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Originally Posted by peter12
I think Engen is motivated by the narrative that emerged after the war. Canadians were blamed for not closing the Falaise Gap fast enough or some of the Anglo-Canadian breakout attempts that ended in failure.
He demonstrates that that was never really the operational objective of the Second Canadian Corps or First Canadian Army.
Also, uses officer questionnaires to take a stab at deflating the Marshall thesis that only 15-20% of infanteers in WW2 fired their weapons in combat.
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Fair enough.
I think that a couple of things kind of stand out to me.
First of all, when the Canadians' arrived in Britain they were viewed as poorly trained and embarrassingly equip and poorly lead. They were also viewed as basically rude boisterous barbarians.
the other problem to me is that they were viewed almost as British units, so people expected them to act like British units.
Also I go back to the fact that we had really inexperienced leadership, and we never took the going forward position that we should have with allied commanders.
I think it was poor utilization by our allies that caused the problems.