Product Overview
From Follett
Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-311) and index.;Issued also in electronic formats.;Conscription and Canadian History, 1627-1939 -- Mobilizing Canada: The Creation of the Thirty-Day Training System, 1939-40 -- Enshrining the NRMA: Compulsory Military Service, 1940-41 -- Creating the "Big Army": Conscription and Army Expansion, 1941-43 -- Canada's Zombies, Part 1: A Statistical Portrait -- Canada's Zombies, Part 2: Life in Uniform -- "No stone Unturned": The Failure of Conscription and the Big Army, 1943-44 -- Revolt or Realization? The NRMA and the Conscription Crisis of 1944 -- Epilogue: Conscription and Canadians in the Second World War. Zombie Army tells the story of Canada's Second World War military conscripts - reluctant soldiers pejoratively referred to as "zombies" for their perceived similarity to the mindless movie monsters of teh 1930s. In the first full-length book on the subject in almost forty years, Byers combines underused and newly discovered records to argue that although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they soon became a steady source of recruits from which the army found volunteers to serve overseas. He also challenges the traditional nationalist-dominated impression that Quebec participated only grudgingly in the war.
From the Publisher
Zombie Army tells the story of Canada's Second World War military conscripts - reluctant soldiers pejoratively referred to as "zombies" for their perceived similarity to the mindless movie monsters of the 1930s. As Byers argues, although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they also soon came to be a steady source of recruits for active duty overseas. While Canadian generals were criticized for championing an overseas army too large to maintain through voluntary enlistment - leading inevitably to calls to send conscripts to Europe - until now there has been little satisfactory explanation for why military leaders pushed for (and why politicians accepted) such a sizeable overseas force. In the first full-length book on the subject in almost forty years, Byers combines underused and newly discovered records to argue that although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they soon became a steady source of recruits from which the army found volunteers to serve overseas. He also challenges the traditional nationalist-dominated impression that Quebec participated only grudgingly in the war.