Canada’s Forgotten War Crimes During The Great War

Canada’s WWI history isn’t just heroism—it's marked by brutal acts, from executing captives to using poison gas, revealing a side often erased from the national story.

Canada’s involvement in World War I is often painted with the brush of bravery, heroism, and sacrifice, woven into a national narrative that celebrates Canadian troops as defenders of justice and freedom. However, a closer examination of Canadian actions during the war reveals a far darker history, marked by incidents that, in today’s standards, would likely be condemned as war crimes.

This sanitized story omits some unsettling realities, including the execution of prisoners, the use of poison gas, and other ruthless tactics. Historian Jonathan Vance, in Death So Noble, reflects on how Canada has mythologized its WWI participation, often excluding the more brutal aspects.

By looking closely at the historical records and the accounts of military historians like Desmond Morton and Tim Cook, we can reconstruct a fuller picture of Canada’s wartime conduct, one that challenges the myth of a peace-loving nation.

To understand this complex history, one must consider the environment of the Western Front, where Canadian soldiers first gained a reputation for fearlessness. However, Desmond Morton describes this reputation as double-edged, noting that the Canadians’ toughness often veered into unchecked aggression.

Early in the war, Canadian soldiers took part in trench warfare characterized by close-quarters combat and high psychological stress. As the conflict wore on, reports emerged of Canadian forces executing surrendering German soldiers rather than taking them as prisoners.

Military protocols required the humane treatment of captives, yet Canadian soldiers, possibly driven by anger and a desire for retribution, frequently disregarded these rules. The War Museum’s records provide evidence of this behavior, detailing how soldiers on both sides sometimes violated protocols under the intense pressures of trench warfare.

Historian Tim Cook delves deeper into this issue in No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War. According to Cook, Canada was one of the first Allied nations to actively employ chemical weapons, specifically chlorine gas, on the battlefield. While Germany had initiated chemical warfare, Cook notes that Canadian forces embraced gas as an offensive tool, with little regard for its horrifying effects.

Chlorine gas inflicted severe injuries, causing blindness, choking, and often death by asphyxiation, creating a battlefield that Cook describes as a “hellscape.” Canada’s participation in these gas attacks did not merely respond to German actions; it was calculated, repeated, and executed with what Cook calls a “pragmatic disregard for long-term consequences.”

This aspect of Canada’s military conduct contradicts its later role as a supposed advocate for international human rights, revealing a willingness to inflict maximum suffering on the enemy.

Beyond the use of gas, Canadian forces became infamous for their brutal trench raids. Desmond Morton describes these raids as deadly, close-combat assaults intended to weaken the enemy’s morale. These raids often descended into bloody hand-to-hand fighting, where soldiers used whatever weapons were available, including bayonets and trench clubs. Morton points out that Canadian soldiers were known for killing prisoners during these raids, sometimes out of rage or revenge.

This behavior went beyond the harsh realities of combat; it demonstrated a willingness to forgo the rules of war entirely. Historian Matthew Barrett provides insight into how this reputation was perceived by the enemy in Through German Eyes, noting that German intelligence reports often described Canadian forces as ruthless and unyielding, a portrayal that starkly contrasts with Canada’s self-image as a fair and ethical combatant.

In addition to these physical tactics, Canadian forces employed methods of deception that further reveal the darker side of their conduct. For instance, Canadian soldiers sometimes lured German troops with food or other bait, only to ambush them with grenades once they approached.

Historian Tim Cook has also explored how such tactics exploited basic human needs and manipulated the desperation of starving soldiers. This level of deception highlights a more calculated approach to warfare, one that used the enemy’s vulnerabilities as a weapon. These tactics undermined any claim to a moral high ground and contradicted Canada’s later portrayal as a nation committed to fair play and humane conduct.

These actions raise uncomfortable questions about the myth of Canada as a moral and humane actor in international conflicts. Jonathan Vance argues that Canada’s image as a peace-loving, ethical nation is a postwar creation, one that overlooks the brutal realities of its WWI conduct.

Vance explains that Canada’s complicity in summary executions, chemical warfare, and deception challenges the notion that Canadian forces were simply following the rules or responding to German aggression. Instead, the Canadian military displayed a willingness to embrace ruthless tactics, a point underscored by the accounts in the War Museum’s archives and the research of historians like Vance and Cook. This willingness to ignore established wartime protocols when convenient reveals a side of Canadian history that is rarely discussed or acknowledged.

The legacy of these actions, according to Vance, has been largely ignored or sanitized in Canadian popular memory. Canada has cultivated a narrative of exceptionalism, positioning itself as a beacon of fairness and restraint on the world stage. However, by disregarding its past actions, Canada contributes to what Vance calls “historical amnesia.”

In omitting these episodes from the national story, Canada has created a selective memory that glosses over its own complicity in war crimes. This selective memory allows Canada to present itself as a champion of international human rights while conveniently forgetting instances where it acted in direct contradiction to those values.

In critically examining these aspects of Canada’s military history, we confront a narrative steeped in hypocrisy. As Tim Cook notes, Canada’s reputation as a force for good on the global stage is complicated by its history of violence and moral compromise during World War I. Cook’s work illustrates how Canada’s use of gas and brutal trench tactics contrasts sharply with its later image as a humanitarian nation.

This hypocrisy becomes apparent when we consider the impact of Canada’s wartime conduct on the broader war and on the civilians affected by poison gas and other ruthless measures.

Matthew Barrett’s Through German Eyes reinforces this critique, providing an outsider’s perspective on Canada’s behavior in WWI. German intelligence reports frequently described Canadian forces as particularly harsh and feared on the battlefield, a view that complicates Canada’s postwar image. Barrett suggests that these reports reveal an underlying “moral bankruptcy” in Canadian military culture, where ethical considerations were often secondary to the aim of achieving victory at any cost.

The Canadian War Museum’s archives, Morton’s and Cook’s analyses, and Barrett’s German intelligence accounts together expose a reality at odds with Canada’s constructed identity. Canada’s actions in WWI were not just unfortunate byproducts of war; they were deliberate choices made in pursuit of military objectives, choices that reveal a side of Canada’s military history that is often hidden.

By confronting these uncomfortable truths, we gain a more complete and accurate picture of Canada’s wartime conduct—one that forces us to reconsider the image of Canada as an innocent or “peaceful” player in global affairs. Instead, we see a nation willing to engage in morally questionable tactics, one that selectively remembers its past to uphold a narrative of purity and virtue.