Troops line the border, ready for an all-out invasion.
The enemy are mounted on horses with red uniforms.
These soldiers may not look threatening, but they come from a long line of Mounties who
grew up in the harsh conditions of the Canadian Arctic.
The signal is given.
U.S. soldiers flood across the border.
The invasion of Canada has begun.
Surprisingly, not only was there a fully detailed plan for the United States to invade Canada
called War Plan Red, but it wouldn’t even be the first time battles broke out between
the two nations.
During the period between World War I and World War II the countries of the world were
on edge.
It seemed that at any given moment, another war could break out.
Leaders imagined what it would be like to control more territory or to fend off invaders
trying to take their country.
This led to both the United States and Canada coming up with plans to invade each other.
The crazy thing is you won’t believe who planned on invading first.
Canada was actually the first of the two countries to develop an invasion plan.
After the First World War ended, the United States had shown they had the military power
to make a difference in the world.
Their technology was advanced, and they had a relatively large population of people to
enlist when it came to all-out war.
This made Canada nervous as they hadn’t always had the best relationship with their
neighbor to the south.
Canada tasked one of their war heroes named Buster Brown to conduct reconnaissance along
the United States/Canada border to identify main entry points.
Brown was happy to help his nation; he put on a disguise and made his way along the nation’s
shared eastern border.
What he found raised the hopes of the Canadian government that defeating the Americans would
not only be possible but easier than they thought.
Brown traveled around New England in his Ford Model-T and a Kodak camera to take pictures.
He found that Americans were not all that scary, but instead, were something else entirely.
During his mission, Brown sent back reports including descriptions like: “If Americans
are not actually lazy, they have a very deliberate way of working and apparently believe in frequent
rests and gossip.”
He also took a shot at American women when he wrote: “the women of the rural districts
appear to be a heavy and not very comely lot.”
Basically, in his official reports to the Canadian government concerning the invasion
of the United States, Brown said American men were lazy and American women were ugly.
In 1921 using Brown’s reconnaissance, along with that of other operatives, Canada came
up with their invasion plan.
They would launch attacks across five different sections of the border to take U.S. cities
in the north that had strategic significance.
Each city could then be used as a base of operations to move further south.
The Canadians would not be able to carry out this plan alone using only Mounties and their
military.
Instead, they would rely on the help of Britain.
Canada gained its independence from Britain in 1867, but they still depended on them for
military protection.
It’s interesting to note that Canada’s plan to invade the United States made it clear
they would reclaim Maine as their own, which brings us to the tumultuous relationship that
Canada and the United States had in the past.
The two countries get along pretty well today, but that wasn’t always the case.
This tense relationship dates all the way back to the War of 1812 when soldiers from
Canada crossed into the United States, marched on Washington D.C., and burnt the White House
to the ground.
This was a bold statement by the then British Colony that they were not afraid to invade
their neighbor and ransack their capital.
The War of 1812 ended with no clear victor as the British were able to defend their western
territories but could not claim more land as their forces were split between North America
and fending off Napoleon in Europe.
Eventually, the British were pushed back to Canada, but the border was now a hotbed for
skirmishes and petty disputes between the two powers.
It quickly became clear that the Canadians and the Americans were not fans of one another
as they would use any crazy excuse to start a fight.
For example, in 1838, there was the Lumberjack, or Pork and Beans War.
It all started over a silly argument about who could chop down more trees along the border
between Maine and New Brunswick.
Things got out of hand, and the Americans claimed that the Canadian lumberjacks were
crossing the border to cut down U.S. trees.
This seems like a ridiculous reason to start a war, but the United States apparently took
their trees very seriously as they sent 50,000 men to the border to protect their lumber
interests from the dubious Canadians.
Before war broke out, Secretary of State Daniel Webster and the British Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Baron Ashburton, met for talks.
They concluded that the dispute was over a piece of land that really wasn’t worth anything,
and Canada ended up relinquishing control over its section of Maine to the United States.
But the peace wouldn’t last long between the two countries as 20 years later, an altercation
involving a pig being shot and the disproportional response of naval fleets almost led to another
war between the two countries.
In 1859 an American farmer found a pig eating potatoes on the San Juan Islands just off
the coast of the northwestern territory of the United States.
This area would eventually become part of Washington state.
The Americans decided they didn’t want the pig eating all of their potatoes, so they
shot it.
Whether they knew it was a Canadian pig or not can be debated.
However, the Canadians claimed the death of their pig was an act of war.
This prompted both sides to send naval vessels to confront one another in a showdown that
would come to be known as the Pig War.
The United States sent the USS Massachusetts and 500 troops to the area.
In turn, the governor of Vancouver responded by sending five warships and 2,000 British
troops.
Luckily before any blood was shed, Royal Navy Rear Admiral Robert Baynes realized how ridiculous
the whole thing was and called off the attack.
Baynes had decided “to engage two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig
would be foolish.”
However, it wasn’t foolish enough for both sides not to leave 100 troops on the island
to make sure no more funny business regarding pigs happened until the official borders could
be drawn up.
War Plan Red was just on the horizon.
But the United States may have been thinking about invading Canada long before these plans
were ever drawn up.
During the Civil War in the United States, two Confederate diplomats tried to flee to
Canada on board a British ship called the Trent.
The British claimed the U.S. had no right to search their ships or seize anyone on board
since they were not officially taking sides in the war.
The governor general of Canada then sent troops to the border in case war broke out between
Britain and the United States.
The British and Canadians were sure that the U.S. Secretary of State was trying to use
the whole dispute as a reason to invade Canada, and they would have none of it.
Lincoln realized that there would be no way to defend his Northern border from the British
while simultaneously fighting a war with the South, so he decided to let the Confederate
soldiers go and sent the British ship they were aboard on its way.
This averted a war with Canada once again.
But would the peace last?
This brings us to the United States’ plan to invade their neighbor to the north.
By the time War Plan Red was conceived, there had been relative peace between the two counties
for almost half a century.
But the world had just come out of the chaos that was World War I and the U.S. knew anything
could happen.
Military leaders came up with plans on how to defend the country if Canada decided to
invade.
However, they also tossed around the idea of claiming the Canadian territory for themselves
as well.
It wasn’t so much that the United States wanted to attack Canada for its territory,
but it was seen as a way to weaken the British Empire as a whole.
Everyone at this point was afraid of another nation gaining too much power and using it
to take over the world.
After the first World War, Britain was deeply in debt to the United States.
They had provided resources, men, and money to help defeat Germany.
The U.S. wanted their loans paid back in full, which the British could not do at the moment.
This got U.S. military leaders thinking that instead of paying back the money they owed,
Britain might decide to wage war on the United States using Canada.
The best way to stop this from happening would be for the U.S. to invade Canada first, thus
removing Britain's foothold on the continent.
As a result, War Plan Red was born.
One of the craziest things about War Plan Red was that without knowing anything about
Canada’s plan to invade the U.S., the military strategists came up with a mirror image of
what Canada had already created.
The plan called for all invasion forces to proceed simultaneously to ensure that the
Canadian defenses were spread thin.
The United States outnumbered the Canadians in every way, but there was someone else they
had to worry about.
In order for the invasion of Canada to be successful, the United States needed to make
sure that Britain couldn’t interfere.
To do this, it was imperative that the cities along the Atlantic coast of Canada were secured.
This would be done by launching a naval fleet from Boston to Halifax along with an invasion
force crossing through Maine.
The plan was for U.S. forces to occupy Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before the Canadians
knew what hit them.
The key was to take Halifax first and to hold it as this would be the main port the British
would use to resupply Canadian forces.
The U.S. would set up a naval blockade around the ports of Halifax but also keep any ships
from reaching the rest of Nova Scotia or the mainland of Canada as well.
The only way that Canada could receive the supplies and support they needed was by ship,
and if the U.S. could stop the Royal Navy, then Canada would be theirs for the taking.
The United States would also need to get boots on the ground in the area as well.
Traveling through Maine’s dense forests and windy, unkempt roads would be slow and
tedious.
Therefore, the plan was to load up ships with soldiers and drop them in St. Margarets Bay,
an undeveloped landing site near Halifax where very little resistance would be encountered.
Then the soldiers could circle around and attack the city while the naval vessels were
bombarding it from the bay.
If all went according to plan, one of the first Canadian cities to be occupied by United
States forces would be Halifax.
If the U.S. failed to do this, Canada would be able to receive supplies from Britain,
and a war with their northern neighbor could end up being long and drawn out.
However, there was a backup plan if things in Halifax did not go according to plan.
The U.S. could also occupy New Brunswick and cut Nova Scotia off from the mainland completely
by holding the railway junction at Moncton.
By blocking the rail system, supplies could not be moved from Nova Scotia to the rest
of Canada.
This would have helped with the rest of the invasion effort.
However, Nova Scotia would be much harder to take in the long run.
In this scenario, there would be an island stronghold that the United States would have
to deal with at the end of the war.
The other problem was that from Nova Scotia, the Canadians and British could launch counterattacks
down the east coast of the U.S.
While the east coast of Canada was being secured, a separate force needed to take the larger
cities in Quebec and along the Saint Lawrence River.
This would be done using ground forces, including armored divisions of tanks from Albany and
Vermont.
The occupation of Montreal and Quebec City would be vital to the operation.
These cities could be used to manufacture weapons and supply Canadian forces if left
untouched.
The ground forces would likely meet only slight resistance on the way up to the cities.
But once there, U.S. forces would encounter enemy soldiers entrenched at entry points
into the cities and within the buildings.
This would bring the battle into the realm of urban warfare, making it extremely costly
for the United States.
If they didn’t take Montreal and Quebec City, however, there would be a chance that
they could lose the entire eastern section of Canada.
This was especially true if supplies were allowed to travel from the coast to the cities.
What made this section of Canada so essential to control was that it would allow the United
States to stop the movement of supplies from one side of the country to the other.
This would split Canada in two making it easier for the United States to deal with each half.
If the Canadians and British couldn’t move supplies and men to areas where the U.S. was
attacking, every battle would be easier to win.
It would be more important to stop supplies from moving from east to west than vice versa
as most of the British troops and materials would be landing on the Atlantic side of the
continent.
If the country’s western half could be separated from the eastern half, the United States could
slowly bleed each section dry of resources.
Eventually, the Canadians would have to give up and surrender to the American forces.
The other important reason behind the United States wanting to occupy Montreal and Quebec
City so quickly was because these cities sit on the St. Lawrence River, which could be
used as a supply line for the Canadian and British militaries.
If the United States controlled both of these cities, they could stop all movement up and
down the St. Lawrence and cut off another transportation route.
On top of controlling the main river in the region, War Plan Red also called for the United
States to control the Great Lakes region and the cities on the Canadian side of these bodies
of water.
The United States could attack Toronto and other manufacturing centers by deploying ships
into the Great Lakes.
This would need to be done during the initial invasion to protect the United States from
counterattacks.
Many of the manufacturing centers in the United States were based in the Midwest or around
the Great Lakes.
Cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Buffalo would be easy targets for the Canadians if
the U.S. didn’t secure the cities around the region.
One key component to the invasion across the Great Lakes was to hit Canada’s Niagara
Falls power grid.
This would shut down most of the area’s power supply, allowing U.S. forces to fly
under the radar, so to speak.
It would also slow or stop the production lines of any Canadian factories that relied
on electricty to operate.
This would be detrimental to the Canadian war machine as help from Britain would still
be a long way off, and the Canadians would have limited means of replenishing their supply
of ammunition and weapons in the region.
Also, by controlling both sides of the Great Lakes, the United States would have complete
control over the waterways extending out from the area.
It would also prevent British ships and aircraft from landing or traveling in the lakes themselves.
Basically, it would create a monopoly for the U.S. who would then control the vast water
resources in the middle of the continent.
Although Winnipeg may not seem like a vital city for the Americans to take, nothing could
be further from the truth.
The unassuming city was actually the main depot for the Canadian railroad system running
from coast to coas.
If the United States could capture Winnipeg and the surrounding area, they would cripple
Canada’s ability to move troops from one section of the country to the other.
The best part about launching an invasion from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to capture
Winnipeg was that there were no obstacles in the way.
The ground forces could travel straight north and would encounter very little resistance.
They would have to pass through some rough terrain, but overall, the United States saw
the capture of Winnipeg as one of the easier aspects of War Plan Red.
There was one final part of War Plan Red that needed to be executed with precision if the
United States was going to successfully take Canada.
Vancouver is about as far as you can get from Britain in Canada.
However, it also housed the naval base that Britain used for its Pacific Fleet.
This meant that it would not be an easy target to capture and hold, especially by sea.
The plan was to attack from Bellingham, Washington, to try and seize the city and base without
having to risk a naval battle.
However, if this couldn’t be done or additional support was needed, the United States planned
to launch ships from Port Angeles.
If the U.S. could plan it right, they would wait for either the British Pacific Fleet
to be docked with little hope of disembarking before beginning their attack, or when the
majority of the fleet was on the other side of the ocean.
The hope was in this second scenario that the ships would be so far away that they wouldn’t
be able to return in time to help fight off the Americans.
Either tactic would work, but if the United States tried to strike while the fleet was
nearby, it could be a disaster.
All the U.S. really needed to do was take the city and its port, then they could shut
down the railways and set up a naval blockade.
This would pretty much secure Vancouver even if British reinforcements from the Pacific
were sent back to help.
If the United States could get a foothold in Vancouver, it would be very difficult for
the Canadians and the British to retake the city.
There were several main components of War Plan Red that needed to occur outside of Canadian
borders as well.
During the extensive war games that were conducted at the United States Naval War College, it
became clear that the U.S. Navy should not be sent to destroy the British fleet either
in the Pacific or the Atlantic Oceans.
Instead, all Naval vessels would be used in blockades to stop the movement of supplies
and troops between Britain and Canada.
The Royal Navy was an admirable force to be reckoned with, and the creators of War Plan
Red were unsure if the United States Navy would be able to defeat them in open waters.
However, by staying close to land and making sure allied forces were at their backs, the
U.S. Navy could focus on repelling any ships that tried to reach Canada through their blockade.
When looking at War Plan Red, it is important to remember that all of the invasion forces
that were sent by land would likely be successful in taking their targets.
In fact, they probably would meet very little resistance at all, and the U.S. soldiers would
sweep across the border and take their targets quickly without many casualties.
The reason for this was that compared to the United States military, Canada really didn’t
have much to fight with.
They were supposed to have the support of Britain, but their former rulers were really
far away, and it wasn’t clear whether Britain would even bother trying to send troops to
fight off an American invasion.
Instead, it would have been more likely that Britain would have given up Canada in exchange
for some kind of peace treaty or agreement between them and the United States.
The only viable tactical option for British and Canadian forces would be holding Nova
Scotia and launching counterattacks from the island.
However, it would have been highly unlikely they’d be able to control the island for
very long, especially once the United States captured the rest of Canada.
The United States also had a sneaky suspicion that they could gain an ally from one of the
provinces in Canada to help them fight against the British if they approached them in the
right way.
Quebec is a mostly French-speaking province that identifies more as their own entity than
as part of the rest of Canada.
Most people in Quebec felt no strong allegiance to the British Empire or their English-speaking
countrymen for that matter.
It was a real possibility that once the United States began their attack, the leaders of
the Quebec province may have tried to make a deal and ally themselves with the U.S. in
exchange for maintaining their independence when the war was over.
This offer likely would have been accepted by the United States as it would provide their
invading forces easy access to several other parts of Canada.
They also wouldn’t have to fight for control over Montreal and Quebec City which would
save a lot of time, effort, and resources that could be used to ensure that Nova Scotia
and Vancouver were taken quickly and blockades were set up to fend off the British Royal
Navy.
More likely than not, some Canadians would have welcomed the U.S. as liberating them
from the British, while others would fight to the bitter end.
Either way, the end goal for War Plan Red was to claim all of the Canadian territories
and make them a part of the United States.
There was no plan of how the different parts of Canada would be split up, but eventually,
they would have been reorganized into different states.
The main goal for War Plan Red was to destabilize the British colonies in the Americas and the
Western Hemisphere.
The United States didn’t really want to invade Canada, but with the way the world
was shaping up after World War I, they needed to plan for every posibility.
If you weren’t the most powerful country in your region, there was a chance that your
neighbor might see you as an easy target and take what they wanted.
Regardless of how Canada was split up, Quebec would likely have been able to maintain its
independence if they allied themselves with the United States during the invasion.
But the new Quebecois country would be heavily reliant on its now enormous neighbor as it
would be surrounded on all sides by the U.S. They also probably would not be able to do
anything without the permission of their “liberators.”
As the U.S. military developed War Plan Red they had scouts and agents assess different
paths and ways to invade Canada.
Interestingly, it was concluded that the Mounties should not be underestimated, especially in
their own forested and mountainous terrain.
These Canadian soldiers could have developed a type of gorilla warfare that would make
them a problematic force to fight against once the invasion began.
Even still, it was concluded that a U.S. invasion of Canada had a high likelihood of success.
In order to prepare and improve their chances, it was recommended that the United States
needed more airfields closer to the Canadian border.
In 1935 Congress passed a bill that allocated $57 million for different assets that would
improve U.S. infrastructure while also aiding in the plan to invade Canada if it ever came
to that.
This included the building of three airports near the border which were claimed to be civilian
in nature.
However, information accidentally leaked to the press that they were in fact military
airfields.
This led to questions being asked and the first inclinations that the United States
had developed a plan to invade Canada to surface.
War Plan Red actually led to one of the largest war games in U.S. history when 36,000 soldiers
were deployed to Fort Drum to run drills associated with the invasion of Canada.
The crazy part was that the military base was only 30 miles from the actual border.
If the Canadians had been aware that the war games were happening, they might have contacted
their British allies and started preparing for war.
Now watch “Hitler's Actual Plan for Taking Over America.”.