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Could WW2 military growth be repeated today?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Silentstriker01
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Silentstriker01

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Hypothetically, however unlikely, if Canada was to become involved in a major war on the scale of World War 2, how fast would we be able to expand our forces? (Assuming the war had strong political backing). Would Canada be able to repeat WW2 era growth? Or has modern training and equipment become too advanced to rapidly increase armed forces capabilities and numbers?
 
Who knows? The answer would depend on if the training system were to stay the same. Funny enough, the Canadian military was around the same size as it was today pre-WW2.
 
SevenSixTwo said:
Who knows? The answer would depend on if the training system were to stay the same. Funny enough, the Canadian military was around the same size as it was today pre-WW2.

Not quite:

Granatstein notes that "the Permanent Force had only 4,261 all ranks in mid-1939, every unit being under strength." (xxxi) The Militia saw another 46,251 train in 1938-39. (xxxii) So who, exactly, were the other men and women that made up the wartime strength of the Canadian Army, which saw the service of 730,625 (xxxiii) soldiers and support personnel, in Canada and abroad, during the Second World War.
(source link)

Silentstriker01:

The limitation would be industrial capability to build whatever modern force you are imagining would be the result of "similar" expansion.  The Canadian Army in the Second World war had between 1939 and 1943 (invasion of Sicily) to be provided with equipment, personnel and training to be prepared for that. There was also significant national will to provide the support necessary for that buildup.  Assuming you have the right circumstances, I suppose we could do quite a bit in almost four years of preparation.

Questions like this really need more context to allow for worthwhile discussion.
 
I suspect there is a plan in place somewhere in the hallowed halls of NDHQ for a scenario like this, involving industry as well as reserve units, working in conjunction with our existing force generation capability. Different COA's already thought out depending on the scenario they were to respond to. Nations would retool their industrial capability to meet the demands. Another challenge would be dealing with multinational companies, who's industrial might although located on our soil, could not be utilized to our benefit. (unless forced to of course). A great deal of our industry is no longer Canadian owned. Putting boots on the ground is only part of the challenge, the big one is meeting the manufacturing needs, and getting the required products to the troops who have been trained on them. Point of case, the Japanese awoke the industrial giant of the USA during WW11. (now to get back to my Sat morning coffee)

(the opinions expressed above are highly Logistically biased  ;D )
 
I think the military would be capable, I don't think the 18-25 year old demographic would be willing to fight like they did in 1939.
 
Don't forget that the Canadian government originally wanted to fight a limited war when we started up in 1939. It took the shock of the Blitzkrieg through the Low Countries and France to shock us out of our lethargy. It also meant that we cancelled the plan to close the armoured school (not called that back then) as it had been appreciated that there was no place for tanks in the Canadian military. The original plan was to have a corps of two infantry divisions and corps troops with most of the effort devoted to industry, the navy and the air force, including the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
 
Michael O'Leary said:
Not quite:
(source link)

Silentstriker01:

The limitation would be industrial capability to build whatever modern force you are imagining would be the result of "similar" expansion.  The Canadian Army in the Second World war had between 1939 and 1943 (invasion of Sicily) to be provided with equipment, personnel and training to be prepared for that. There was also significant national will to provide the support necessary for that buildup.  Assuming you have the right circumstances, I suppose we could do quite a bit in almost four years of preparation.

Questions like this really need more context to allow for worthwhile discussion.

Im sure the U.S. would be able to spare a few million M-16's.
 
Welfare switched to workfare would make for a smoother transition, just saying.
 
SevenSixTwo said:
Im sure the U.S. would be able to spare a few million M-16's.

Sapplicant said:
Welfare switched to workfare would make for a smoother transition, just saying.

I can see it now, the media and opposition party's reactions to Canada building a large army for combat by the thinly veiled conscription of welfare recipients armed with weapons retired by another country.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken


 
Michael O'Leary said:
I can see it now, the media and opposition party's reactions to Canada building a large army for combat by the thinly veiled conscription of welfare recipients armed with weapons retired by another country.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken

Don't even have to go to the expense of weapons....Iran didn't.......weren't the legions rather good at clearing minefields?...... ;D
 
SevenSixTwo said:
Im sure the U.S. would be able to spare a few million M-16's.
If we needed to repeat the same level of military growth, then I wouldn't doubt that the US would be involved, thus drafting troops (and as a result, not being able to spare any weapons).
 
Unless part of the build up involved eliminating the bureaucracy, the ordering and building of weapons would be the biggest bottleneck of all
 
Thucydides said:
Unless part of the build up involved eliminating the bureaucracy, the ordering and building of weapons would be the biggest bottleneck of all

To elaborate on this point, the amount of time, money and labour that goes into building modern military technology has has increased exponentially since the 1940's. Simply to transition to a state of affairs where our industry would be capable of sustaining a "total war" effort would likely require more capital and/or labour then Canada actually has. The effort to try would take a great deal of time and effort in itself - naval procurement being a sterling example of what would happen in such a scenario. Further, access to military technology would be another damper. We have excellent LAVs, ships and small arms, but no capacity to build say, fighter aircraft. In a future scenario wherein our new F-35s were found wanting, the ability for us to swiftly transition to new platforms could very well be many months or even years in the making - even with full access to foreign technology and platforms. We would be hard pressed to equip a force indigenously or even invest in the means - privately or publicly. Foreign capital as investment and purchases of foreign weapons would likely be a necessity in the outset.

Another issue is demographics. The Canadian population is not as young, relatively, as the population in 1939, and is better employed than we were in the Great depression. Canadian recruiting would likely face a great deal of rivalry from competition in primary and secondary industry as world demand for our food, minerals, metals and whatever leftover industrial capacity we have (or appears) could very well stymy our ability to rapidly expand. Our main advantage over 1939 is the availabilty of women to serve in both military and home-sectors. The presence of women under arms and in industry would put the social history of the Second World War to shame. They would be a necessity in a total war scenario.

One should remember that by the time the Canadian military was ready for large-scale independent operations (a qualification which thus largely excludes the efforts of RCN and RCAF elements under British command for the early phases of the war) the Second World War was over half over. A future war scenario it would take far, far longer to prepare an equivalent force - and cost astronomically more. The cost to train, equip and sustain and individual soldier is massive on it's own, and a massive increase over the Second World War. A private of 1939 made as much in a year as I did in about two days in Afghanistan, and I'm certain it cost far more to feed me and to keep my vehicle running...

Which of course brings us to the price of gas. Given the shift in the paradigm towards full-mechanization, a modern army utilizes vehicles in a way soldiers in the Second World War could only imagine. Given the relative paucity of young men (and women) willing and able to fight on the front lines, not to mention the ability of news media to cover events, it would be a fair scandal to have the infantry ride into battle on tanks as our forefathers did. Vehicles and all those things that run them could be seen as a political necessity, and those things are at a near historic cost and unlikely to drop - not mention the obvious spike that would occur during a "total war"

Of course, all of this is under the assumption that we're not fighting in Canada...
 
Silentstriker01 said:
Hypothetically, however unlikely, if Canada was to become involved in a major war on the scale of World War 2, how fast would we be able to expand our forces? (Assuming the war had strong political backing). Would Canada be able to repeat WW2 era growth? Or has modern training and equipment become too advanced to rapidly increase armed forces capabilities and numbers?
SevenSixTwo said:
Who knows? The answer would depend on if the training system were to stay the same. Funny enough, the Canadian military was around the same size as it was today pre-WW2.
The answer to the first question is no.  We could not ramp-up to a comparable size fighting force in the same time-span.

People and training would not be the limiting factor.  Instead, available equipment and the time/capacity to manufacture new equipment would be the limiting factors.  To make matters worse, we do not buy enough major equipment to kit our standing forces - we buy enough so that we must manage fleets and ship equipment from one target training audience to the next.
 
Sapplicant said:
Welfare switched to workfare would make for a smoother transition, just saying.

You'll have to trust me on this one, but NO.
 
Danjanou said:
You'll have to trust me on this one, but NO.

I feel I should elaborate...

I don't mean take all the people on welfare and give them guns. Put them to work in the factories, shipyards, farms, etc. Don't force them to the front lines. If Canada were to be legit at WAR with a group of other countries, I believe you'd see more than enough capable people signing up to defend Queen and Country. The welfare group would be the ones picking up the slack at home, doing the jobs that were vacated by people enlisting.

Sorry for the confusion.
 
Sapplicant said:
I feel I should elaborate...

I don't mean take all the people on welfare and give them guns. Put them to work in the factories, shipyards, farms, etc. Don't force them to the front lines. If Canada were to be legit at WAR with a group of other countries, I believe you'd see more than enough capable people signing up to defend Queen and Country. The welfare group would be the ones picking up the slack at home, doing the jobs that were vacated by people enlisting.

Sorry for the confusion.

Yup, again trust me on this NO. 8)
 
Kernewek said:
To elaborate on this point, the amount of time, money and labour that goes into building modern military technology has has increased exponentially since the 1940's. Simply to transition to a state of affairs where our industry would be capable of sustaining a "total war" effort would likely require more capital and/or labour then Canada actually has. The effort to try would take a great deal of time and effort in itself - naval procurement being a sterling example of what would happen in such a scenario. Further, access to military technology would be another damper. We have excellent LAVs, ships and small arms, but no capacity to build say, fighter aircraft. In a future scenario wherein our new F-35s were found wanting, the ability for us to swiftly transition to new platforms could very well be many months or even years in the making - even with full access to foreign technology and platforms. We would be hard pressed to equip a force indigenously or even invest in the means - privately or publicly. Foreign capital as investment and purchases of foreign weapons would likely be a necessity in the outset.

Another issue is demographics. The Canadian population is not as young, relatively, as the population in 1939, and is better employed than we were in the Great depression. Canadian recruiting would likely face a great deal of rivalry from competition in primary and secondary industry as world demand for our food, minerals, metals and whatever leftover industrial capacity we have (or appears) could very well stymy our ability to rapidly expand. Our main advantage over 1939 is the availabilty of women to serve in both military and home-sectors. The presence of women under arms and in industry would put the social history of the Second World War to shame. They would be a necessity in a total war scenario.

One should remember that by the time the Canadian military was ready for large-scale independent operations (a qualification which thus largely excludes the efforts of RCN and RCAF elements under British command for the early phases of the war) the Second World War was over half over. A future war scenario it would take far, far longer to prepare an equivalent force - and cost astronomically more. The cost to train, equip and sustain and individual soldier is massive on it's own, and a massive increase over the Second World War. A private of 1939 made as much in a year as I did in about two days in Afghanistan, and I'm certain it cost far more to feed me and to keep my vehicle running...

Which of course brings us to the price of gas. Given the shift in the paradigm towards full-mechanization, a modern army utilizes vehicles in a way soldiers in the Second World War could only imagine. Given the relative paucity of young men (and women) willing and able to fight on the front lines, not to mention the ability of news media to cover events, it would be a fair scandal to have the infantry ride into battle on tanks as our forefathers did. Vehicles and all those things that run them could be seen as a political necessity, and those things are at a near historic cost and unlikely to drop - not mention the obvious spike that would occur during a "total war"

Of course, all of this is under the assumption that we're not fighting in Canada...

Brilliant analysis. Canada would be caught awfully unprepared. Fortunately, the scenario is not very realistic. The concept of total war died in the 20th century. Wars between great power rivals will never be fought like that again.
 
Comrade said:
The concept of total war died in the 20th century. Wars between great power rivals will never be fought like that again.

We can only hope.
 
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