It has recently been estimated that sixty-two percent of all war related deaths in the twentieth-century were non-combatant.  This translates to more than 54 million civilians having perished in all military conflicts of the last century.  Much has been written on the cataclysmic impact of war on society in the Second World War and continues to be a topic of interest for many scholars of post-1945 international relations.  The history of the First World War, however, has been written almost irrespective of examining civilian casualties.  My Ph.D. thesis entitled, “A ‘Weapon of Starvation’: The Politics, Propaganda, and Morality of Britain’s Hunger Blockade of Germany, 1914-1919” focuses on the British naval blockade imposed on Germany between August 1914 and July 1919 when the Treaty of Versailles was eventually ratified.  The blockade has received relatively little attention in the historiography of the First World War, despite the assertion in the British official history that extreme privation and hunger resulted in more than 750,000 German civilian casualties.

While past scholarship has emphasized the blockade’s early imposition and its complex legal and economic framework, it has yet to sufficiently detail its use as an instrument of war and, equally, potent “bargaining chip” at the Paris peace table.  My research assesses the moral and political considerations that resulted in Britain’s tightening and prolongation of the blockade circa 1917-1919.  More specifically, it considers the impact of the blockade’s prolongation after 11 November and the Allies’ ability to ratify the Treaty of Versailles on 12 July 1919.  How did the British government and press, for example, reconcile the blockade as an instrument of war with the need to rebuild relations with Germany in the peace process?  Was the blockade seen as a legitimate wartime strategy or a dubious ‘weapon of starvation,’ as Winston Churchill argued in March 1919?

Preliminary research suggests that the British War Cabinet and Allied Supreme Economic Council viewed German civil unrest as a valuable tool to insure peace.  But the Allied decision to prolong the blockade was not unanimously reached.  In fact, Churchill as British Secretary of State for War and John Maynard Keynes as a representative of the Treasury Department were two notable diplomats in favour of allowing foodstuffs into Germany after the Armistice.  So too, Herbert Hoover (Director of the Supreme Council of Supply and Relief) and Lord Robert Cecil (Chair of the Allied Blockade Committee) worked tirelessly throughout the peace negotiations to persuade the ‘Big Four’ Powers to raise the blockade before Germany collapsed further into political and social dislocation.  Whether this was a purely political consideration in order to stem the tide of ‘Bolshevism’ in Weimar Germany or, an honest attempt at postwar reconstruction, it is clear that key politicians on both sides of the Atlantic were troubled by the prolongation of the blockade after 11 November. 

My research this summer at the National Archives, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, and the Imperial War Museum in London, England explores how the blockade and relatedquestions of morality factored into the Versailles negotiations.  My next research trip will be to consult the newly available records of the Supreme Economic Council and American Relief Administration housed at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. 

The Royal Naval blockade first became of interest to me during the course of my undergraduate and master’s work at the University of Western Ontario.  Now, several years later, I hope that my ongoing research will be of similar interest to scholars in security studies and international relations and, more significantly, to military and naval historians as the centenary of the First World War approaches. 

Further Reading:

A.C. Bell, AHistory of the Blockade of Germany: and of the Countries Associated with Her in the Great War, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, 1914-1918(London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1937).

Belinda J. Davis, Homes Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).

Eric W. Osborne, Britain’s Economic Blockade of Germany, 1914-1919 (New York: Frank Cass, 2004).

Marion C. Siney, The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1914-1916 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957).

C. Paul Vincent, The Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915-1919 (Athens: Universityof OhioPress, 1985).

Alyssa Cundy is a History PhD Candidate at Wilfrid Laurier University under the supervision of Dr. Roger Sarty and a student associate of the LCMSDS.   

The Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies has an extraordinary collection of aerial reconnaissance photographs from the Second World War.  We have used these photos extensively in our various publications over the years but we keep making discoveries.  I have been working with these photos since I was an undergrad (a long time ago) and I thought I knew the collection well, but I continue to find amazing images.  Last fall I was looking through the collection (I can't even remember what it was I was originally searching for!) and I came across a photograph that showed a large number of vehicles in a rectangular field.  It took me a while to figure out where the photo was taken and cross reference it with a topographical map, but I eventually realized that I had found a photograph of the field where Worthington Force ended up after it getting lost.  The story of the battlegroup is well known - during Operation Totalize Worthington Force, made up of the tanks of the British Columbia Regiment and the infantry of the Algonquin Regiment, were ordered to make a night march to capture Point 195.  Somehow, the battlegroup got lost and ended up near Point 140. Nobody knew it was there, including the men of the battlegroup, and over the course of the day the battlegroup was destroyed by determined German counterattacks.

Over Friday and Saturday 18/19 June a group of some 40 people (military history and security studies scholars from Laurier, RMC, and Queens, Naval Reserve officers and members of the public) gathered at HMCS Cataraqui in Kingston for the Laurier Military Centre's first conference in eastern Ontario.  The event was a very successful first effort in what has become a growing series of regional conferences highlighting military history, current strategic issues and the role of Reservists in Canada's foreign and defence operations.  This event was much in keeping with those themes.  On Friday evening Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer gave a vigorous and thought provoking presentation of the history and current trends of Canadian Arctic Security.  On the Saturday morning Dr. Roger Sarty gave an equally insightful examination of Canadian anti-submarine operations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence during the Second World War; in this centenary of the Canadian Navy he paid particular attention to the efforts of the RCN.  The day was capped off by a panel of four recent veterans speaking on their diverse experiences in Afghanistan ranging from an NCO's perspective on Canada's interaction with the Afghan population to aviation operations to the work of two Naval Officers in very non-traditional roles.  Both the CO of HMCS Cataraqui, LCdr Susan Long-Poucher, and the Centre's Director, Prof Terry Copp, were pleased at the quality of the presentations and the engaging discussions and look forward to running another session in 2011.

by Randy Wakelam

I recently completed a two-year research fellowship at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. In July 2007 I arrived at the Museum with plans to explore the history of Canadian military mechanization and logistics. After completing a few trial articles on various aspects of the twentieth-century experience, I settled on the First World War as a principal research objective. After all, that conflict happened on the threshold of the automobile age, and the fighting marked a key phase in the evolution of military transport from animal to mechanical power. Although I had an office space at the Museum, I typically spent several days a week up the street at Library and Archives Canada, mining the records of the Canadian Expeditionary Force for material on motor vehicles, transport, supply, roads, tactical railway, and anything else related to mechanization during the period. I came away with a lot of material, and have signed a contract to write a book on my findings.

Me and my workshop volunteers piled onto a 1970s-vintage Canadian Forces M151A2 ¼-ton truck that we have just reconditioned. This truck is fitted with the TOW missile special equipment vehicle (SEV) kit, although a launcher has not yet been added to the pedestal mount.

Security at mega-events has been much on the minds of Canadians this year, as we host the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the upcoming G8 and G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto at the end of June. These events have been secured at huge tax payer expense – pushing a billion dollars each. What are we getting for the money and is it worth it? Why is security so expensive?

It’s very difficult to estimate security costs. Governments and militaries are reluctant to disclose costs for fear of revealing operational secrets – especially before the event happens. Cost estimates are usually aggregated and not very specific. They are based on a projected threat assessment – an estimate of the expected threat which is used for planning purposes. For the G20, planners are assuming that the threat level will be medium. If the actual threat assessment at the time of the event turns out to be more severe, or if a security incident requiring a response happens, costs may be even higher.

Taken from http://www.mapleleafweb.com/political-cartoons

Here’s some of what we do know about security costs for the G8 and G20:

The overall budget is already estimated at $833 million dollars, with an extra $100 million in reserve. Of that, $450 million will go to the RCMP, with most of that being spent on personnel costs: it is estimated that it costs about $500 per day to employ a police officer for the G8/G20, and 19 000 of them are reportedly being used for the G20.

Across the street from the main entrance of Wilfrid Laurier University there is a small parkette with a modern, albeit modest memorial to Canadian veterans. The parkette also includes several information panels outlining the history of the surrounding neighbourhood that is now known locally as Veterans’ Green. The surrounding townhomes and 1½ storey bungalows that surround this monument were Waterloo’s first major veterans’ settlement after the Second World War. My current research examines the development of this neighbourhood in the context of Canadian post-war veterans’ policies and the reconstitution of the Canadian family. 

The monument and heritage project were unveiled in 2005 as part of an ongoing effort by the City of Waterloo, local residents, veterans’ organizations, and Wilfrid Laurier University to revitalize the community’s green space and give

Welcome to the new website of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies.  The new site has been designed around your feedback and suggestions.  We have updated to a fresh and clean interface for a more user friendly experience.  One the highlights of our new site is the blog.  Not only will the blog draw attention to the Centre’s activities, including conferences, lectures, and new publications, but we will also feature a guest blogger every week focused on the work of one of our many Centre associates or others in the field.  TO this end our Centre Associates has been updated under “About Us” and you can easily see their bios and link to their publications etc…  Canadian Military History will now make an article from every new issue available online and you can visit to see an annotated table of contents from the most recent issue.  You can now catch up with us on Twitter and Facebook, finally bringing the LCMSDS to your favourite social media networks.  The website will be updated regularly.  Be sure to check back often!

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