Having successfully warded off the threat of imminent German invasion in 1940, the British gave considerable thought to hitting back at the Germans. While the British had achieved some morale-building successes, such as the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, in 1941, there was widespread feeling that more should be done to strike at Hitler’s ‘fortress Europe.’ After the fall of France, Churchill had sanctioned the training and employment of ‘commando’ units to strike at targets in occupied Europe. He also created the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to ‘set Europe ablaze.’ The commando raids were successful in raising Allied morale and proving a nuisance to the Germans, but after successes at St Nazaire (See Campaign 92: St Nazaire 1942) and Bruneval, the Allies determined on a more substantial foray into occupied Europe. The aim of the Dieppe raid of August 1942 was limited in terms of what was to be achieved practically, but significant in terms of what the Allies hoped to learn about the problems involved in landing in enemy-held territory. The Allied plan, Operation Jubilee, aimed to land troops and armored vehicles on the beach and take and hold the port for 12 hours. The Allied forces, having secured the town, were to push inland and capture a German headquarters, gaining prisoners for interrogation and documents, and then to retreat back across the Channel. The Allies also hoped to cause enough damage, and to worry the Germans sufficiently, that the German High Command would withdraw forces from the Eastern Front and thereby take some pressure off the Red Army. This second aim was rather ambitious.
In the event, Dieppe was a disaster. The Allied force lost the vital ingredient of surprise when they ran into German shipping mid-Channel, and failed to secure the two headlands on either side of the main beach at Dieppe. Despite this setback, the main force landed on the beach and met considerable fire from German troops, well dug-in in blockhouses on the seafront and from the headlands. Still more Allied forces landed: 27 Churchill tanks reached the beach safely and 15 made it to the esplanade but no further. Eventually, when it was apparent that no progress was being made, the mixture of British, Canadian, and American troops were withdrawn. This first composite Allied force, a foretaste of the Normandy landings two years hence, suffered 1,027 dead and a further 2,340 captured. However, the experience gained by the assault itself proved invaluable and prompted Admiral Lord Mountbatten to comment that ‘for every soldier who died at Dieppe, ten were saved on D-Day.’ While Mountbatten’s comments may have proved, ultimately, to be true, he was also the man in charge of the operation.
(© Osprey Publishing. Extract taken from: Essential Histories 35: The Second World War (2) Europe 1939 –1943)