War Two baby boom. In Canada between the years of 1945 and 1946, Canada had the largest annual birth rate in history with a rise of 15% in those two years. United States had  a total 79 million babies born between the years of 1946-1960. A large increase of baby's were seen everywhere in Canada and the United States post world war. People from the baby boomer's era are now about 60 years or age and almost ready to retire and when they do Canada will see a large influx of retirement homes and seniors. Also today's youth might notice many jobs now becoming available which before belonged to the people from the baby boomer era.

The cancellation of the Avro Arrow

The Avro Arrow

Avro Canada 

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow was a interceptor aircraft designed and built by Avro Canada a aerospace design company. The construction of the Avro Arrow began in 1953 and its first test flight took place in on March 25th 1958. The aircraft was a state of the art machine capable of flying up to speeds of Mach 3. Despite such a well designed plane and the opportunity to bring the aviation industry to Canada and put us on the map, it was suddenly cancelled. The cancellation of the Avro Arrow sparked a long, never ending debate as to the reasons why. At the time of the cancellation the reasons to justify such an act were; The mounting cost of the project and the cost to maintain such a project in the long term was too high, another reason was because the United States thought that long range missiles were the way to go and that such use for aircraft like the Avro Arrow will no longer be needed. The last reason was politics, United States who was planned to be the biggest customer of the Avro Arrow would not have wanted to purchase such a plan because it would want to produce its own top gun fighter. The real reasons as to the cancellation are still debated today, and the reason it was not re opened, nobody knows for sure, but  I think it was a missed opportunity.

The start of the Cold War

A picture depicting the two sides of the Cold
War.

Cold War

The Cold War was a period of high tensions between the USSR (Communist) and the United States (Democratic and Capitalist). The Cold War had high political hostility between the two nations and it was the fight for either a communist Europe or a Democratic/Capitalist one. The Cold War started in 1945, but there was not event that we could say marked the start of the Cold War. It was just a build up political fear.After World War 2 Russia controlled most of Eastern Europe and set up a strong Eastern Bloc. This Eastern Bloc included many countries such as; Poland, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. These were all countries that were independent but were heavily influenced by the Russian superpower and its Communism. Since Russia had such a powerful Eastern Bloc, the weaker Western Europe and the United State feared a further spread and influence of Communism around the world. In order to stop this the United States took up a strong position. Harry Truman, the President of the United States at the time around the start of the Cold War set up a policy called the "Truman Doctrine" . This policy was to support Greece and Turkey with monetary and military aid to prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere of influence. Truman believed that the stronger a nation was the harder it would be for it to fall under Soviet control. So again Truman set forth another policy this time called "The Marshall Plan".  The program was to aid all of Europe this time and help them rebuild their economies after World War 2. The Soviets saw theses attempts as a way of trying the get the countries in Europe to side with the US to then ultimately attack the USSR. This fear caused many outbursts, events and political hostility until 1991, the fall of the Soviet Union. 

The selection of the Jews at a concentration camp

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was a mass genocide of about 11 million  Jews, Gays, and Handicapped. The killings of these people were performed by Hitler's Nazi army during the years of World War Two. It was a systematic genocide where Nazis would round up people, mainly Jews, and send them in cattle cars attached to trains to the nearest concentration camp. A concentration camp was a place where Jews were either killed on arrival by either a bullet or gas or were worked to death inside these camps, making munitions and other supply's for Hitler's Army. As Hitler was capturing more and more of Europe, he would find and track down all the Jews in his newly captured town/city/country and send them to theses camps or he would have parts of towns closed off and be built into ghettos. Ghettos were an area of a city where only Jews could live and theses ghettos had extremely terrible conditions, it was disease ridden,full of dead bodies, had little to no food or water,  and there were people cramped into every corner and left to work and die.This to Hitler was called the "Final Solution" , the solution to ending the existence of Jews in the world. 6 million Jews were killed in either camps or ghettos but there were still many more alive in them, and when the Allies invaded Normandy and created a Western front, they began to liberate the Jews from these camps and ghettos as they slowly moved closer to Berlin. Even though some Jews were liberated from the concentration camps, they still had no place to go, no money and  unfortunately in most cases no family or friends. Many found their way into Canada and the United States and tried their best to start new lives. Others were not so lucky and still died in the war.This was the 3rd largest Genocide in human history and one that we will never forget. 

Canadians landing at Juno beach.

Juno Beach

On June 6th 1944 the Allied invasion of the beaches of Normandy began. Operation Overlord, the objective, to open up a western front and force Germany to fight on two fronts and then box them in. The landing took place on the coast of Normandy, France. The coast was divided into five beaches; Utah beach, Omaha beach, Gold beach, Sword beach, and lastly Juno beach. Juno beach was assigned to be landed by Canadian troops and their objective was to capture the beach and provide flanking support for the British on Sword and Gold beach. The landing was scheduled to occur at 6 am but was delayed because of rough waters, when Canadian troops did land on Juno beach at 7:30 am, they encountered heavy resistance from the German 716th Division, the bombardment that occurred before the landing prove to have little effect and left Canadian to have to do most of the work. The Canadian had to face multiple MG nests ( Machine Gun positions), however the 30,000 Canadians that landed by the end of the day pushed through the heavy defences and penetrated further into France than any other of it Allies. Along side Utah, the assault on Juno beach by Canadian forces proved to be the most strategically successful. Canada proved its self in D-Day, but Canada did suffer its fair share of casualties, the total count showed 340 killed, 574 wounded, and 47 taken prisoner. Canada showed that it was a force to be reckoned with and showed it by successfully capturing the beach and pushing the Germans back at Juno.

Canada and the home front during WW2

Workers assemble a Sexton self propelling
gun in Montreal Locomotive Works

Home front during World War II

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1st of 1939, it took Canada only 9 days after that to join the war effort. After delaying a week to show their independence, Canada quickly switched to a wartime economy and ramped up munitions production quickly, unemployment slowly disappeared across Canada. As the war raged on Canada became one of the largest pilot trainers for its allies overseas because of the BCATP (British Commonwealth Air Training Plan).Once again Canada answered the call of duty, with many men volunteering to fight for their country. Now with men overseas and production at a boom, women once again fill the roles of the men to help in the war effort. Shipyards and repairing facilities expanded to double their size, producing over a thousand warships and cargo ships. Also many other auxiliary vessel, and other small craft. Women also took on the role to recycle and salvage anything they could so that they could get the needed supply's to make munitions and other things. Women were a big part of the war effort and to helping stabilize the economy and bringing Canada out of the Great Depression. It was said that around 1-1.2 million women stepped up and worked full time to help the men overseas, and many more women worked part-time. This was the Canadian Home Front.

The Policy of Appeasement

Appeasement

Appeasement is the policy of acceding to the demands of a potential enemy in order to maintain peace. This is commonly associated to the actions of British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain between 1937 and 1939. After World War One the world was still getting back on its feet and rebuilding what has been destroyed over the war. At the same time Germany had just elected a new chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler was a man who wanted to get Germany back to its former glory after being completely destroyed by the Treaty of  Versailles. Hitler began to do so by taking a risk and re militarising the Rhineland, hoping that Britain and France wont intervene. Britain and France went to the League of Nations and protested Hitler's action, but nothing was done.  Later the British Prime Minster Stanley Baldwin (predecessor to Chamberlain) said that Britain lacks the forces to back up France if they choose to go to war and that it was opposed by public opinion. It was thought as Germany merely walking into their own backyard. In 1937 Neville Chamberlain took office and a year later was faced with a challenge. In April of 1938, Nazis in the Sudetenland( and area created by the Treaty of Versailles, that was taken from Germany and made into the Czechoslovakia)  asked for autonomy, and Chamberlain thought that because of this there might be a possibility of a German invasion, and warned Hitler that Britain might attack if Hitler does so. Hitler wasn't shaken and ordered an attack on Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain quickly then sent a person to Prague to convince the Czech Government to grant the Sudeten autonomy, and the Czechs agreed, war is avoided. Later that year Neville Chamberlain flew over to Austria to speak with Hitler himself, hoping to set up and agreement and to permanently avoid war. When they met Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland shoudl be absorbed into Germany, and as Chamberlain desperately wanted to avoid war, he appeased Hitler and allowed for such a thing to occur. Chamberlain thought that because of him another war was forever avoided. Yet, even after giving Hitler more land(which lead to more power), Hitler on September 1st,1939 invaded Poland, marking the start of World War Two. The problem with Neville Chamberlain using the appeasement policy was that he really was just delaying the inevitable and also by doing so was making the enemy stronger , in the long run the appeasement policy was a bad decision I think. If they acted upon Hitler re arming the Rhineland then I think things could have gone favourably for Britain.

The Great Depression

A crowd builds outside the New York Stock
Exchange after the crash

Great Depression

The great depression was a worldwide economic depression in the years after WW1 and before WW2. The great depression began on October 29th, 1929 when the many stock exchanges including the New York Stock Exchange crashed. This day was also known as Black Tuesday. The Great Depression was the largest economic downfall in the 20th century. The crash devastated many countries around the world including Canada. Canada was already ravaged by the dust bowl, and the stock market crash didn't help. The Canadian national income fell to 56% of the level it was at before the crash and its unemployment rate reached 27%, many other countries including the United States had similar statistics.  Many people believed this was just a small phase and that the economy will be back to its normal  in no time, unfortunately they were wrong. The years of the Great Depression were from October of 1929 to September of 1939, the start of World War Two. Because of the start of a new world war the economy around the world began to rise and get closer to its levels pre 1929, as the world was now switched over to a wartime economy. But what could have caused such a devastating crash in the stock market?

There were many factors and variables in play that lead to the  start of the Great Depression, But the main reasons were; 

1. Over Production and Over Expansion- Canada had such an economic boom that many people immigrated from the United States to Canada to get work, but this caused a problem, as work was found and factories and farms began to increase it production output, they began to create more supply than there was a demand for causing prices in commodities to decrease.
2. High Tariffs constricting international trade- High taxes in International trade, many countries found ways to save money by producing their own products instead of importing, causing countries to produce less products.
3. Credit buying of stocks- As the stock market was at an all time high many people were buying stocks with credit cards hoping that the stock would double or triple and that they would have enough money to pay the bank back and still have a profit. However in most cases the stock didn't double or triple and people were left debts that they never had the money to pay in the first place, causing people to lose money and causing banks to lose large sums of money.

The Great Depression was a terrible time for everyone who had lived through. It was devastating and a low point in human history, who knows how long it would have lasted if World War Two had not began. It was bitter sweet, as one terrible time passed another began.

A Canadian Conscription Poster

Conscription Crisis of 1917

On August 4th ,1914 Canada has entered World War I, and the Canadian people answered the call of duty. By the end of August of 1914, Sam Hughes ( The Canadian Minister of Militia) has already created a training camp in Valcartier, Quebec, which was able to house 32,000 men, and by the end of October of 1914 the first 31,000 men were already overseas fighting with Britain. As the war continued the Canadian government continued to raise it expectations for volunteers, which was now at 150,000 men by 1915. However all of the training camps and battalions were English speaking and because of that very few French Canadians(which made up of 28% of the Canadian population) ever volunteered, making it harder for Canada to get enough volunteers. As political tensions between Ottawa and Quebec rise and no French speaking camp or regiments are formed, Canada is suffering many casualties overseas and with only 300,000 volunteers instead of the now promised 600,000 by the end of 1916, Prime Minster Robert Borden had only way to go. Conscription.

After the Battle of Somme, Canada was in great need to replenish its supply of soldiers. Being very few volunteers to replace them and the failing of the recruiting effort in Quebec, Conscription was a must. In May of 1917 Robert Borden introduced the Military Service Act ( a act that would allows the Prime Minister to Conscript if necessary) and on August 29 1917 the act was passed, allowing Canada to conscript men. Following the passing of the Military Service Act, the 1917 election were held, Robert Borden and his opposition Wilfred Laurier went head to head. To make sure that there was support for conscription, Robert Borden used the Military Voters act to gain votes from oversea soldiers who were in favour of conscription as they were in desperate need of more men, and with theses votes  Robert Borden was able to put them in any riding he wanted, allowing him to win the election with 153 seats, while Wilfred Laurier's Liberals secured 82. On January 1st,1918 the Government began to enforce the Military Service Act,causing over 400,000 men to be liable for military service, but as the act allowed for exemptions, so over 80% of these men were able to use these exemptions and find loopholes to avoid being conscripted. The men that were conscripted didn't have to do much or have wait long as the official end of WWI was on November 1st,1918. Conscription and the many events that revolved around it, would to this present day put a dent in the relations between Ottawa and Quebec.

The Schlieffen Plan

A map depicting the Schlieffen plan

The 

Schlieffen Plan

General Count Alfred Von Schlieffen created the Schlieffen Plan in December of 1905.What was the Schlieffen Plan? 

       The Schlieffen  Plan was the German plan to try and quickly defeat and capture France before Russia could mobilize their army. Russia and France who are allies have just declared war on Germany, but because of Russia's large and unprepared army spread over its country, it would take at least 2 month before Russia could be fully mobilized and ready to take on Germany. This is where Schlieffen Plan comes in, the plan required the use of 90% of the Germany army (Blitzkrieg). The plan was to take a few German squadrons and have them attack France head on, grabbing their attention, while the rest of the Army would launch a surprise attack on France through Belgium (a neutral country), Thus outflanking France and allowing them to get behind Paris and capture it quickly and with little resistance, taking  France out of  the war right of the bat. Why did Germany want to do this?

    The reason Germany wanted France so quickly out of the war was because Russia being on the East and France being on the West, when the Russian army would mobilize, Germany would be forced to divide its army and have to fight on two fronts making it much harder for a German victory. However since Russia would take some time before they could mobilize, Germany thought that if they could launch a surprise attack and capture France before Russia was ready then they could regroup and focus all of its fire power on Russia. Despite what seemed like an amazing plan, it failed. Why did it fail?

   The Schlieffen Plan failed based on a number of reason

1.  Germany thought it would take Russia at least 2 months to mobilize when it really took them only 10 days and thus had to withdraw troops to protect its eastern border
2. The plan heavily relied on speed and was not expected to be met by any resistance when they invaded Belgium but were met by the Belgium army and the BEF (British Expeditionary Force)
3. The Germans appointed to many troops to the French border causing the German forces to be spread  thin and halted in Belgium

Because of theses reasons Germany was forced to withdraw their troops and go back to Germany and prepare to fight on two fronts, the East ( France, Britain, Canada) and the West (Russia).