Canada and the Second World War

The Second World War began in 1939 when the right-wing fascist leader of Germany Adolf Hitler invaded Poland and conquered much of Europe.

In order to defeat Nazism and Fascism, Canadians, as subjects of the British Empire, took part in the liberation of Italy in 1943-1944. In the invasion of Normandy in northern France on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, 15,000 Canadian troops stormed and captured Juno Beach from the German Army.

Approximately one in ten Allied soldiers on D-Day was Canadian. The Canadian Army liberated the Netherlands in 1944-45 and helped force the German surrender of May 8, 1945, bringing to an end six years of war in Europe.

More than one million Canadians and Newfoundlanders (Newfoundland was a separate British entity) fought in the Second World War, out of a population of 11.5 million. This was a high proportion, and of these 44,000 were killed.

The Canadians fighting for the British suffered losses in the unsuccessful defence of Hong Kong (1941) from attack by Imperial Japan, and in a failed raid on Nazi-controlled Dieppe on the coast of France (1942).

The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) took part in the Battle of Britain and provided a high proportion of Commonwealth aircrew in bombers and fighter planes over Europe.

The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) protected convoys of merchant ships against German submarines. Canada's Merchant Navy helped to feed, clothe and resupply Britain. At the end of the Second World War, Canada had the third-largest navy in the world.

In Canada around that time of war, racism and xenophobia with rising right-wing sentiments led a growing vengeful public opinion to the persecution and relocation of non-white Canadians -- especially the Japanese -- by the Canadian government and the forcible sale of their property even though some local officials and the RCMP told Ottawa that they posed little danger to Canada.

The Government of Canada apologized in 1988 for wartime wrongs inflicted on Japanese Canadians. Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945 -the end of four years of war in the Pacific.