The Good Allies: How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism during the Second World War

By Tim Cook

Penguin Random House 2024

At the end of the 1930s, Canada was a young nation, barely 70 years old, still developing itself. A government report claimed that Canada was then “one of the least self-sufficient countries in the world.” The US, while reeling from the Great Depression, was an established economic and cultural dynamo, a preeminent world power. Canada was largely seen as just another part of the British Empire; America was its own man. The US largely ignored Canada; and Canada, despite splitting two-thirds of a continent with the US, seemed to operate in a different political region than the US.

By 1945, Canada was a united and highly industrialized country. It was one of the world’s great “creditor nations, second only to the US.” Its navy was the fourth largest in the world. In 1945, it was said that Canada had “developed … into a nation of importance.” Canada had also developed a tight political, military, and economic alliance with the United States. The event that produced these drastic changes was the Second World War. The story of Canada during that war, and of its alliance with the US, is the subject of Canadian military historian Tim Cook’s blandly-titled new book The Good Allies: How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism during the Second World War. 

Cook’s book is also somewhat misleadingly-titled, as it is just as much a book about how the Second War World changed the relationship of the US and Canada as it is about how the Second World War changed Canada. Much of The Good Allies is devoted to Canada’s provincial disputes, its wartime industrial revolution, the development of a Canadian comic book industry (producing such patriotic heroes as Johnny Canuck and Nelvana of the Northern Lights), and such important things. When Cook does turn towards the global scene, it is from a Canadian perspective that it is seen. The Good Allies is, in short, thoroughly Canada’s book.

Canadian historians do, of course, have permission to write such books; and Tim Cook has done a fine, if workmanlike, job in writing one. His writing is lucid and often intelligent, though he is better on internal Canadian affairs than he is on international affairs.

One of Cook’s chief contentions about the latter is that Canada was greatly beneficial to the US in World War II because of its importance “in defending North America during the Second World War.” This claim is certainly valid (Canada was a willing and helpful North American partner of the US)—insofar as North America needed defending during a war fought in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Because it was a relatively insignificant part of the war, Cook’s emphasis on North American defense is misplaced, and quickly gets tiring.

Fortunately, most of the time, Cook is properly aware of the significance of the events he describes, especially when showing the relationships between the US and Canadian leaders. American President Franklin Roosevelt—chummy, charming, chain-smoking, and utterly self-confident—at first seems to contrast sharply with Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who is unassuming, cautious, and awkward. But both men’s penchant for political deception and manipulation quickly reveals them to be rather similar political spirits. But, unfortunately for King, the might of his and Roosevelt’s countries were drastically different, and King never forgot that he was undoubtedly the junior partner in the Canadian-American alliance he and Roosevelt were key in forming. Cook can be refreshingly blunt on this subject: “King had almost no say in matters of strategy in Washington, or indeed throughout the war;” “Canada was the third ranking member of the Western alliance, albeit a distant third.” (The second-ranking member of the alliance was, of course, Britain, led by, of course, Winston Churchill, who makes a few cameo appearances, and of whom Tim Cook is overly-fond.)

It is not just Canadian inferiority that causes subtle tensions in the Canadian-American alliance. For the opening segment of the book, the fact that Canada, loyal to Britain, immediately joined the war in Europe, while the US was (supposedly) at peace with all the world for the first two-and-a-half years of war, causes some difficulties. But more troubling are Prime Minister King’s fears of the sheer power of the United States. King, and many Canadians, were acutely aware that the US didn’t exactly have a superb record of respecting Canadian sovereignty, and that the US, if it was drawn into the war, could very easily “assimilate” Canada. This could result from an occupation of Canada if North America became a theater of war and Canada did not adequately defend itself (again, the theme of continental defense!), but it might also result through Canada’s excessive reliance on US economic and military aid. Thus, Canada not only needed to fight the Nazis, but in doing so, it also needed to become self-reliant enough to eliminate the American threat to Canadian sovereignty.

The wily and determined Canadians officials mostly overcome these issues by the end of the war, with their nation emerging as a helpful, reliable, but independent partner of the US (even providing the “uranium that was weaponized in the atomic bombs used against” Japan to end the war in the Pacific). Despite its flaws, The Good Allies will certainly give readers a greater appreciation of the United States’ good fortune in having a healthy, powerful democracy with whom to share the world’s longest international border. And, even if The Good Allies overestimates Canada’s importance in World War II, it reliably documents the great importance World War II had for Canada.

Spencer Peacock is a student currently living in Utah