University of British Columbia Press
Zombie Army
The Canadian Army and Conscription in the Second World War
Distributed for University of British Columbia Press
Zombie Army
The Canadian Army and Conscription 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 the 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.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: The Historical Legacy
1 Conscription and Canadian History, 1627–1939
Part 2: The National Resources Mobilization Act and the Rise of the Big Army
2 Mobilizing Canada: The Creation of the Thirty-Day Training System, 1939–40
3 Enshrining the NRMA: Compulsory Military Service, 1940–41
4 Creating the “Big Army”: Conscription and Army Expansion, 1941–43
Part 3: Canadian Conscripts and Their Experiences During the War
5 Canada’s Zombies, Part 1: A Statistical Portrait
6 Canada’s Zombies, Part 2: Life in Uniform
Part 4: The Fall of the Big Army
7 “No stone … unturned”: The Failure of Conscription and the Big Army, 1943–44
8 Revolt or Realization? The NRMA and the Conscription Crisis of 1944
Part 5: The Aftermath
Epilogue: Conscription and Canadians in the Second World War
Appendix I: The National Resources Mobilization Act, 1940
Archival Sources Consulted; Notes; Index
Endnotes