After the campaigns in Italy in 1943 and the Normandy invasion in 1944, combined with a lack of volunteers, Canada faced a shortage of troops. The offensive against the Gothic Line in Italy and the Normandy campaign, especially the battles of Caen and the Falaise Gap had decimated the Canadian infantry. However, General Kenneth Stuart, the chief of Canadian Military Headquarters in London had all through the summer of 1944 been downplaying the Canadian losses in France and Italy, and only in late August 1944 did he first start to hint at the truth. By the late summer of 1944, the numbers of new recruits were insufficient to replace war casualties in Europe, particularly among the infantry. It was on 22 November 1944, that the Liberal government decided to send to Europe a single contingent of 16,000 home defence draftees trained as infantry men. Further contributing to King's difficulties was the return of Duplessis to power in the Quebec election of 8 August 1944. Duplessis won the election by appealing to anti-Semitic prejudices in Quebec. He claimed, in a violently anti-Semitic speech, that the Dominion government and the government of Premier Godbout had made a secret deal with the "International Zionist Brotherhood" to settle 100,000 Jewish refugees left homeless by the Holocaust in Quebec after the war in exchange for campaign contributions to both the federal and provincial Liberal parties. By contrast, Duplessis claimed that he was not taking any money from the Jews, and if he were elected premier, he would stop this alleged plan to bring Jewish refugees to Quebec. Though Duplessis's story about the alleged plan to settle 100,000 Jewish refugees in Quebec was entirely untrue, his story was widely believed in Quebec, and ensured he won the election. Duplessis was a French-Canadian nationalist opposed to both the war and to sending the "Zombies" overseas, and with his return to power made King more reluctant to have the "Zombies" fight at the exact moment when the Canadian Army in Europe was suffering from major manpower shortages.