The Second Quebec Conference Revisited.

Doerr, Paul

The Second Quebec Conference Revisited, by David Woolner. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1998. xiii, 210 pp. $49.95.

As noted by the editor of this volume, the Second Quebec Conference of September 1944 surely qualifies as the most overlooked of the wartime Allied summit meetings. That fact alone should justify further scholarly inquiry. The problem, unfortunately, is that not a great deal of significance happened at Octagon, (the code name for the conference). Warren Kimball, author of the first of nine essays, argues that the whole thing was unnecessary. The military decisions could have been reached without a face-to-face summit, while the decisions on post-war Germany, the Morgenthau Plan, and Lend-Lease were all soon overturned by events. Subsequent contributors have their work cut out for them.

The first four essays are grouped together under the heading "Strategy and High Policy." These essays are based largely on secondary sources, published memoirs and published documentary collections. Specialists will not find much that is new. Kimball's essay sets the general strategic and political context for the summit. Jack Granatstein's contribution points out that when it came to issues of grand strategy, Canada was indeed a marginal player at Quebec, which was only to be expected of a nation with a population of eleven million. The Mackenzie King government was somewhat more successful at winning Canadian representation on various joint wartime boards. King also gained important political benefits from Octagon that did much to assure his re-election in June 1945.

The most substantial contributions come from B.J.C. McKercher and David Woolner. McKercher argues that Churchill's primary objective at Quebec was to restore Britain's status as a great power in the post-war world. Churchill favoured expansion of the war in Italy and the Balkans since those were the theatres in which British arms could play the most decisive role. Battlefield success would lead to a major role in the post-war occupation of Germany and also to the recovery of Britain's South East Asian possessions. Woolner's essay considers the genesis of the Morgenthau Plan, the controversial scheme hatched by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau for the deindustrialization of post-war Germany. Morgenthau gained the support of Roosevelt for his ideas prior to Quebec by appealing to the president's deep-seated dislike of German militarism. According to most historians, Churchill signed on at Quebec (to the horror of his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, who feared a repetition of the mistakes of Versailles) largely because he hoped to gain a quid pro quo that would ensure continuation of Lend-Lease after the defeat of Germany. But as Woolner points out, anti-German feeling was at a high point in 1944, and harsh treatment of Germany enjoyed widespread support. In retrospect the abandonment of the Morgenthau Plan following Quebec was a fortunate development. The machinations of Morgenthau's political rivals (especially Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of War Henry Stimson) make for the most intriguing reading of the first part of the book.

The remainder of the book comprises five essays that do not deal with the Quebec Conference, but rather "Canada's role in the latter stages of World War Two." These papers draw somewhat more heavily on primary sources. John English analyzes the rise of "Atlanticism," or the sense that Canada should take its place alongside Britain and the United States as a member of the North Atlantic community. Serge Bernier contributes a too-short essay on French Canadians in the Canadian armed forces. The unifying theme for the second half of the book is clearly the battle for recognition of Canadian contributions to the Allied cause. Donald Avery covers the efforts of the Anglo-Canadian Montreal Laboratory to retain at least a portion of the atomic research conducted in North America between 1942 and 1945. Roger Sarty's work focuses on the Royal Canadian Navy's struggle to carve out a role for itself beyond anti-submarine work. Finally, Hector MacKenzie describes the exertions of the Canadian government in gaining equality of representation on inter-Allied wartime management boards.

All the essays in this book are based on papers originally presented to a conference held in Quebec City in 1994 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Octagon. One notes with dismay that it took nearly half a decade for publication and distribution of this pricey volume. I also found myself wondering if readers interested in topics as varied as the Montreal Laboratory or the R.C.N. would turn naturally to a book on the Second Quebec Conference for sources. Internet publishing, anyone?

Paul Doerr

Acadia University