\u3cem\u3eRich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945\u3c/em\u3e by David Reynolds [Review]

Review of David Reynolds, Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945. New York and Toronto: Random House, 1995

Researching Guy Simonds

Review of Dominick Graham, The Price of Command: A Biography of General Guy Simonds. Toronto: Stoddart, 1993

Granatstein on Montgomery

Review of Stephen Brooks, ed. Montgomery and the Eighth Army: A Selection from the Diaries, Correspondence and Other Papers of Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, August 1942 to December 1943. London: The Army Records Society, 1991

The American Influence on the Canadian Military, 1939–1963

On Armistice Day in 1927, officials of the Canadian and United States governments dedicated a monument at Arlington Cemetery near Washington to commemorate the service of those Americans who had fought with Canadian forces before their country became a belligerent in the Great War. The occasion, stage-managed by Vincent Massey, Canada’s first Minister to the United States, was a glittering ceremony featuring permanent force infantry of the Royal Canadian Regiment and the Royal 22nd Regiment in their British-pattern scarlet tunics, as well as the pipes and drums of the 48th Highlanders, a well-known kilted Toronto militia regiment. Everyone was on their best bahviour, and the occasion was a great success, even the review of the infantry at the White House by the taciturn, if not comatose, President Calvin Coolidge

The CIA on Canadian Defence Policy

At the request of the Pentagon, in the spring of 1985 the Central Intelligence Agency prepared an assessment of Canadian defence policy. Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives had formed the government in the election of 4 September 1984 and, in the CIA’s view, the new administration was likely to be more interested in defence than the Liberals. Even so, the assessment observed that “Canadians generally think little about defense and when they do, reject outright the idea of giving defense priority over maintaining the social welfare system.

Tommy Burns as a Military Leader: A Case Study using Integrative Complexity

Lieutenant-General E.L.M. Burns is relatively well-known to Canadian military historians and to Canadians generally. A professional soldier born in 1897, Tommy Burns attended the Royal Military College, leaving before graduation to serve with the Canadian Corps in France and Flanders during the Great War. He saw much action, won the Military Cross, and decided to remain in the tiny Canadian Permanent Force after the Armistice. Burns rose with rapidity in the interwar years, his career helped by brilliant performance at the British Army Staff College, Quetta, and selection for the Imperial Defence College, London. He had powerful patrons, senior officers such as Harry Crerar who admired his intelligence and skills as a staff officer, traits that occasionally camouflaged his sarcasm and lack of traditional leadership qualities of the kind that can make men willing to follow an officer into battle. At the same time, Burns’ restless mind was searching for other outlets. He began writing articles in H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury, the magazine of the 1920s. He published a play and a novel, and he wrote sketches for the theatre. And at the same time, the Canadian Defence Quarterly, the military’s one interwar intellectual outlet, featured a stimulating debate on the use of armour between Burns and a young captain, Guy Simonds, who was to develop into the best general Canada was to produce in World War II. Burns, in other words was a man of parts