The Americanization of the Canadian Army's Intellectual Development, 1946-1956

Abstract

Canadian scholarship has detailed the impact of increasing American political, economic, and socio-cultural influences on post-Second World War Canada. This paper demonstrates that the Canadian Army was likewise influenced by the Americans, and changes to the army’s professional military education are evidence of the “Americanization” of the army. During the early Cold War period, Canadian Army staff officer education increasingly incorporated United States Army doctrine, ranging from the basic organization of American formations to complex future military strategy. Research is primarily based on the annual staff course syllabi at the Canadian Army Staff College in Kingston, Ontario, which indicate that Canadian Army leaders were sensitive not only to the realities of fighting alongside the Americans in a future war, but to the necessity of making the Canadian Army, previously historically and culturally a British army, compatible with its American counterpart. In the context of limited scholarship on the early Cold War Canadian Army, this paper advances the argument that the army’s intellectual capacity to wage war was largely determined by external influences.