In Peace Prepared: Innovation and Adaptation in Canada?s Cold War Army

Although the Allies claimed victory at the end of the Second World War, the United States' invention of the atomic bomb and its replication by the Soviet Union posed new dangers for all nations. In Peace Prepared examines what Canada's Cold War Army did to prepare for war against the Warsaw Pact armies - and why and how it did it.

Drawing on previously classified documents from both sides of the conflict, Andrew Godefroy reveals that although the Third World War never happened, peacetime operations played a significant role in the evolution of Canada's army. Officers, soldiers, and a large civilian defence workforce of scientists, engineers, and designers acknowledged that the odds were stacked against them, but they nevertheless responded aggressively and innovatively to the challenges presented by the possibility of nuclear war.

This important work shows that through innovation and adaptation the Canadian Army developed a systematic approach to problem solving. In the process, it reshaped not only how the army would respond to future threats but also how armies in the Western Alliance related to one another during the Cold War and beyond.

Andrew B. Godefroy is a strategic analyst and historian with the Canadian Army, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Army Journal, and the author of Defence and Discovery: Canada's Military Space Program, 1945-74.