What was the main reason that Germany lost w.w.2?

I may be wrong, but I don't think there was a "Royal Canadian Navy" in WW2.
They were still part of the Royal Navy.

I don't think Canada was independent of Britain at the time.

Canada's independence is usually said to have begun with Federation in 1867, and became definite in 1931. The Royal Canadian Navy was formed in 1910.

The Royal Canadian Navy lost 31 (some say: 24, but the former number includes merchant vessels under RCN-flag) warships during WWII.

By the end of the war, the RCN had become the third-largest allied navy in the world after the United States Navy and the Royal Navy.

By any means, Canada was at least independent when it became a member League of Nations as an "independent, free-voting member": January 10, 1920. (Canada declared independently war on August 19, 1914)

Indeed, Canada became an independent nation with confederation on July 1, 1867. The British North America Act was amended to reflect the new status. Thereafter, all substantive changes in the constitution of Canada were incorporated in new emendations of the Britesh North America Act, obligingly passed by Parliament with the text provided from Ottawa, and assented to by the monarch--until the British North America Act was "repatriated" in the 1980s.

The Royal Canadian Naval Service, renamed the Royal Canadian Navy within a year, was an independent service from it's inception in 1910, as Contrex has pointed out. Although bowing to British pressure in the Second World War, at least in theory, the RCN was only incorporated into the RN with the consent of the government in Ottawa. The RN carried it with a high hand in the Second World War. When Canadian destroyers or frigates became highly efficient, they were immediately taken over by the RN and seconded to RN ASW hunter-killer groups. While continuing to convoy the lion's share of merchantmen which crossed the Atlantic, the RCN's escort flotillas continued to be the ugly stepchildren of the two navies--doing the biggest job with only the resources the RN left them. Their losses in the war, and the task they accomplished with their available resources (their ships were built in Canada, using Canadian resources and on Canadian designs) represent a remarkable achievement.

Actually, I'd thought that most US-Americans knew why "Canada Day" is celebrated: British North America Act, 1867 (aka Constitution Act, 1867), which united three colonies into a single country called Canada within the British Empire ... ... ...

Source: Canadian Naval Centennial

Canada Day (formerly Dominion Day) has not really been on the radar of most Americans, i think. I'm not saying nobody knows, just that, as usual, the Americans don't pay much attention to what goes on north of the border.

At the time of the American Revolution, "Canada" was two North American provinces, Lower Canada (Québec) and Upper Canada (Ontario). At the time, Upper Canada consisted of little more than Fort Henry and the nearby village of Kingston, and some scattered farmsteads along or near the shores of Lake Erie. Loyalist from the United Stares, known as Tories there, and calling themselves United Empire Loyalists flooded into Upper Canada after the Revolution. (One sees Loyalist this and that all over southeast Ontario. There is a Loyalist High School in Kingston; i don't recall if The Girl attended that school or not.)

During the War of 1812, about which Canadians have many unrealistic historical myths, Isaac Brock invaded Michigan from Upper Canada, and a superannuated veteran of the Revolution, General Hull, surrendered Fort Detroit to inferior forces. There was a notorious slaughter of prisoners by Brock's Indian allies, lead by Tecumseh who claimed he was unable to control them. Later, the Americans riposted with an invasion of Upper Canada from the west, and soundly defeated the Brits at the Battle of the Thames near present day London, Ontario. Tecumseh was killed in that battle. You find Brock this and that and Tecumseh this and that all over southwest Ontario, including the town of Tecumseh. Brock had been obliged to hurry across southern Upper Canada because of a threatened American invasion, and he was killed at Queenston on the day the Americans invaded.

After the war, the Brits imposed the hated governor and council system of colonial government which was a major factor in American discontent before the Revolution. Finally, in the mid-1830s, there were insurrections in both Upper and Lower Canada because of dissatisfaction in the Canadian provinces with the governor and council system. The Lieutenant Governor, John Colborne, did much to expand settlement and infrastructure in Upper Canada, but he lives on in the resentments of les habitants as "Le Vieux Brûlot" (the Old Firebrand) because of the burning of farmsteads in Lower Canada, as well as lynchings and outright murders of French-speaking Canadians. Colborne, like Tecumseh at Detroit, disavowed responsibility by saying he had been unable to control the English-speaking militia he had marched in there. The excuse is more feeble coming from a Major General who was a veteran of the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Retaining the governor and council system had been a pig-headed example of government's inability to admit having been wrong. However, cooler heads prevailed in London, and the two provinces were turned into Canada East and Canada West, and were given a legislature with equal representation for both provinces. Canada as we think of it, though, simply did not exist. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador were all North American provinces separate from the two Canadas.

In 1866, Irish Fenians, veterans of the American civil war, invaded Canada. Most of the "invasions" were farcical, but in the Niagara Peninsula, John O'Neill, a former Federal cavalry officer, lead a successful invasion, and at the battle of Ridgeway, routed the Canadians who had come to round them up. He then retired on Fort Erie, retaking it from the Canadians, and then surrendering to the U.S. Navy in the Niagara River. This was the first "all Canadian" battle in their history, and they have made many cosmetic changes in their record of the event to try to overcome the fact that 300 or fewer Irishmen routed their troops. The British then told the Canadians that they'd have to foot the bill for their own defense and the Militia Act was passed.

At that time, the Tories in Canada West were finding it increasingly difficult to form and maintain governments with their French-speaking partners. The government fell in 1864, but the parties involved began discussions to gain a measure of independence. When John A. MacDonald and George-Étienne Cartier approached a meeting of Maritime provincial politicians in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, a deal was worked out which turned Canada East, Canada West, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island into the Dominion of Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador did not join until 1949. The other components of modern Canada had been added in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

As Walter has pointed out, Canada effectively became an independent nation in 1931, when they stopped allowing Parliament to write their foreign policy, and began opening embassies in other nations, beginning with the United States. After 1949, Parliament surrendered the right to legislate the Canadian Constitution. The British North America Act was "patriated" to Canada in 1982.

I do not think there is a way to tell U.S. citizens apart from Canadian citizens, without documentation. Language sounds the same. Dress is similar. Manner of walk can be the same. I have come to the personal conclusion that U.S. citizens and Canadian citizens are just the same version of homosapiens with different holidays. And, if they ever go to live in each other's country, they often adapt like chameleons. Future archeologists will likely consider North America as being one large country extending to the Arctic Circle from the Rio Grande.

21.3% of Canadians have French as mother tongue, more than 30% a working knowledge ...

Il faut pas se bâdrer avec les détails!

Foofie is such an idiot--i can't understand why you waste any time on her.

What are you talking about, eh?

14% of US citizens speak Spanish in their homes. French sounds just like Spanish.

As long as they keep in their homes, and don't expect Foofie to understand them . . .

Of course, that's another main reason why Germany lost WWII:
The Legión Cóndor didn't really know what el bando republicano and el bando sublevado meant, and therefore stopped the developing of a precise maritime weather-forecast system.
Which effected the U-boat weapon, as Set pointed out before.
Thus ...

Them Spanish-speakers is insidious . . .

(Weather reports from Spain were only useful when weather fronts arrived from the southwest. The prevailing weather patterns for the Bay of Biscay are westerlies. Even the Allies had a problem with this--they really didn't see the storm coming which destroyed the American "mulberry" on June 19, 1944.)

My mother landed with her field hospital the day before the storm, hours before it hit, in fact. So, they moved inland with just the supplies they had landed with. After that, the only resupply the got for about the next month was what could be air-dropped to them. At that point, the 29th division had started to make some real progress toward capturing St. Lo, and they had more German patients than Americans. Feeding them was starting to be a real problem, as they barely had enough for themselves and their American patients. She told the story of how they were set up near a Norman village, in which the villagers had been hiding a portion of their harvest from the Germans throughout the war. The Normans had brought out their grain, had started milling it and baking bread. The hospital had huge amounts of canned beef and canned hams, and, of course, as things went in the U.S. Army in those days, lots and lots of cigarettes. They traded with the Normans for fresh bread and fresh vegetables, eggs and other things they could get, using the canned beef and ham, and the cigarettes. They were then able to eat well themselves, and feed their patients. Cigarettes were a very valuable trading commodity, then and for many years to come. The Girl's father, Hamburgboy, has told me about trading cigarettes in post-war Hamburg.

hahahahahahaha

I think we finally have the answer. Germany lost because they didn't have enough cigarettes.

She must have seen some awful sights, Set.

I have a branch of my extended family from Normandy, and they have a saying that goes something like....Normandy is the martyr of France. I was drunk on Calvados at a wedding there at the time, but I soon got to understand what they meant.
The rest of France got off pretty lightly compared to Normandy.

Various ramblings, as passed on to me from Uncles.....

One uncle (I never met him) made it ten yards up the beach on DDay, hid behind a broken down tank and woke up in a Brighton hospital two days later, minus a knee cap. He died a year later from shrapnel complications, apparently.

Another uncle (my dad had eleven brothers) "acquired" half a dozen alarm clocks from a burnt out German Jewellers on the push down to Berlin. They were the only stock left in the place by the time he arrived.
Soon after the surrender, he was on a train sitting opposite some Russian soldiers, who were so enamoured with his "ringing clocks", that they all swapped their Rolex and Omega "booty" for them.
He gave one Rolex to my dad upon his return, who in turn eventually passed it to my older brother. It still works fine, which is more than can probably be said for the alarm clocks.
Another uncle was a POW in the "forgotten" part of the war, and was routinely beaten by the Japanese and almost starved to death.
One of the punishments he endured (for forgetting to bow) was to be wrapped in barbed wire and left in a sweatbox for the day.
The idea was that every time he moved, the wire would "remind" him to bow in future.

Another brother, the black sheep apparently, got drunk and hit an Admiral in Portsmouth, was jailed for three months, escaped, deserted, apparently joined the Merchant Navy, jumped ship in Australia, sent one postcard to say he was OK, and promptly disappeared.

As for the Germans in Normandy:

my father here in 1940 (or 1941, that's not definitely clear) ...


... and here in 1946 ---



... his home (he's not on that photo but took it)

One of the worst things she told us, although we didn't understand it a the time, was about the German boy soldiers. After St. Lo, the hospital was evacuated to the beach (i now undersrand that the collapse of the salient formed by the 29th and First divisions pushing inland meant that the situation was "fluid," it was no longer safe for them). Perhaps because they already had so many German patients, they began to get the casualties from the battle between the Canadians and the 12th S S Panzer division--the Hitler Youth division.



Apparently, as she explained when we were older, these kids would wake up screaming, pulling at their dressings and IV tubes. When we were younger, she just sang German lullabies and children's songs to us. The German officers taught them to sing the songs phonetically, and it apparently calmed these kids. The battle with the Hitler Youth was ugly for another reason--there were allegations that they shot their prisoners, Canadians and Englishmen. There ought to be a special place in Hell for people who use children in that way.