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Topic spans: 1942 - 1999
The Contentious Legacy of Dieppe
It has been called the most controversial battle Canadians have ever fought. On Aug. 19, 1942, after nearly three years of waiting in England for a chance to fight, Canadian troops were sent to raid the French coast at Dieppe. But the Germans were ready for them, and the attack became a massacre. Of nearly 5,000 Canadians sent to Dieppe, only 2,000 returned. More than 60 years later, the operation remains divisive: was Dieppe an essential trial run for D-Day, or a shocking waste of lives?
14 television clips
12 radio clips
'Grand show, you Canadians!'
Broadcast Date: Aug. 19, 1942
"It's been a wonderful day," says CBC Radio's H. Rooney Pelletier from London, England. The streets are abuzz with excited rumours that after nearly three years of garrison duty, Canadian soldiers are finally battling in Europe. Official confirmation arrives as Pelletier is on the air, though there are few details. Until more information becomes available, Pelletier says, there is "every reason to believe this is a noble occasion, a day of high honour."'Grand show, you Canadians!'
• The Second World War began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later and Canada declared war on Sept. 10.• After war was declared, Canada readied its coastal defences and mobilized its armed forces, including thousands of volunteers; almost 60,000 men and women enlisted in September alone. The first Canadian volunteer troops sailed for Britain on Dec. 10, 1939.
• The Canadians remained in Britain for two and a half years. The Canadian government under Prime Minister Mackenzie King initially agreed that defending British soil from assault was the most important task at hand. But by 1941, King faced mounting political and military pressure to get the troops involved in the fighting.
• Terence Robertson, author of The Shame and the Glory: Dieppe notes that for Canadian troops in England, "confinement was so prolonged that it seemed to the men they were the Cinderellas of the Commonwealth, ordered to stay at home" while other armies did the fighting.
• According to Mackenzie King's diaries, in May 1941 discussion began about getting Canadian troops involved in raids in either the Middle East or in France. In September 1941, King is said to have told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, "I don't know how long I can go on leading my country while our troops remain inactive."
• The Canadians weren't the only ones pushing for some sort of major raid on occupied France. Russia, besieged by German forces, demanded a second front be opened up to relieve the pressure. American President Franklin Roosevelt also believed that a western front in continental Europe should be opened. As a compromise, Churchill promised diversionary raids along the English Channel to divide German attention.
• The first planned attack was to be a July 1942 raid on Dieppe called Operation Rutter. The plan was to quickly seize the port, capture prisoners, and see how the Germans responded. Troops were boarded on July 5, but the weather deteriorated and the operation was cancelled two days later.
• Most Allied leaders, including Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, wanted the raid cancelled. But Chief of Combined Operations Louis Mountbatten pushed ahead, remounting the raid as Operation Jubilee. On the night of Aug. 18, 1942, more than 200 ships set sail for Dieppe.
• It took more than a day before the results of the raid became widely known. Initial reports from England were sketchy, patriotic and overly optimistic.
'Grand show, you Canadians!'
Medium: Radio
Program: CBC Radio Special
Broadcast Date: Aug. 19, 1942
Reporter: H. Rooney Pelletier
Duration: 11:53
Homepage image: Library and Archives Canada / C-014160
Last updated:
Aug. 17, 2006
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26 clips in this topic . page
Radio
14:35
Aug. 19, 1942
CBC Radio's Robert Bowman delivers a sobering day-after report of carnage at Dieppe.
Television
2:06
Aug. 19, 1994
Canada finally gives special recognition to the veterans of Dieppe, 52 years later.
Shall we begin by quoting Sir John Keegan: "Dieppe, in retrospect looks so recklessly hare-brained an enterprise that it is difficult to reconstruct the official state of mine which gave it birth and drove it forward". Notwithstanding that something was learned (the necessity for the creation of "Hobart's Funnies" special armour) how can it be that tracked vehicle experts cannot be aware of the problems of foundering tanks on pebbly beaches? (Any local construction contractor would immediately notice this) No, the raid was something bigger, something geopolitical. Maybe the proof to Stalin that we weren't ready for D Day allowed for more deaths on the Slav Teutonic front? Stategically, allied capitalist post-war vision did not want anymore of those types floating around. And wouldn't it be better that fewer of our boys are killed on the real day (D Day), rather than suffer an Eastern Front type loss? And as well, taking an established hardened harbour is impossible without massive air and sea bombardment; hardly a realization of bare minimum commonsense military planning. I fear something else was really the motivation for the loss of these men. That is why I remember them. And some were my relatives.
Submitted by: Craig Lerbekmo