Dieppe: A Necessary Failure

The Allied assault on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in France, code-named Operation Jubilee, took place on 19 August 1942. It was a battle that lasted for less than ten hours but it has gone down in history as a military disaster, often spoken of in the same manner as The Charge of the Light Brigade and Gallipoli.The German defences had been underestimated. The numbers killed, wounded and taken prisoner at Dieppe were shockingly high and none of the main objectives were realised. The Third Reich considered the raid as a military joke and it provided a textbook of 'what not to do' in future amphibious operations.Dieppe was the largest tri-service operation ever mounted up until this point and even if the planning for the operation was woefully inadequate, it showed that the three services could coordinate their movements under one command. Many believe that Dieppe should not be looked upon as an isolated incident or its purpose will be totally overshadowed and forgotten by its failures. Put into context, it was one in a series of raids between Dunkirk and D Day designed to test the defences of Hitler's Atlantic seawall, each for a different purpose. The most famous and successful of the raids was the attack on St Nazaire, which is still considered to be the greatest commando raid of all time.