Canada's Greatest Wartime Muddle: National Selective Service and the Mobilization of Human Resources During World War II

In this exhaustively researched and carefully documented account, Michael Stevenson argues that National Selective Service (NSS) - the agency responsible for controlling the nation's military and civilian mobilization apparatus - failed in its attempts to regulate Canadian society. He challenges traditional views that Prime Minister Mackenzie King handled the conscription issue by creating a comprehensive, centralized, and efficient human resource mobilization strategy, carefully supervised by government bureaucrats in Ottawa. Stevenson argues instead that a fractured, de-centralized, and widely unpopular mobilization program often prevented NSS officials from channelling eligible men into Canada's system of compulsory training for home defence or allocating workers to essential industrial jobs. To determine the government's commitment to a comprehensive mobilization strategy, Stevenson considers the effect of NSS policies on eight significant sectors of the Canadian population: Native Canadians, university students, war industry workers, coal miners, longshoremen, meatpackers, hospital nurses, and textile workers. These case studies show that mobilization officials achieved only a limited number of their regulatory goals and that Ottawa's attempt to organize and allocate the nation's military and civilian human resources on a rational, orderly, and efficient scale was largely ineffective. This detailed assessment of the effect of NSS activities on a broad cross-section of Canadian society provides a fresh perspective on the domestic impact of the Second World War. It will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in Canada's economic, military, social, and political history.