The War Book

Please fill out these forms to go to war.

What is a war book?

“Broadly stated, a war book is a document which attempts to anticipate and list the measures that will probably have to be taken to meet an emergency that might or does lead to war, and to assign responsibility for executing the measures.”

Over at the main Canada Declassified website, I have uploaded two Cold War-era war books: A 1952 draft of the first-ever Privy Council Office War Book, and a 1961 Department of National Defence War Book that was later approved amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

These departmental war books fit neatly in to Canada’s Matryoshka-doll-like war book structure:

The “Government of Canada War Book” was the over-arching war book. It listed general measures to be taken in case of war, but its primary task was to allocate responsibilities for plans and measures to departments and agencies.

Different parts of the government had their own, more detailed, war books.

And while DND had its own war book, the Royal Canadian Navy, Army, Royal Canadian Air Force, and Defence Research Board each had their own war books, too.

The first chapter of the DND War Book is a series of “alert” measures for military forces. This includes instructions for preparing troops to move to “war stations” and then instructions to move there if needed. In keeping with NATO nomenclature, this draft adopted the grandly titled “State of Military Vigilance.”

Other chapters include a whole slew of unphased and “Phased Emergency Measures.” These include instructions for things you might expect, like “emplementing [sic] defence plans.” But it also included security measures like the “control of electronic emissions” and “control of illumination,” i.e. lighthouses.

At the back of the War Book are the forms.

The first annex of the DND War Book (“Annex 1 - Draft Submissions to the Governor in Council”) is a pile of ready-made templates to be copied out and signed in case of war.

Once signed by the Governor General, these Orders-in-Council would allow the government to take a number of important steps and arrogate certain powers. The list of titles, below, explains what I mean.

These forms were designed to save time in a crisis, and make sure that important steps like “augmenting [the] annuities of annuitants” were not missed.

For me, the most fascinating draft submission is the one that would place Canadian troops on “active service.”

The template offered a number of choices to whoever was re-typing the form as a submission to the Governor in Council. You can see the use of parenthetical to indicate options. For example, was Canada taking action under the “United Nations Charter” or “the North Atlantic Treaty”?

It was, I suppose, the drop-down menu of its day.

Crisis and Opportunity

For the Cuban Missile Crisis junkies out there, these records include one more intriguing detail. This 1961 version of the DND War Book was not formally adopted until 1962, in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As Asa McKercher explains in this article, Canada’s Minister of National Defence Douglass Harkness put Canadian interceptors and ships on alert early in the crisis, but without Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s knowledge or approval. Harkness’s actions were in line with the responsibilities described in the war book I’ve posted here. (But recall that this War Book had not been approved by Cabinet at the time of the alerts).

The “Cuban Crisis” (and the Canadian mini-crisis over alerts) helped get Dief’s attention on the matter of alerts and the DND War Book.

On October 25, 1962, Cabinet approved the DND War Book but with an important proviso I’ve highlighted here:

In what seems like a direct effort to curb the powers Harkness exercised earlier in the week, the Minister of National Defence was now obligated to obtain the approval of the Prime Minister before moving up the chain of alerts.

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The quotation at the top of the post, about the purpose of a war book, is drawn from the 1961 DND war book. All documents, along with their LAC provenance, are available at Canada Declassified, here: https://declassified.library.utoronto.ca/exhibits/show/war-book/war-books.