World War II Letters

Your chance to improve your marks

Your letters

• You should hand in the planning – If I can’t find the answer for something in you letter but it was in the planning I gave you the mark

• You must hand in 3 letters

• If you would like to re-do your letters you can complete and or resubmit them for

February 22, 2011There will be no letters accepted after this date!

Letter #1

• You have to choose your person• Where do they live in Canada? If it is Quebec this will

effect your second letter. If they are from BC this will effect another part of letter 2.

• You have to choose what force they will fight in– Air Force– Navy– Army (infantry)

Letter #1

• If you choose Air Force– You will have been trained in the BCATF – You will fight in one of two battles

• Battle of Britain• Battle of the Atlantic as a bomber escort

• Battle of Britain (Before Sept 1940)– We have better planes than Nazi’s & radar to track

them– We were fighting to control the airspace of Britain

and save the infrastructure of Britain

Letter #1

• Battle of Britain (After Sept 1940)– You LATER went on night bombing raids over

Germany• Bombing factories so they could not produce more

battle goods, and infrastructure so they cannot get around as well

• Battle of the Atlantic (After 1941)– You flew long-range bombers looking for U-Boats– You protected the convoys from Nazi “Wolf Pack”

attack

Letter #1

• If you are in the Navy– You fought in the Battle of the Atlantic

• This was for control of the shipping lanes between Europe/ Africa and North America

– You could be on one of the corvetts (small warships) that protected the merchant marine

– You use sonar to track and find the Nazi U-Boats– How does a “Wolf Pack” Attack work?– You will likely continue to work on this battle

making numerous trips back and forth

Letter #1

• If you are in the Army– You fought in either Dieppe or El Alamein (NORTH

Africa) • If you fought in Dieppe (August 1942)– You took a boat over – Battle of the Atlantic – 5-6 Days– It is likely that you got injured– It was a one day raid that was a major failure– There were very few who got off the beach in retreat

– most died and the rest got taken P.O.W.– Why/ How did the Nazi’s know that the Canadians

were coming?

Letter #1

• If you fought in North Africa/El Alamein (Sept 1940)– You took a boat over – Battle of the Atlantic – U-

Boat attack? Preventative measures? – You fought against the Italians in Egypt– You preserved the use of the Suez Canal for the

Allies– You prevented Hitler from getting oil resources– You saw terrible close combat with little sleep

working through extreme heat and bad food

Letter #1

In General• You are all very against the war – people

volunteered to do this – it was/is an honour• You all seem to have a sick grandmother –

would you really ask this? And apparently you have dogs – what about the cat lovers?

• I want gory and specific details – don’t disguise this for me – I want to know that you know specifically what was happening over there

Letter #2• Where is this person located? This will affect

how you answer different questions. Be specific and clear – “The weather in BC is great this week.”

• The people of axis country origin– “Enemy Aliens” Germans, Italians, Japanese– They might be spies so they had to register with

the government– They banned the Canadian Nazi party– They rioted against the religious pacifists who did

not want to go to war

Letter #2

• People of axis country origin– They did not want any Jews coming in from

Europe “None is too many”– The Japanese (mostly those who lived in BC, b/c it

is close to Japan) were rounded up and placed in internment camps

– Their stores were looted and white Canadians often took over their prospering businesses and stole their possessions that were not taken to camp

Letter #2

• What does this person do for work?– If they were unemployed, they now have a job and

are working more hours– This is partly because of the NRMA– Any one who is able bodied had to help Canada

with the war effort– The factories would be running 24 hours a day,

and you would have 3 x 8 hour shifts instead of shutting it down every night

Letter #2

• The NRMA– If they are a farmer they would be sending their

produce to Europe – Canada is on strict rationing– If you were making pots and pans you were likely

changed into an ammunitions factory – They created Crown Corporations so many more

people would be working for the government

Letter #2

• The conscription plebiscite happened when?– April 27, 1942– No conscripts were sent over until 1944 – it takes

a long time to train the men adequately– Only 12,000 men were sent and for less than 6

months– If you lived in Quebec you felt highly betrayed that

they would ask to send men over seas– If you were in the rest of Canada you were all for it

and voted yes to sending men over

Letter #2

In General• You need to answer all of the questions asked

by the first letter – many forgot• Think of what the implications of the NRMA

could be – you will have to consider things outside of the box

• This is more of an information exposé than the other letters, so give me lots of information!!!

Letter #3

• If you are in the Army– You either fought in D-Day or in the Italian

Campaign• D-Day (June 6, 1944)– This was the largest Canadian military of WWII– Canadians landed on Juno Beach– They took the beach and in a week had a strong

hold on the area• In a month they had over 300, 000 troops and 200,000

vehicles

Letter #3

• After D-Day– You will push forward and possibly liberate Holland or

take Germany straight through to Berlin• The Italian Campaign– This happened after North Africa had been cleared– You take the island of Sicily in July 1943– You are opening up a successful second front to take the

pressure off of the Soviets– They did an amphibious attack (similar to what they

used in D-Day)– This became the staging area for troops to go up Italy

and into Europe

Letter #3

• The Italian Campaign– They fought close range battles moving forward very

quickly with little sleep and poor living conditions for 4 months

– They got stopped at Ortona and fought there for one solid month suffering many casualties

– The French Canadian unit was the most feared in the area – Vandoos• They were the first to get through to Rome

– It was hoped that they may be able to meet up with the other allied troops in France after D-Day to push the Nazi’s to German territory, but this never happened because the fighting was more intense than expected

Letter #3

• If you are in the Navy– You are still fighting the Battle of the Atlantic• Canadians are doing much better at this now• They are making more ships than are being destroyed• They are working with the merchant marine now

– You will now be dropping depth charges on the U-Boats

– The use of the convoys rendered the wolfpack attacks less effective

Letter #3

• If you are in the Air Force– You just finished clearing the way for the allied

troops to land in Normandy– You took out communications and various

infrastructures in advance so supplies could not reach the battle front

– You are starting to out number the Nazi fighters and are destroying more of their airplanes than they can produce (their factories are getting destroyed)

Letter #3

In General• Not many people got to even the planning for

this so I did not have much to go off of• Don’t get too sentimental – I still need to

know the information and a lot of people that did get that far said a lot of very sentimental nothing and very little information