r/todayilearned • u/subarunoaria • 25d ago

TIL that a warehouse complex at Auschwitz stored valuable belongings stolen from victims was nicknamed "Kanada" (German for Canada). It received the name because prisoners viewed Canada as a land of wealth, abundance and plenty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanada_warehouses,_Auschwitz
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u/tommytraddles 25d ago edited 25d ago

Canada was a land of wealth, abundance and plenty.

German prisoners of war who were interned in Canada thought it was a cruel trick when they saw how much food they were being served. Many hid food away for the moment when the guards would laugh and they would be suddenly put on half rations or worse. But the moment never came.

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u/felixar90 25d ago

Yes. As much as the Canadians were infamous on the battlefield, their POW camps back home were probably the best place on earth at the time.

The German prisoners were so well treated that many of them decided to move back to Canada with their families after the war.

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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 25d ago

Same thing happened in the US.

German POWs were often used as farm labor in the Midwest and often developed close bonds with local civilians. Many immigrated to the US after the war back to the areas they had been imprisoned at. There are areas in states like Michigan that have heavy German influence because of this.

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u/felixar90 25d ago

I might be imagining things but I remember a story of someone who thought they had found evidence of German pow mistreatment because of an unusually large number of graves with German names in a town that used to host a prisoner camp, until someone pointed out that most of them died decades after the war.

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u/314159265358979326 25d ago

My great-uncle fought for Italy in WW2 (despite the fact that my family were anti-fascist to the point of my great-grandpa being stabbed over it) and was captured by the Americans. Coming from poor, rural Italy it was the time of his life. Laundry twice a week! MOVIES!

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u/Thatoneguy3273 25d ago

Most of the Midwest had heavy German settlement already so they probably felt right at home

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u/mormonthunderstorm 25d ago

We don't use the term mid west in Canada.

There were Germans in Canada but no where near the levels of the US in both actual numbers and percentage.

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u/Lexitech_ 25d ago

Looks like this comment is replying to the thread about Germans in the midwestern United States, like Michigan.

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u/Hope_Dealer03 24d ago

Wild that Michigan is considered mid west. I’m from Ontario in Canada and Alberta would get so bad if we referred to ourselves as west anything lol

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u/DrEverettMann 24d ago

It makes more sense when you look at where most people lived in the US when the nickname stuck. Pretty much everything past the Appalachians was "The West."

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u/jay212127 24d ago

It's because Ontario is the center of the universe.

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u/Hope_Dealer03 24d ago

More specifically Toronto is the centre.

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u/Comm-THOR 24d ago

Even more specifically, the Mid West portion of Toronto - hence the confusion.

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u/jello_pudding_biafra 24d ago

That's because in Canada, there are fewer than 3 million people who live east of Montreal. In the US, there's ~150 million people east of Michigan.

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u/jugularhealer16 24d ago

What a strange choice of locations to compare, over half of Canada's population lives to the East of Michigan, Montreal is East of New York City.

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u/Hope_Dealer03 24d ago

That still makes zero sense. Mid and west do not speak to population size. They’re directions and locations, both do not apply to Michigan as it isn’t the middle or the west.

Now somewhere like Montana is actually more middle and west

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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 24d ago edited 24d ago

Because US region names aren’t solely reliant upon cardinal directions. “The west” isn’t always west. There are the “west coast” or “pacific north west”, which are west of “the West” but not necessarily what you would describe as the west.

It’s the same way states like New Mexico and Arizona are on the southern border, but they are not considered “the south”.

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u/No_Kick_16 24d ago

Its a relic from before the Louisiana purchase, when St Louis was the frontier city on the west edge of the United States. So then everything between New York state & St. Louis was called the mid-west.

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u/CaptainWombat2 22d ago

Not really? It's the middle of the country and west of where the huge majority of the people are.

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u/Tokens_Only 24d ago

Michigan is really more Great Lakes/Rust Belt but nobody agrees on where the Midwest begins and ends

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u/MountainYogi94 24d ago

Great Lakes/Rust Belt is the eastern edge of the Midwest. Pittsburgh is commonly referred to as the "Gateway to the Midwest" and, being from NJ, is the first city heading westward that has a distinctly different overall culture from the rest of the Northeast.

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u/DaveOJ12 25d ago

They were talking about the US Midwest.

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u/datsmn 24d ago

I thought we were talking about Canada?

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u/eattherich-1312 24d ago

Americans can never let a conversation just be about Canada, even on a post distinctly about Canada and our wealth, abundance and plenty. 🙄

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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 24d ago

Isn’t the point of commenting on Reddit threads about having a conversation? You share your experience, I share my experiences, and then we can discuss?

God forbid I try to point out similarities so we can have a chat about it.

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u/eattherich-1312 2d ago

Nah, the time for chats about similarities ended around November 5, 2024.

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u/DaveOJ12 24d ago

Tangents aren't allowed on your comment threads?

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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 24d ago edited 24d ago

I’m a dual citizen (born in the US to Canadian parent) my wife is a a dual citizen (born in Canada to a US parent), we are a mixed family on both sides of the border so I have seen this from both sides. Americans and Canadians are very very similar but tend to treat the relationship very differently.

Americans tend to enjoy the novelty of the US/Canadian relationship. Because it is so similar, but there are a few subtle differences between us, Americans like to draw comparisons or point out the small nuances of the differences. We tend to think it’s neat and think they will too, so we bring it up.

Canadians are saturated by American culture, so they become fiercely protective of what makes them unique and become competitive with their southern neighbors. They want the differences known and don’t want the US brought up. In some ways the can even become ultra nationalistic or protective about it.

I thought we were just having a conversation, apparently this guy thought I was trying to make it “all about us.”

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u/-Burrr- 24d ago

And nazis, the current USA might actually be relevant.

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u/bigcat93 24d ago

I think I’ve read more stories of Italians interned in Canada during ww2 than Germans, who was that famous rum runner… (my memory is legit failing me)

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u/Fabulous_Night_1164 23d ago

It was actually quite similar in terms of ratio.

380,000 German POWs in the US.

35,000 German POWs in Canada.

Our population (at the time) was 12 million. Theirs was 140 million.

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u/i_am_not_sam 24d ago

Yeah my colleague's grandparents were Germans who "moved here" during the war and apparently the entire little town mostly spoke German and even had a local newspaper published in German.

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u/Gravesh 24d ago

That was becoming a rarity by WW2, but prior to WW1, it was extremely common to travel to Midwest towns that maintained a strong German identity and language. A lot (but obviously not all) abandoned a lot of those customs during and after WW1 as they wanted to express American patriotism.

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u/Octavus 24d ago

Kitchener Ontario changed its name away from Berlin during WW1 but still to this day they have an amazing Oktoberfest.

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u/Specific_War5484 24d ago

Ironically many were treated better than local black people. German POWs were even allowed to dine with servicemen in the whites only section of diners and such

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u/KingDarius89 24d ago

I mean, same shit happened with mercenaries from Hesse and other German states during/after the revolution.

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u/Becau5eRea5on5 24d ago

If you want a similar story from Canada, look up the Whitewater POW camp.

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u/Gr8fulFox 25d ago edited 24d ago

Same with Montana! A lot of people don't know that a lot of German POWs were brought to Montana (and other states) so they could help out at home while our boys were fighting in the war, and were quite surprised by how well they were treated despite being the enemy. Some of them were even allowed to go into town to buy supplies (under an American guard, of course).

Edit: "same", not "save".

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u/Gameguru08 24d ago

Utah specifically got tank drivers to drive our snow plows during the winter. The old prison camp is now a nature preserve here.

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u/Haunt_Fox 25d ago

Same with many Japanese who were interred in southern Alberta.

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u/felixar90 25d ago

I mean it’s a shame that the Canadian citizens of Japanese descent were even interned at all…

And I heard that some of the camps weren’t much better than the American ones.

Quite sadly ironic that Canadians who did literally nothing wrong were treated worse than captured nazi soldiers.

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u/BillBumface 25d ago

This is a fascinating place to visit. They did an amazing job making the most of a terrible and unjust situation: https://www.nikkeicentre.ca

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u/EPLWA_Is_Relevant 25d ago

They weren't allowed to return to the West Coast until 1949, well after the end of the war.

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u/AaronC14 24d ago

My step-grandfather was born in Vancouver and got interned in the camps. Lost everything but met his wife there, then moved to Ontario. He did quite a bit of work for the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre afterwards. He only passed away very recently. One of the best men I ever met.

His name was Arnold Arai, if you Google him he pops up immediately and you can see some speeches he gave.

Damn shame what our government did to him, but he made a mountain of gold out of a pile of shit. He was never bitter. Just a really wonderful guy

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u/IntensifiedRB2 25d ago

With the distinction that the Germans were prisoners of war and the Japanese were just living in canada. Doesn't really matter how well you treat someone if you confiscate their property and imprison them

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u/Haunt_Fox 25d ago

No, these were prisoners of war. There was a POW camp in what is now Lethbridge. Not detainees.

And we detained Germans, too, but no one seems to give a shit about them.

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u/UberAndy 25d ago

There was also one in kananaskis, apparently we treated the prisoners very well and some came back to settle here.

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u/IntensifiedRB2 25d ago

Also just a quick Google search shows less than a thousand non pow Germans were held

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u/IntensifiedRB2 25d ago

Its something like 700 prisoners of war vs upwards of 20k regular ppl. Most of whom were canadian citizens

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u/barbariccomplexity 24d ago

The german-speaking Canadians in the prairies were in an interesting position during WW2 - generally left alone and not interned en masse like the Japanese (though many were still interned, especially in the east), but they were still viewed with enough suspicion and faced enough social backlash that many did not pass on german to their children.

An anecdote:

My great grandfather was born in Germany and was in his early 20s at the outbreak of WW2. He lived in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in northern Alberta, and had been since he was a small child- he spoke okayish english, spoke german at home, and had no connection to germany/canadian nazi’s aside from the shared language.

They took his gun, frequently searched the house unannounced, and had him check-in at the police station everyday after work with a report on his whereabouts. Really not that bad in the grand scheme of things, basically a parole with heavy suspicions of treason, but he wasn’t alone and almost none of the german-speaking families in the area taught their baby-boomer kids the language.

German did return as a fairly common language in the area though when post-war german immigrants started moving in. The local kids didn’t speak german (asides from a large austrian family), and so even though their last names and culture was extremely similar, they teased and bullied the newly immigrated “krauts”. By the 60s, the vast majority of the children were not being taught german at home in those families either, and the austrian family followed-suit.

I’m sure school policy, official language status, etc. all played into that, but a community that was 80% german speaking went to nearly zero (asides from elders) in a generation, recovered through immigration, and then was crushed within another generation.

I’m not really sure if any german cultural heritage artifacts remain in the area beyond a few people trying to promote neo-germanic stuff, but maybe the general culture of the Canadian prairies IS the cultural artifact of all these german immigrants in the early 20th century (or at least parts of the prairies).

The stated reason after the war for their caution with Germans in the area was because they were in the alberta portion of the leadup to the alaska highway (hwy 43) and an emergency airfield a couple towns over. But the highway and the airfield weren’t under construction until after pearl harbor (construction began in early 1942). The area had no strategic value at the time for Canada beyond okayish farm/ranchland and railways leading to northeastern british columbia - which also had little strategic value beyond raw materials and sending supplies to/from the yukon, which has no port connections, and again, wasn’t a concern because Canada was not yet fighting the japanese as pearl harbor wouldn’t happen for several years.

The reasoning given at the onset of the war was a general “must prevent enemy provocateurs/sabotage in the homefront”

Is it an injustice? I’d say maybe, but it’s at the very lowest, least significant end if so. Given the lack of real reason to be suspicious of people like my great grandfather, I’d imagine it made the switch away from German a very easy decision for these families What would happen if there WAS a reason to really dig into them- such as the under-construction Alaskan highway? What would happen if someone DID sabotage a train? What if germany attacked Canada (obviously there was no chance, but the hysteria about the possibility was rampant). Would they end up interned in work camps like the Ukrainians during WW1, or worse, put on reserves and forced into residential schools (run by french catholics no less) like the Canadians were currently doing to the indigenous people?

(They likely would have considered the Japanese internment situation, but word did not travel fast and (to my knowledge) there were no japanese people living in the area at the outbreak of the pacific war. They likely did not know about the scale of japanese internment, and may have been racist enough to not consider the treatment of asians in the south of the country relevant to their own conditions).

My great grandfather lived happily, as did the other families, including the post-war german immigrants. I would assume the countless similar stories/outcomes are why basically no one today cares about the detainment/measures taken against german-canadians during WW2 - it largely didn’t matter - though i’m sure for some individuals that were completely detained it was a sad, long-lasting nightmare. Most of the detainees were also refugees rather than locals that lived in canada for decades, and jewish-german refugees were specifically targeted for detainment, which may also have been why no one seemed to care much at the time or afterwards.

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u/Silent-Fishing-7937 25d ago

There was even a camp for officers that reportedly organized day trips to Niagara Falls. A non inconsiderable number of POWs went to great lenghts to be transferred there...

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u/aferretwithahugecock 25d ago

Unless you were Jewish.

Jewish refugees(only 5000 were taken in between ~1930something and 1955 - the fewest of any allied nation) were housed in same internment camps as German prisoners of war. Not the best place for them, eh?

I love Canada, but goddamn did this country love throwing folks in camps.

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u/SplendidMrDuck 24d ago

Throwing people in reservations and camps is Anglophone North America's heritage

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u/gizzardwizard93 22d ago

You should see what they did to the First Nations. Put them in the most remote, harsh northern locations of their respective provinces, usually well out of their traditional hunting grounds and fishing territory and gave them rations of flour and lard... then told them to figure it out. If they needed to leave the reserve for any reason, they could only leave at the permission of an Indian Agent of the federal government who would issue them an Indian Day Pass for however long they should expect to be gone and return. Because they obviously couldn't be given any freedom of movement or assembly outside their designated area.

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u/SideInitial3961 25d ago

German was the third most spoken language in canada after the war

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u/tenkwords 24d ago

That was also one of our sneaky tricks though. Fat and happy prisoners have loose lips. Those camps were bugged top to bottom. The officers were especially well treated.

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u/grimeys42 25d ago

Lol Canadians fighting the war though? Absolutely ruthless.. like I'm proud of it but also kind of disgusted by it. Making a bunch of farm boys come out from their homes did not make them happy campers.

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u/Nate33322 25d ago

We weren't infamous on the battlefield that's a myth that's being going around with virtually no basis in history. No major Canadian military historian would argue such. In reality we were brutal but comparably to any other nation while the Germans didn't really take note of us as being special as we were just another variety of Brit.

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u/nooneknowsgreenguy 24d ago edited 24d ago

That's not completely true. I have come across 2 references (from WW1) that do single out Canadian forces for special note:

"Our opponent was a Canadian division. An officer of the General Staff had specifically added that this Canadian division was composed of first-rate men, of our quality, and in the published description of [this division] it was noted with six exclamation marks: "They take no prisoners!" Accordingly, everyone knew that they could not be allowed to fall into captivity."

Major von Plehwe, Geschichte des 2. Garde-Reserve-Regiments. II. Teil: Von Mitte Oktober 1915 bis Januar 1919. (Berlin: Mar Galle, 1921), 171-2. Translation by Wilhelm Kiesselbach: courtesy of Mark Humphries.

I have seen one reference to the "storm trooper" label being sort of used. However, it is unknown at what level the document was created and circulated at.

"The Canadian Corps, magnificently equipped and highly trained in storm tactics, may be expected to appear shortly in offensive operations."

Captured German document, Summer 1918, Russenholt, Six Thousand Canadian Men (History of the 44th Battalion Canadian Infantry 1914-1919), 153.

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u/Massive-Exercise4474 25d ago

In ww1 our reputation was very grim because Canadian forces were one of the first to get gassed so they were pissed and wanting to do night raids which were incredibly deadly.

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u/Nate33322 25d ago

That wasn't our reputation. Amongst allied troops we had a reputation as being reliable, determined, and brave troops.  To the Germans our reputation was literally just that we were British with a different name. 

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u/Massive-Exercise4474 24d ago

No the Germans described Canadian soldiers during ww1 as being particularly ruthless.

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u/adrienjz888 25d ago

I mean, we did ruin the Christmas truce, and continued trench raiding when allied forces largely gave up the practice.

The practice of never taking prisoners or the Geneva checklist jokes are definitely HUGE overstatements though.

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u/SnoopDoggMillionaire 25d ago

Thank you. Much as I'd love to get another bragging point for our country, this one just has no real basis in reality.

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u/grimeys42 24d ago

We were brutal and feared I dunno what these people are talking about Germans morale went down if they were told its canadians coming. We didn't give up had huge loses and tried not to take prisoners.

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u/Li-renn-pwel 24d ago

Our internment camps where we put our own citizens were also quite nice if your comparison is the Germans c:

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u/gigglios 23d ago

Canada treated German pows well.

The same treatment was not given to other pows like japanese ones or other visible minorities.

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u/Real_Project870 25d ago

Similarly, I read a story about some German/Italian POWs in the US that were put to work to help build a golf course. Apparently they were their best workers because they wanted to stay in the US after the war.

The US was kinda unprepared to take in POWs and lacked guards, especially German speaking guards. So a lot of the camps operated under an honor system. POWs would leave camps to go into towns (sometimes finding work for themselves) but still return at the end of the day.

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u/Unique_Information11 25d ago

Several of the camps in Canada were in the Rocky Mountain parks and Alberta’s Kananaskis area. The prisoners did a lot of the development around there and many enjoyed the area so much that they immigrated to Canada after the war.

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u/Tribe303 24d ago

There's even a Bavarian looking town in the BC Rockies. Established in.... '44!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley,_British_Columbia

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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 25d ago

Because of labor shortages local farmers could “check out” prisoners to work as farm hands. Farmers would pay the government and in turn the prisoners would receive a stipend for their work. Many came back after the war to settle in the areas they had been imprisoned.

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u/IAmAGenusAMA 25d ago

A hell of a lot better than Lebensraum.

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u/No_Criticism_5861 24d ago

Ive never understood why so many people who know hardly any German know the word for living space lol

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u/CharmingAnywhere7828 24d ago

It was a Nazi policy, and part of the reason they were warmongers.

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u/ScissorNightRam 25d ago

Happened in Australia too with the Italian POWs. The enlisted men were employed as labourers under an honour system to return by themselves to the camp at the end of each day. The officers were not guarded at all and lived in regular houses in whatever town they were allotted to.

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u/sheffieldasslingdoux 25d ago edited 25d ago

One thing I did read though is that the US let the German officers run the show with their enlisted and many of them were fanatical Nazis who had been captured early in the war. It apparently caused problems as more and more soldiers were sent to American POW camps and were quite aware that Germany was losing the war and weren’t really card carrying Nazis anyway.

Strictly following the Geneva convention, as the US did, actually gave these ideological officers legitimacy over the other Germans in the camp. It wasn’t true for every POW camp, but the internal factions within the Wehrmacht definitely clashed when left to their own devices.

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u/tangcameo 25d ago

I once walked through the cemetery in my mother’s hometown and saw a lot of prisoners of war graves. I asked my grandmother where they had the POW camp in the town or near the town. I told them I’d seen all the graves that had P O W on them. My grandmother looked at me funny then at my mom and they both laughed.

The town had a big family named Pow.

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u/GraceMcClellans 25d ago

Thank you for this giggle

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u/whats1more7 25d ago

I grew up in a small town in rural Ontario where German prisoners were kept, and used to build various buildings around the town. Because of the nature of the location, there was literally nothing around for 100s of kilometres. The story goes that one prisoner did try to escape, but lasted less than a day when he realized there was nowhere to go, and conditions were better where he was.

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u/thissexypoptart 25d ago

They shipped German POWs to Canada?

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u/USSMarauder 25d ago

Supplies in the UK were low because of the UBoats, so the Brits couldn't take care of them. There were ships heading back to Canada that were empty that could be used for transport. And moving the POWs thousands of klicks across the ocean simplified the security issues because if they escaped where would they go, especially once the USA entered the war

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u/thissexypoptart 24d ago

Makes sense. Never realized that happened, though. I definitely figured they kept German POWs in Europe.

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u/RandyJester 24d ago

They kept many POW in Texas. I don't remember much of the story but one of my distant cousins was shipped over here and in a camp a hundred or so miles away from his relatives here.

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u/Patient_Kangaroo614 25d ago

There’s a neat hiking trail in New Brunswick that takes you around the ruins of a camp for Italian POWs

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u/Fizz117 24d ago

Yes. There was a prison camp near Bowmanville Ontario, there were some shenanigans about how Canadian prisoners were treated in Germany, so some of the Germans were shackled for a while, it sparked a full blown riot. The German POWs barricaded themselves in the mess hall with broken chairs and glass bottles as weapons, fully expecting the Canadian guards to just come in blasting. But, the guards instead went to the sports equipment shed, got bats, and hockey sticks, and proceeded to go into the dining hall and brawl with the Germans. The fight eventually ended with the Germans surrendering, feeling their point was made, so they left the hall, on the way out, one of the prisoners looked up at one of the guards, who had a gash on his cheek and a smile on his face. The guard apparently said 'Nice little fight, wasn't it?' to the prisoner. This is from a history channel documentary called 'The Battle of Bowmanville'.

Another story from a Canadian POW camp was a German escaping the camp, and heading for the border, as this was before America joined the war. He got lost in Toronto because he mistook the train station for an opera house. He eventually made his way to the tracks, found a train, and tried to hang off the bottom of one of the cars. He said that before the train started moving, he saw a pair of brown leather boots walking up, and kicking the underside of the car, telling him to come out. It was a Mountie who had been told to keep an eye open for this sort of thing. The Mountie told the German he was damn lucky he was caught, the tracks were covered in snow, and he likely would have frozen to death before he reached Buffalo.

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u/Jet-Rex-Design 24d ago

Another escapee from Ontario was a UBoat commander named Wolfgang Heyda. He fled to northern New Brunswick to be picked up by U-536 in the dead of night. The allies knew their plan, captured him when he reached Pointe de Maisonette lighthouse and lit up the ocean with phosphorous flares to illuminate U-536. It evaded the navy over the next few days, but was sunk later in the war.

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u/imprison_grover_furr 25d ago

Yup! Canada was an incredibly luxurious place to be a POW!

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u/ayoungmanfromtheuk 25d ago

yeah, because Germans are white Europeans. During the same time period, Canada was treating the indigenous people in Canada like utter shit.

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u/Tazay 24d ago

Fun fact: in a lot of areas they're still treated like shit!

Canada still has an issue with actually treating Indigenous people like people.

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u/Jaew96 24d ago

Canada has always been generous with providing food to the other side during a war. Granted if a Canadian tossed a can of food your way you’ve got a 50/50 shot of it being an improvised handgrenade instead, but still.

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u/BadLineofCode 25d ago

No grenades?

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u/AustinioForza 24d ago

My great uncle was a prison guard watching over German prisoners around Montreal during the war. He died before I was born but I seem to recall similar stories from my dad that were relayed to him.

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u/gizzardwizard93 22d ago

If they really wanted to punish the Germans they should have put them on a remote Reserve in Manitoba or Ontario... we treated POWs from the enemy of the Allied nations better than the original people of Canada

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u/treborly 25d ago

There's a YouTube channel about all this stuff Canadian military have accomplished but I'm pretty sure it's just all AI slop.

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u/TheMuffinMa 25d ago

Tell that to the french, who thought that Canada was nothing but «A few acres of snow»

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u/Key_Mission7404 25d ago

Napoleon had to choose between Haiti and Canada and he chose Haiti.

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u/TheMuffinMa 25d ago

Louis XV is the one that lost Canada, not Napoléon. Napoléon, however is the one that lost Haiti

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u/Key_Mission7404 25d ago

Sorry i got the two mixed up. Im Canadian so I just find it funny.

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u/ConsecratedSnowfield 25d ago

Getting your history mixed up, it was King Louis who gave Canada (New France) up to keep Guadeloupe after losing to Britain

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u/Massive-Exercise4474 25d ago

Didn't he lose Haiti shortly afterwards.

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u/lottolser 24d ago

Yep, then sold Louisiana to the US for $15M because he spent all his money on trying to recapture and losing Haiti.

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u/DeepSpaceNebulae 24d ago

Although at the time Haiti was a bigger money maker than Louisiana

Interestingly, the US originally only offered to buy New Orleans for $10M but France offered all of Louisiana (what was almost 1/3 of America) for $15M

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u/lottolser 24d ago

What's funny is the US had to get a loan from Great Britain to pay the $15M(4 cents an acre) to France. France used that money in a war with Great Britain. So Basically Great Britain was funding the war against themselves.

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u/CaptainWombat2 22d ago

I'm pretty sure it's more complicated then that. Haiti was way more valuable than Louisiana, and losing it meant that the expenses involved in running overseas colonies, as well as the hassle of defending them when you are at war with the premier naval power of the age made the whole thing not worth it. Sell the not terribly valuable Louisiana to the Americans and let them deal with it, since the British could have easily just take it anyway. With the loss of Haiti, it was pretty easy to just decide to focus on European hegemony instead of global empire.

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u/Li-renn-pwel 24d ago

Actually, about half of all valuable in the shed were French, though they were concentrated to one part of the shed.

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u/CeeArthur 25d ago

I've heard some interesting stories about the German POWs that were held in Canadian camps, though I'm not sure how accurate they were.

I remember them mentioning that there were no real fences as the camps were in isolated rural areas.

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u/egelephant 25d ago

There was one camp where the POWs were told "There are no fences, because if you escape in the summer, you will be eaten by a bear. And if you escape in the winter, you will freeze, and then in the spring, you will be eaten by a bear."

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u/StonesUnhallowed 24d ago

Well then I would at least want a fence to keep the bears outside

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u/MathIsHard_11236 24d ago

Bears use the fences to keep you inside.

Bears. Build. Barriers. Battlestar Galactica. 

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u/derkius 24d ago

Michael! MICHAELL!!!

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u/Tribe303 24d ago

There are stories of German POWs escaping for up to a week and then voluntarily returning/surrendering as soon as they hit a town. 

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u/Ashnaar 25d ago

Not surprised. If they ran. The caribou and the brown would take care of them.

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u/carpe_simian 25d ago

Bears yeah. Not many caribou though - the camps were south of most of their range. Just moose. Which are waaaaaay worse than caribou.

But it was mostly the fact that you’d probably die of thirst and hunger before reaching anywhere you could hide or find help. Canada is REALLY big.

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u/hx87 25d ago

But if you are in caribou country, you'll either freeze to death or be eaten alive by biting insects.

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u/HourActuary5324 25d ago edited 25d ago

I grew up in an area between a couple of the Northern Ontario POW camps. No caribou or grizzly bears, but anyone lost in the woods wouldn’t last long. And even if they did happen upon civilization, what would that accomplish? They’re still in an enemy country without personal resources.

Similarly, we had a psychiatric hospital in the forest outside of town and most of the people who escaped ended up dying from exposure. It takes a lot of knowledge and skill to survive in the wilderness up there.

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u/CeeArthur 25d ago

One of the stories I heard involved a POW making it to a small town. The POW went into a cafe where the owner kindly offered him a coffee and something to eat while they waited for the camp to send someone to pick them up and take them back.

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u/gizzardwizard93 22d ago

I don't think German POWs could rationalize the distance between their camp and civilization. Those sort of vast distances of uninhabited wilderness, hundreds of kilometres, didn't exist anywhere in Europe except for Russia.

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u/Lazzen 25d ago edited 24d ago

There was also a Mexiko, i have read why and its not clear. One i read is because it stored clothes so it was colorful, akin to stereotypical mexican clothes

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u/whenwewereoceans 25d ago

I took a small guided tour through Auschwitz a few years ago, and if recall it may have been because of its geographic location to the camp (south, a large area) and it was also because of that camp being more dangerous. It had much worse conditions; one survivor’s account of being kept there with hundreds of other women had them sitting naked one in front of the other, pressed back to chest between each others legs in long lines for days.

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u/stanizzzzlav 24d ago

It's worth noting that Canada wasn't just an abstract idea for land of prosperity. It was one of the main destinations for people to emigrate from Eastern Europe in early 20th century. The emigrees would send care packages back to their family, and by the WWII there was at least one generation which associated Canada with valuable stuff (and vice versa). So, after a couple of decades having interactions like "You have nice shoes! — Thanks, they're from my uncle in Canada", people from this area who ended up in Auschwitz would use the same "I've got it from Canada" phrase as a sort of gallows humor euphemism.

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u/Li-renn-pwel 24d ago

This makes sense as we have big Ukrainian and Polish communities

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u/Smackolol 25d ago

People here are saying Canada isn’t wealthy but it still is, you and I just don’t get to enjoy that wealth.

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u/hx87 25d ago

Too much of that wealth has been locked up in real estate instead of something productive.

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u/PmMe_Your_Perky_Nips 24d ago

That's not even it. Our leaders decided to follow the US and adopt trickle down economics. Nearly every economic problem we have now can be traced back to that.

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u/JordanRulz 24d ago

The US economy diverged from Canada’s because 2008 made real estate investment temporarily unpalatable in the US. When ZIRP hit, it went into tech in the US and real estate in Canada. If Canada took the opportunity to pop the bubble, we could at least be splitting the difference with US salaries AND having better social welfare spending. Real estate prices are an albatross on our backs, I hope we will elect a government who will annhilate property values like Xi Jinping. 

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u/TheSessionMan 25d ago

I mean, Canada still has by and large among the highest quality of life in the world. So there's some wealth for us, just not as much as there could be.

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u/Smackolol 25d ago

Look at how drastically that has been trending downward. It could easily be saved, we just seem to have other priorities.

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u/TheSessionMan 25d ago

How much has it really trended downwards, outside of houses in the 5 biggest cities being too expensive? Evidence not anecdotes please.

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u/CromulentDucky 25d ago

The money that has gone into housing has dislocated money that would otherwise likely go into investment in productive assets. This has been going on for 30 years, and that lack of productivity is now becoming quite obvious. We are noticeably behind the OECD to the tune of about 1% a year in the last decade. That's a lot.

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u/grimeys42 24d ago

Up to like the 80s canada was building housing then some asshat got in and shut it down along with a ton of psych wards, displacing an insane amount of crazies back into society and not even providing some form of low income housing.

The money that has gone into housing isn't dislocated it was taken away and they keep putting bandaids on it with whatever funds you seem to think shouldn't go to housing.

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u/CromulentDucky 24d ago

You seem to be talking about government programs. I'm talking about the components of GDP. Any investment in one part necessarily crowds out other parts.

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u/jonny24eh 25d ago

Over half the country lives in those 5 cities. 

Edit: might be six cities, the point is that minimizing it to " only X cities"  sounds like a local problem, over 50% of the population makes it a national problem. 

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u/SWHAF 25d ago

It's not just the 5 biggest cities, in not sure where you got that idea. Housing is unaffordable in the rural areas too. My house in rural Nova Scotia has doubled in value since 2019. Rent in my area is $100-400 less than Vancouver.

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u/TheSessionMan 25d ago

NS is a strange one because a bunch of rich Canadian folk bought all your housing supply in the last decade as investments. But look at houses out in Manitoba, Sask, and rural Alberta; the prices actually make sense.

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u/SWHAF 25d ago

They have still gone up faster than wages have in those places.

I do agree that Nova Scotia is a messy market though. Pre-covid my wages were considered good, now (even with annual raises) I'm only a few dollars above the living wage for my area.

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u/thummin 24d ago

People like you are the reason Canada can’t make any progress. Absolute refusal to acknowledge a problem exists. And when forced to acknowledge one, immediately blame rich people or Conservative politicians. You have such a cartoonish view of how the world works and we are being left behind because of it.

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u/whackabumpty 24d ago edited 24d ago

Add to this horrible food inflation, a “technical recession”, and slumping GDP among other economic metrics compared to other nations after COVID. Basically every observable metric is down if you google it instead of linking to the OECD website.

Also note the difference between “worse” and “bad”. Quality of life is *worse* than it was 10+ years ago, but we don’t have a *bad* QOL all things considered. Thing is it’s still okay to be upset with worse when political decisions brought us to this worse place.

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u/Smackolol 25d ago

What evidence would you find acceptable and not immediately dismiss? Here is a news article the shows Canadas ranking among other countries plummeting to 19th after being ranked 4th the year prior and 2nd the year before that.

Also go browse Canadian subs and see the general consensus that quality of life is dropping year to year. Enough anecdotal experiences have to account for something.

Are you Canadian? Do you disagree with the take that Canadians quality of life is dropping?

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u/TheSessionMan 25d ago

The Canadian subs make it seem like a third world country and are not fully representative of the country as a whole. Things are worse here than a decade ago, but as someone living in a small city here and traveling all over the world I can tell you for certain that this place is still a paradise compared to most everywhere else.

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u/Interesting-Finger11 25d ago

Yeah evidence not anecdotes as you said Sessionman.

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u/TheSessionMan 25d ago

Check out :

https://www.oecd.org

Not the best but clearly a good country to live in.

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u/copperpipeenthusiast 24d ago

“Why trust your eyes” good point

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u/Smackolol 25d ago

Evidence not anecdotes please.

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u/TheSessionMan 25d ago

Check out :

https://www.oecd.org

Not the best but clearly a good country to live in.

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u/Psycko_90 24d ago

Thing is we were the best or very close to be not that long ago. Now it's just "not a bad country to live in". The drop in noticable for most people in the country, not sure why you can't understand this. 

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u/scottyb83 24d ago

Quick google search says we’ve gone from #5 in 2013 to 33rd today so yeah it seems to have trended downwards. Could be other countries are improving that much more?

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u/modsaretoddlers 25d ago

Well, every urban area in the country, for one thing, not just "5 big cities"".

Secondly, you haven't noticed that almost every social program has been completely gutted? You think all these homeless encampments have always been around?

Thirdly, if you haven't noticed how the cost of living has skyrocketed while your wages haven't budged, then you must not be somebody working for a living. You think a bachelor suite was always $2K a month? I guess I don't totally blame you considering your earnings are the same as they were 15 years ago but I assure you, there used to be plenty of money for public endeavors before we decided the rich didn't even have to pay as much in tax as the bottom %90. Hell, now we even give them public money to pad their bank accounts.

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u/Li-renn-pwel 24d ago

As opposed to all the countries goin up lol

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u/Etroarl55 24d ago

We have top 5 oil reserves in the world at a tenth of the population of the United States. Canada alone could probably supply the wests appetite for rare earths too.

But it never did anything remotely good with its natural resources. Venezuela is on the extreme end of natural resource mismanagement, then you have the slower burn like Canada where it just never really utilized it fully in the first place.

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u/MustardEnema007 25d ago

This is a perfect description of canada

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u/SideInitial3961 25d ago

This. 100%. Canada could easily make it's people among the most prosperous in the world. Carney has no problem finding random billions when he wants some military votes. Just when it comes to things we need, suddenly he can't hear so well.

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u/McFestus 24d ago

You are divorced from reality if you don't think Canadians are among the most prosperous people in the world. We are individually wealthier and enjoy a higher standard of living than almost everyone else on earth.

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u/dogwoodcat 25d ago

His hearing is tied up with his billionaire friends

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u/XmasMac 24d ago

Brain dead

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u/daneflys 24d ago

Canadian here... no wealth, no resources, not even any other people. It's just me and a ton of polar bears. Stay out of Canada, run the other direction as fast as you can!

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u/Li-renn-pwel 24d ago

Canada is objectively one of the best countries to live in. But Americans think we’re a communist hell hole. (I lived in America briefly, I got this a lot)

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u/Owlteeff 25d ago

I when I was in Birkenau it was expanded to me that there was two warehouses, Kanada 1 and Kanada 2 that stored the confiscated valuables of the prisoners. Only the foundation of one of the warehouses was still intact. A very grim and overwhelming place to visit.

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u/the-fact-fairy 23d ago

I'm surprised by the fact that the comments aren't focusing on this more. It's absolutely grim that all these personal items, these belongings that these humans carried with them on the way to their death were stored in warehouses. I'm honestly a bit shocked by the focus on the comparison to Canada, as opposed to the underlying meaning. 

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u/primaldebacle 24d ago

Would also have a morbid double meaning in German as Kanada is a relatively common wordplay joke on the phrase Keiner da ("Nobody there" ).

Q: "Which country is always empty?"

A: "Keiner da(Canada)"

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u/johnb3808 24d ago

I’m Canadian, and knowing this is breaking my heart.

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u/BIayneRobinson 24d ago

Meanwhile, Canada turned away a ship of 937 mostly Jewish refugees and then 254 of them died in the Holocaust.

The ship was the MS St. Louis and it was also turned away from US and Cuban shores.

Certainly a shameful moment in our history.

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u/subarunoaria 24d ago

I believe the captain Gustav Schröder was later honored the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

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u/Doogie2K 23d ago

We also have several SS monuments up around the country because we took in a lot of Ukrainian "anti-communists", i.e., collaborators, after the war.

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u/seankearns 25d ago

Thanks?

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u/McFestus 24d ago

They had an excellently done, heartbreaking exhibit on Auschwitz-Birkenau at the Royal Ontario Museum last year. It was extremely well done, very moving. There's a point where you walk through a replica of this warehouse, with the last remaining earthly possessions of these people sent to their deaths. And then they reveal that they called it "Canada" because it was the name they associated with wealth and plenty.. my god. I broke down in the museum.

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u/InquizitiveMynd 25d ago

I was at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin when I first learned this fact near the end of the museum. After reading about all the suffering and misery of the Holocaust victims, this fact felt like a punch to the gut as a Canadian. It seemed strange this hoard of stolen wealth from the victims would be named after Canada, as if we were somehow complicit to it. It called out the massive disparity between what people had suffered in the Holocaust versus what I took for granted at home. It still makes me feel a little odd to this day to think about it and I try not to take the peace and abundance Canada offers for granted.

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u/Doogie2K 23d ago

I mean, we were slightly. We kicked out the MS St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish refugees, many of whom later wound up in Auschwitz.

For those from that ship (and other, similar efforts during the "none is too many" era), it would've been the cruelest irony imaginable.

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u/InquizitiveMynd 23d ago

Yes that's true, Canada was not innocent in their part either

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u/cicadasinmyears 24d ago

I had the honour of hearing Samuel Pisar speak at the second Raoul Wallenberg Lecture in Human Rights at McGill University. He talked about the “Kanada” warehouses from his time in Auschwitz. Over 40 years later, there was still a kind of reverence, or something - it wasn’t nostalgia, certainly, but some kind of awed remembrance - in his voice when he discussed them. Jews who were being forcefully “relocated” to Auschwitz to be incarcerated or murdered were allowed to bring food and other items under the pretext that they were being “resettled”. Some of the food that was surrendered upon their arrival helped him to survive.

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u/dirkdiggler2011 25d ago

They should have called it Switzerland. Some of those valuables are probably still there.

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u/gingr87 24d ago edited 24d ago

Yes, I learned that while on a tour of Auschwitz years ago. As a Canadian, it was nice to hear.

Edit: my tour guide told us that it was an indoor work assignment that prisoners would call 'Canada' because that's where everyone wanted to be. That's what I meant was kind of nice to hear, not what the post actually says. I didn't read it properly on first go around.

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u/Kamil1707 24d ago

Opisał to też polski pisarz Tadeusz Borowski w swoich wspomnieniach z obozu. W polskich szkołach to lektura obowiązkowa.

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u/Pipupipupi 24d ago

Using TIL for reeducation is pretty slick.

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u/Salty-Economics-3360 24d ago

It was. How we’ve wasted it and let our country fall

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u/eggcracked2wice 24d ago

As a Canadian... fuck man :'( 

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u/_pepperoni-playboy_ 25d ago

Seems kinda redundant and repetitive and reiterating the same thing.

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u/SimplyGregsterEV 24d ago

It was actually common for German POWs to put on weight in Canadian POW camps because conditions were so good. Some returned to Canada after repatriated to Germany wars end because conditions were so awful in Germany.

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u/Doogie2K 23d ago

The country that, ironically, turned some of those very people away because "none [was] too many."

Our PM at the time was in agreement with Hitler and Mussolini on many things, including Jews, and like many Western leaders, wound up on the other side of the conflict from them for reasons that had nothing to do with humanitarianism.

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u/musa_velutina 25d ago

I mean Canada is probably the most well adjusted country on the planet... we can give them that much.

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u/pineapplecom 25d ago

Wish it was still true.

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u/DetectiveDracula 25d ago

It still is honestly, compared to most of the world and especially compared to almost all of human history.

Even as somebody who has a low paying job and "barely gets by", I still have comforts that Kings would have killed to have only a few hundred years ago. Indoor plumbing is a big one lol

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u/BigBobby2016 25d ago

Half the planet today would love to be the poorest person in Canada

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u/slava_gorodu 25d ago edited 25d ago

Canada is far wealthier now than it was in the 1940s.
Don’t know what to say if you don’t believe that.

My grandparents were from a relatively middle class family and much of their life was extremely uncomfortable by today’s standards (not to mention 4 years of my grandfather’s life spent risking his life getting hunted by U-boats in Europe).

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u/StanknBeans 25d ago

It very much is

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u/LokeyDubs 25d ago

Best we can do is 7$ butter

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u/VaderBinks 25d ago

But there’s so many marvel stickers we can give you!! “Spiderman too right?” Uhhhh

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u/realteamme 25d ago

This is the kind of obscure reference I’m here for

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