Zombie Army: The Canadian Army and Conscription in the Second World War
Daniel Byers
Zombie Army tells the story of Canada’s Second World War military conscripts – reluctant soldiers pejoratively referred to as “zombies” for their perceived similarity to the mindless movie monsters of the 1930s. As Byers argues, although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they also soon came to be a steady source of recruits for active duty overseas. While Canadian generals were criticized for championing an overseas army too large to maintain through voluntary enlistment – leading inevitably to calls to send conscripts to Europe – until now there has been little satisfactory explanation for why military leaders pushed for (and why politicians accepted) such a sizeable overseas force. In the first full-length book on the subject in almost forty years, Byers combines underused and newly discovered records to argue that although conscripts were only liable for home defence, they soon became a steady source of recruits from which the army found volunteers to serve overseas. He also challenges the traditional nationalist-dominated impression that Quebec participated only grudgingly in the war.
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About Daniel Byers
Reviews for Zombie Army: The Canadian Army and Conscription in the Second World War
Brian Bertosa, Independent Researcher
Canadian Military History, Vol 27, Issue 2
Somewhat ironically given the book’s title, Zombie Army is a very human story about the Canadian World War II experience. It deserves a prominent place in both libraries and university classrooms.
Adam Montgomery, Independent Scholar
Canadian Journal of History, Volume 52, Number 2
Since it illustrates a topic that could not have been written in earlier decades, there is much for the Second World War historian to learn from Zombie Army.
Robert Engen, Royal Military College of Canada
The Canadian Historical Review, Volume 98, Number 4
Zombie Army adds yet another important study to the large codex of Canadian Second World War literature, adding new life to a topic that has not been investigated in detail for many years.
Major Andrew B. Godefroy, CD, PhD, jrcsp, Army Lessons Learned Centre
Canadian Army Journal, 17.2
Byers provides us with an impeccably researched look at the daily grind of these soldiers, the way they were perceived by the local populations, their ethnic composition, or where and how they served.
François Charbonneau, University of Ottawa
The British Journal of Canadian Studies, Volume 31, Number 1
Zombie Army tells the whole arresting story with an even hand and smart commentary. The work is as compelling as the subject.
Holly Doan
Blacklock's Reporter, February 2017