The Secret Plan for the US to Invade Canada Before WW2 – War Plan Red

It may seem hard to believe, but in the vacuum of uncertain of geopolitics between World War I and World War II, U.S. military planners deemed it prudent to plan for an invasion of Canada. The Joint Army and Navy “Basic War Plan Red” was one of several color-coded contingency war plans created from the 1920s and 1930s. War Plan Red hypothesized that the British Empire may have wanted to act on a limited window of naval superiority to invade the United States. As a counter-move, the U.S. planned to take the fight to the British by invading Canada to prevent its use as a springboard for ground and air attacks. The idea was even updated to allow the use of chemical weapons against America’s friendly neighbor.

Canada, for its part, also developed a plan to defeat America – a precaution motivated by its own fear of invasion. Suspicions regarding a U.S. attempt to annex Canadian territory as it had done almost a century before with Texas were high. Defence Scheme No. 1 called for a preemptive strike against the U.S.’s northern border designed to occupy U.S. military resources until reinforcements could arrive from Britain…