America's secret plan to invade Canada - WAR PLAN RED

June 1914. Europe detonates. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, was assassinated in Sarajevo, an act that lit the fuse for a war that would consume the world. The assassination spirals into World War I, a meat grinder that consumes empires, borders, and entire generations. And it isn't fought with glory. It's fought in trenches, miles of mud and barbed wire, men living like animals, underground for weeks, rats, disease, trench foot rotting through the boots, an artillery so constant it drives soldiers insane. Then the gas comes, a green fog rolling across no man's land, burning lungs from the inside out, boys clawing at their throats, blinded, drowning on dry land. On one side, the allied powers, Britain, France, and Russia. On the other side, the central powers, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. For nearly three years, the United States stays neutral. But the neutrality eventually erodes. German U-boats sink American ships. Then the Zimmermann telegram promises Mexico financial and military support and that Germany would help reclaim the U.S. territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona in exchange for war with the U.S. British intelligence intercepted the telegram. They decoded it and passed it to Washington. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson had no choice and brings the United States into the conflict. American forces don't arrive first, but they arrive fresh. And by 1918, U.S. troops fight alongside British and French armies on the Western Front, helping break the stalemate and force Germany's collapse. The war ends. The central powers are shattered. The British Empire stands victorious, but exhausted. And the United States emerges transformed, not just as a wartime partner, but as a rising global power. To the public, Britain and America are allies bounded by blood and victory. But inside the U.S. War Department, pioneers don't deal in gratitude. They deal in contingencies. Because Britain still controls the world's largest navy. It is a global empire, and a massive, lightly defended land border with the United States through Canada. So even as diplomats shake hands, American strategists quietly begin drafting plans for war. Not against Germany, not against Japan, but against the British Empire itself. They called it War Plan Red. So at what point does an alliance stop being a partnership and start being a liability worth planning around? And if alliances are built on shared interests, not loyalty, how quickly do you think today's global partnerships could unravel when those interests change? Let's try to find out. Hello, I'm Mike Joberg, Marine Corps veteran and filmmaker, and we will try to answer these questions on today's episode of Forgotten History. The beginning of the toughest 26 days in Marine Corps history. 36th President of the United States died this afternoon. When the fighting ended in 1918, the world was shattered and exhausted. The old European order had collapsed. The German Empire was gone. Austria-Hungary was broken into pieces. The Ottoman Empire was dying. Britain and France emerged on the winning side, but barely. Their economies were strained, their populations depleted, and their global dominance was no longer guaranteed. The United States, by contrast, came out of World War I stronger than it entered. American industry had surged. Its military had proven it can project power overseas, and its economy was now tied to the fate of Europe. Publicly, Washington talked about peace, cooperation, never repeating the catastrophe of 1914. But privately, the U.S. military drew a very different lesson. The war had proven one thing beyond a doubt. Global alliances could collapse overnight. Countries that traded together for decades ended up killing each other by the millions. Treaties meant everything until the moment they meant nothing. Inside the War Department and the Navy Department, planners began treating peace as temporary. They did not ask who America liked. They asked who America might someday have to fight. The real danger wasn't Britain. It was the assumption that friendship equals safety. So they began drafting contingency plans, war plans. Each potential enemy was assigned a color. Germany, Japan, Britain, France. And the most uncomfortable conclusion of all was this. If the United States ever found itself at war with the British Empire, the war would not begin in Europe. It would begin at home. That realization became the foundation for a plan that was never meant to be public. War Plan Red. To understand War Plan Red, you have to strip away modern assumptions. The United States planned for war based on geography, logistics, and worst case scenarios. If a war ever broke out with the British Empire, American planners believed one thing was unavoidable. Canada would be involved whether it wanted to be or not. Britain was still the dominant naval power on the planet. It controlled sea lanes, colonies, and the ability to move forces across oceans. But oceans were also Britain's weakness. Moving large armies across the Atlantic would take time. Canada solved that problem. Canada shares a massive land border with the United States. One that runs dangerously close to American population centers. Cities like Detroit, Chicago, and New York were no longer protected by oceans. With ports, rail lines, and infrastructure already woven into the North American economy, Canadian territory could, in a war, serve as a staging ground, supply hub, and launch point for British forces against U.S. cities and industry. From Washington's perspective, that made Canada the decisive factor. War Plan Red assumed that if fighting started, speed mattered more than diplomacy. The goal was not to conquer Canada, but to deny Britain access to North America before the Royal Navy and Imperial forces could fully mobilize. American planners focused on key objectives. Major ports that could receive British reinforcements like Halifax and St. John. Rail hubs that connected to eastern Canada to the interior, such as Montreal and Quebec City, and industrial centers that could support sustained operations like Toronto and Hamilton. If those were taken quickly, Britain would be forced to fight from across the ocean instead of from America's doorstep. That was the cold logic of the plan. Canada was coded crimson, not because it was an enemy, because it was the terrain that mattered the most. The War Plan Red was built on a brutal assumption. In modern war planning, neutrality doesn't protect geography, and in the event of a war between great powers, being close to an ally can be just as dangerous as being an enemy. But Canada itself wasn't naive. In the 1920s, Canada was still part of the British Empire's strategic world, and Canadian military planners understood exactly how exposed they were. They knew if war ever broke out between the United States and the British Empire, Canada would become the opening battlefield whether London wanted it or not. And they knew they could not win a long war against the United States. So Canada drafted its own contingency response, known as Defense Scheme No. 1. The plan was blunt, realistic, and temporary. Canadian forces were not expected to defeat the U.S. Army. It was expected to delay it. If war began, Canadian troops would immediately cross the border and launch limited attacks into northern U.S. cities and infrastructure targets. The goal was disruption, confusion, and time. Time for Britain to mobilize. Time for reinforcements to cross the Atlantic. And time to turn a fast American strike into a prolonged imperial war. It was never meant to be a permanent occupation. It was just a holding action. Once British forces arrived in strength, Canadian units were expected to fall back, abandon exposed positions, and integrate into a broader imperial defense. In other words, Canada's plan quietly accepted an ugly truth. Canadian territory would likely be lost in the opening phase of any war with the United States. Defense Scheme No. 1 was eventually shelved as political relations improved. But it revealed something critical about the era. Both sides saw the same reality. Both sides planned accordingly. And both sides understood that alliances did not erase geography. They only delayed the moment when geography mattered most. By the mid-1930s, that world was changing fast. Germany was rearming. Japan was expanding across Asia and the Pacific. Italy was moving towards open aggression. The idea of a single clean war against the British Empire no longer made sense. American planners began to realize that the next conflict would not be one enemy. It would be global. Instead of preparing for war against one specific power, the United States began planning for multiple enemies at once, across multiple oceans. In that reality, Britain stopped being a hypothetical rival and became something far more valuable. A partner. British naval power, intelligence networks, and global bases were no longer threats to be neutralized. They were assets the United States would soon rely on. By the time World War II erupted, War Plan Red was quietly abandoned. Not because it was a failed plan, but because the plan simply became unnecessary. World War II didn't just redraw borders. It rewired alliances. Germany and Japan, once declared enemies of the United States, were defeated, occupied, and rebuilt. Within a generation, both became cornerstone allies of Washington. Former Axis powers were folded into the American security umbrella. Their militaries restructured. Their economies integrated. Their survival tied directly into U.S. protection. At the same time, another wartime ally moved in the opposite direction. The Soviet Union, which had fought alongside the United States against Nazi Germany, emerged from the war as America's primary adversary. Europe was split. Ideology hardened. The Cold War replaced the hot one. Allies became enemies. Enemies became allies. Not because of loyalty or morality, but because the strategic map had changed. This is the context of War Plan Red. The plan was not an anomaly. It was an early example of a rule that would repeat again and again throughout the 20th century. There are no permanent sides, only shifting alignments. Alliances formed after World War II felt permanent at the time. NATO, European integration, and U.S.-led global order. For decades, they defined what the West meant. But history does not freeze. Today, the United States debates its role inside NATO. The cost of defending Europe is questioned openly. Commitments once assumed are now negotiated. Germany and Japan remain allies, but they are no longer dependents. They are regional powers with their own interests. And Russia, the successor state to the Soviet Union, has re-emerged as a direct geopolitical rival. The alliances forged in the ashes of 1945 are no longer sacred. They are being re-examined, renegotiated, and in some cases, widely weakened. The sands of time are again shifting. War Plan Red reminds us what happens during those moments. When certainty fades, planning returns. And contingency replaces trust. When alliances strain, geography reasserts itself. And when the world changes, yesterday's friends and enemies are recalculated, just as they always have been. Today, the signs are familiar. Militaries expanding. Blocks hardening. Diplomacy fraying. The language shifting from cooperation to preparation. Ukraine has become the proving ground of a new Cold War. Taiwan sits like a fuse in the Pacific. Greenland is no longer just ice, but a strategic anchor in an Arctic opening to competition. Diego Garcia remains a silent outpost in the Indian Ocean, built for wars no one is supposed to talk about. The question is no longer whether conflict is unthinkable. The question is where it breaks first. Is it Russia? Is it China? Or is it someone we still call a partner? An ally? A friend? Because the most dangerous wars are not the ones we argue about in public. They're the ones hiding in contingency binders, written quietly, just in case today's assumptions collapse tomorrow. History says they usually do. Let us know your thoughts about War Plan Red in the comments below. Thank you for watching Forgotten History. Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any comments or show ideas, we'd love to hear from you. Thanks again.