The world according to GRP — Monday, March 13, 2006:
The U.S. plan to invade Canada
If rumors of war against Iran seem far-fetched, consider this: of all the Color-coded War Plans drawn up by the United States between the First and Second World Wars, the most amended and most acted-upon was for a global war against Britain (color code RED), in which the main military operation was to be the invasion and conquest of Canada (color code CRIMSON). The plan assumed that the war would begin with U.S. interference in British trade, "although other proximate causes to war may be alleged". Even if Canada declared neutrality, it was still to be occupied and permanently annexed, the provinces of Canada becoming states of the U.S. Also to be annexed in perpetuity were Jamaica, Barbados, and Bermuda.
War Plan RED, as it was called, was drafted in 1924 and 1928 and approved by the War Department in 1930. In October 1934 it was amended to authorize the carpet-bombing of Halifax, Montreal, and Quebec City. That's 2½ years before the Luftwaffe demonstrated the technology at Guernica. A further amendment authorized the use of chemical weapons "from the inception of hostilities" in order to encourage quick surrender (you know — sort of like Hiroshima and Nagasaki). In 1935, at the suggestion of General Douglas MacArthur, Vancouver was added to the list of bombing targets.
Also in 1935, a certain Captain H.L. George warned a secret Congressional Committee hearing of "the vast number of sheltered water areas that are available deep in Canada... from which pontoon-equipped aircraft could operate at will..." and added: "There is no necessity for starting with an observation in order to know what they are going to bomb. They know now what they are going to bomb."
I guess that's the 1935 equivalent of a WMD capability — although it probably would have taken more than 45 minutes to launch an attack, and the explosives probably wouldn't have come from Niger. But I digress.
Captain George advised that "the best defense against air attack is offense against the places from which the air attack originates." The Committee was persuaded. Congress approved funding for three military air bases disguised as civilian airports for surprise attacks on Canada, and on August 10 the Act was signed into law by FDR.
Meanwhile the U.S. government printer had mistakenly published the Congressional Committee hearings. The story hit the front page of the New York Times on May 1, 1935. FDR was obliged to assure the Canadians that he was not contemplating war. But in August, in the biggest war games the U.S. had yet held, the invasion was rehearsed in Upstate New York near the Canadian border.
How seriously did the Canadians take all this? Well, as early as 1921, Canada's Director of Military Operations and Intelligence, Colonel James Sutherland "Buster" Brown, drew up "Defence Scheme No. 1". The scheme acknowledged that Canada could not repel a determined U.S. invasion unaided. Therefore, at the first sign of a U.S. attack, Canadian forces would counterattack the U.S. at other points in the hope of keeping the U.S. forces busy until British reinforcements arrived. This plan was abandoned before Plan RED became official.
Plan RED was refined right up until 1939, when it was scrapped in favor of new plans that belatedly considered the problem of Nazi Germany. The Color-coded War Plans were declassified in 1974.
Sources:
- Floyd Rudmin, "Secret War Plans and the Malady of American Militarism", CounterPunch, February 17, 2006
- Peter Carlson, "Raiding the Icebox", Washington Post, December 30, 2005
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Color-coded_War_Plans
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1.
Copyright © Gavin R. Putland except as otherwise attributed. Posted at The world according to GRP under the title The U.S. plan to invade Canada. You may republish this item verbatim on your website or blog provided that you include this notice (with hyperlinks).
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