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Abstract
This dissertation analyses academic military history and the writing of the World Wars in Canada. While there have been hundreds of books devoted to Canada’s role in the World Wars, few historians have examined the writing of that same history, or the archival records that were used to construct these narratives.
It has been the official historians of the Department of National Defence who, for much of the twentieth century, have controlled the historical writing of the World Wars, and that military history has been narrowly defined as the history of military operations. Training, administrating and operational war-fighting remained the focus. Only recently have academic military historians pushed the discipline of military history to explore the impact of the World Wars on Canadian society. Nonetheless, it remains the publications of A.F. Duguid, C.P. Stacy, Gilbert Tucker, Fred Hitchins, Joseph Schull, and more recent official historians that provide the central narrative when examining the writing on Canada’s World Wars. An exploration of key historians and their works reveals historical themes underpinning how memory and narrative of the World Wars has been constructed within historical writing.
The official historians were the guardians of memory and controllers of the past. Caught within the battles of reputations that followed the World Wars, they were forced to carefully navigate through these contested issues. Laying an interpretative frame-work, the official historians allowed subsequent generations to build upon and rework their findings, through writing their histories but also by acting as the archivists for their respective services. While the official histories have their flaws, they are also exceptionally important foundational studies that deserve greater attention and study in their own right.