Ĭanada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939, and sent one division to Europe, which did not have an opportunity to engage in combat before France was defeated by Germany. King had laid down defence spending priorities in April 1939 that declared the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) was to be the main service, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) the secondary service and the Militia the last on the list as he wanted to avoid fighting a war on land again, which was likely to cause heavy losses. In 1935, King had been opposed to sanctions on Italy for invading Ethiopia, in 1936 he had stated that Canada would not take part if Britain decided to take military action in response to the German remilitarization of the Rhineland and in 1938 he had warmly supported the Munich Agreement as the necessary price for peace.
English called "an abiding aversion to conscription" and "an apparently unshakable conviction in the efficacy of appeasement" as he regarded another world war as "the ultimate catastrophe" for which no price was too high to avoid. During the 1930s, Mackenzie King had displayed what the Canadian historian Colonel John A. Though there were several reasons for King's reluctance to go to war with Turkey, but at least one of which was the memory of how the First World War had badly strained Canadian domestic unity. In 1922, during the Chanak Crisis, when Britain almost went to war with Turkey, King had first asserted that Canada would not automatically go to war as part of the British empire if Britain did, saying he would consult the Canadian parliament first and presumably declare neutrality if the House of Commons were unwilling to go to war with Turkey.
King, who experienced the split first-hand, was determined to avoid another such split.
Main article: Military history of Canada during World War IIĬanadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King had been haunted by the way the Conscription Crisis of 1917 had fractured the Liberal Party between its English-Canadian and French-Canadian members.
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