En esta noticia
In the 1930s, the U.S. military drew up a secret plan to invade Canada, and later versions authorized using poison gas against Canadians. Known as War Plan Red, it was approved in 1930, kept classified until 1974 and never carried out.
The plan imagined a war between the United States and the British Empire, with Canada as the main battlefield. Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley and Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams III signed off on it in May 1930.
The poison gas came later. Amendments in the mid-1930s allowed chemical weapons from the start of the fighting and approved bombing Canadian cities, including Halifax, Montreal and Quebec City. The documents are now kept at the National Archives.
The plan is getting new attention as President Donald Trump keeps pressing Canada. He has repeatedly floated making it the 51st state. On Aug. 27, he signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” for U.S. federal use.
What did the US plan to invade Canada in ‘War Plan Red’ include?
Planners assumed Britain would use Canada as a base to attack the United States. Their answer was to strike first and take Canada before British troops could arrive. In the plan’s color code, the U.S. was Blue, Britain was Red and Canada was Crimson.
The first target was Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada’s key Atlantic port. Taking it would cut off British reinforcements and the undersea telegraph cable linking Britain and Canada. A 1934 memo filed with the plan argued that gas would force a fast surrender and save American lives.
After Halifax, the plan called for attacks across the border:
- Seizing the power plants near Niagara Falls to cripple Canadian industry
- Pushing from New York and Vermont toward Montreal and Quebec City
- Moving from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to take Winnipeg, the hub of Canada’s railways
- Crossing from Michigan toward Ontario’s nickel mines
- Taking Vancouver from Washington state while the Navy controlled the Great Lakes and blockaded Canada’s ports
The planners didn’t intend to give anything back. Captured provinces were to become U.S. states and territories after the war. If the U.S. lost, they expected Canada to demand Alaska.
Was the US ever going to carry out ‘War Plan Red’ against Canada?
No. War Plan Red was one of several color-coded contingency plans the military drafted between the world wars, largely as planning exercises. It never needed approval from the president or Congress, and it never got it.
Canada had its own version. In 1921, Lt. Col. James “Buster” Sutherland Brown drafted Defence Scheme No. 1. It called for quick raids into cities such as Seattle, Minneapolis and Albany, New York, to buy time for British help. Canada had shelved the plan by the late 1920s.
When World War II began in 1939, the U.S. stopped working on War Plan Red but kept it on file. By 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King were discussing how to defend North America together.
That partnership became NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The two countries created it in 1957 to guard the continent’s skies, and its commander still answers to both the U.S. president and the Canadian prime minister.