Raiding the Icebox

[saavedra77]

From last Friday's Washington Post: During the Hoover Administration, the U.S. developed a contingency plan to invade Canada.  The U.S. Navy would have blockaded Canada's Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as the Great Lakes.  A joint Army-Navy force would conquer and occupy the strategic port of Halifax.  U.S. forces would then move to seize the hydroelectric power plants at Niagara Falls, the Winnepeg rail junction, the Sudbury nickel mines, and the cities of Quebec and Montreal.  U.S. warplanes would have made a bid for control of the airspace over Ontario.

In actuality, the so-called "Plan Red" was part of a larger strategy in the event of a possible war between the U.S. and Britain and was one of several such contingency plans (i.e., for possible wars with Japan, with Germany, with Mexico, etc.) developed by the U.S. during the '20s and '30s.

Apparently, however, the Canadians were way ahead of us: as early as 1921, Canadian planners decided that the best defense against a threatened U.S. invasion would be a good offense, including hit-and-run assaults on Albany, Buffalo, Great Falls, Minneapolis, Maine, Seattle (!), and Spokane--and a timely request for British reinforcements.

Or, as the Toronto Globe and Mail put it on Saturday: "They'd Take Halifax--And Then We'd Kill Kenny!"