Thread: The Raid on Dieppe

Two years before D Day, on 19 August 1942, the 2nd Canadian Division and Commando units raided the French port of Dieppe. Stalin had complained that if the Allies didn’t start a Second Front in Europe, the

Soviet Union would make a separate peace with Hitler. Preparations for return to France were still in the early planning stage, but to convince Stalin that a premature invasion would have catastrophic results, Churchill authorised the raid on Dieppe to demonstrate the sort of difficulties the Allies would face. As expected, the raid on Dieppe achieved very few of its objectives and the Canadians sustained severe casualties. Against this, the Allies drew valuable lessons:

They could not expect to capture a port intact, so they decided to take their own pre-fabricated harbours, codenamed Mulberries, with them. These consisted of breakwaters made from sunken blockships, quays consisting of concrete caissons or watertight chambers, and floating roadways.



The German’s coastal defences, known as the Atlantic Wall, were so highly developed that they were capable of inflicting horrendous casualties on any landing force. The Allies therefore designed armoured vehicles that were capable of dealing with every aspect of the defence, including mines, concrete bunkers, anti-tank walls, and anti-tank ditches (see sidebar ‘Hobart’s Funnies’).

As the shortest sea crossing between England and France lay between Dover and Calais, it seemed logical for the planned invasion to take place in the Pas de Calais area. That was what everyone, including the Germans, thought, so the Allies decided to land somewhere else, namely Normandy, but placed dummy tanks, lorries, guns, supply dumps, and camps in southern England for German reconnaissance flights to spot them, with the result that almost all the German armoured divisions congregated in the Calais area to oppose this dummy force.

At the time Allied commanders claimed that valuable military information was gained from the Dieppe Raid, mainly the recommendation of better equipment and techniques. Many historians have questioned the purpose of the raid, claiming that this lessons learned from the failed raid could have been predicted and the lives of brave soldiers had been wasted for no good reason. It was also claimed that the use of Canadian soldiers for the raid suggested that Allied commanders saw Commonwealth troops as more expendable than those in the British Army.

Originally Posted by Cpl Smyth

At the time Allied commanders claimed that valuable military information was gained from the Dieppe Raid, mainly the recommendation of better equipment and techniques. Many historians have questioned the purpose of the raid, claiming that this lessons learned from the failed raid could have been predicted and the lives of brave soldiers had been wasted for no good reason. It was also claimed that the use of Canadian soldiers for the raid suggested that Allied commanders saw Commonwealth troops as more expendable than those in the British Army.

I will go with the historians version, thou i am not sure about the Allied commanders seeing Commonwealth troops as more expendable than those in the British Army.