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, 2011 There 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