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OverviewZombie Army tells the story of Canada’s Second World War military conscripts – reluctant soldiers pejoratively referred to as “zombies” for their perceived similarity to the mindless movie monsters of the 1930s. As Byers argues, although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they also soon came to be a steady source of recruits for active duty overseas. While Canadian generals were criticized for championing an overseas army too large to maintain through voluntary enlistment – leading inevitably to calls to send conscripts to Europe – until now there has been little satisfactory explanation for why military leaders pushed for (and why politicians accepted) such a sizeable overseas force. In the first full-length book on the subject in almost forty years, Byers combines underused and newly discovered records to argue that although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they soon became a steady source of recruits from which the army found volunteers to serve overseas. He also challenges the traditional nationalist-dominated impression that Quebec participated only grudgingly in the war. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Daniel ByersPublisher: University of British Columbia Press Imprint: University of British Columbia Press Weight: 0.499kg ISBN: 9780774830522ISBN 10: 0774830522 Pages: 344 Publication Date: 15 January 2017 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: The Historical Legacy 1 Conscription and Canadian History, 1627–1939 Part 2: The National Resources Mobilization Act and the Rise of the Big Army 2 Mobilizing Canada: The Creation of the Thirty-Day Training System, 1939–40 3 Enshrining the NRMA: Compulsory Military Service, 1940–41 4 Creating the “Big Army”: Conscription and Army Expansion, 1941–43 Part 3: Canadian Conscripts and Their Experiences During the War 5 Canada’s Zombies, Part 1: A Statistical Portrait 6 Canada’s Zombies, Part 2: Life in Uniform Part 4: The Fall of the Big Army 7 “No stone … unturned”: The Failure of Conscription and the Big Army, 1943–44 8 Revolt or Realization? The NRMA and the Conscription Crisis of 1944 Part 5: The Aftermath Epilogue: Conscription and Canadians in the Second World War Appendix I: The National Resources Mobilization Act, 1940 Archival Sources Consulted; Notes; Index EndnotesReviewsZombie Army adds yet another important study to the large codex of Canadian Second World War literature, adding new life to a topic that has not been investigated in detail for many years. -- Major Andrew B. Godefroy, CD, PhD, jrcsp, Army Lessons Learned Centre * Canadian Army Journal, 17.2 * Zombie Army tells the whole arresting story with an even hand and smart commentary. The work is as compelling as the subject. -- Holly Doan * Blacklock's Reporter, February 2017 * Byers provides us with an impeccably researched look at the daily grind of these soldiers, the way they were perceived by the local populations, their ethnic composition, or where and how they served. -- Francois Charbonneau, University of Ottawa * The British Journal of Canadian Studies, Volume 31, Number 1 * Since it illustrates a topic that could not have been written in earlier decades, there is much for the Second World War historian to learn from Zombie Army. -- Robert Engen, Royal Military College of Canada * The Canadian Historical Review, Volume 98, Number 4 * Somewhat ironically given the book's title, Zombie Army is a very human story about the Canadian World War II experience. It deserves a prominent place in both libraries and university classrooms. -- Adam Montgomery, Independent Scholar * Canadian Journal of History, Volume 52, Number 2 * ...by far the most complete account to date of conscription in Canada during the Second World War. -- Brian Bertosa, Independent Researcher * Canadian Military History, Vol 27, Issue 2 * Zombie Army tells the whole arresting story with an even hand and smart commentary. The work is as compelling as the subject. -- Holly Doan Blacklock's Reporter, February 2017 Author InformationDaniel Byers is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Laurentian University. He has published in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, Canadian Military History, the Canadian Army Journal, the Bulletin d’histoire politique, and Ontario History. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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