The British-inspired Dieppe Raid on August 19, 1942, was an epic disaster later dressed up as a victory. The losses have since been described as akin to those at the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade.
Involved were 6,000 troops that included 5,000 Canadian servicemen. The rest were made up of British commandos, a token force of Frenchmen, and a small force from the U.S. Ranger battalion.
Bloody Massacre
This assault was centred on the French port of Dieppe and carried out on August 19 1942. The result was a bloody massacre and humiliation for the Allied forces.
Despite this calamity, British archive papers, released in 1972, show that Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, informed the War Cabinet that the raid had gone ‘very satisfactorily.’
The gung-ho American Press went even further by giving the impression that the Americans had spearheaded the raid on Dieppe and opened up Europe for the Allies.
‘We Land in France’
‘We Land in France’ screamed the New York Times whilst the New York World-Telegram boomed, ‘Tanks and U.S. Troops Smash to the French Coast.’
Ross Munro of the Canadian Press Agency explained, ‘I never really felt, except maybe on the Dieppe raid, that I was really cheating the public at home.’
What actually happened
We can assume that they might not have been very impressed with the casualties. The most accurate summary of Dieppe was actually written by a German PK man who, visiting a nearby Luftwaffe station soon afterwards, wrote:
‘As executed the venture mocked all the rules of military logic and strategy.’
Slaughterhouse Dieppe
Tragically, 907 Allied troops were killed during the raid, 2,460 others wounded, and 1,874 Allied servicemen were taken prisoner.
Of the 2,210 who did make it back to England, only 36 were unhurt. This was even though 200 men had not even made it to the French shore.
106 Aircraft Downed
During the raid, Allied air power suffered its biggest single-day loss of the war when 106 aircraft were downed.
Without a single exception, every Allied tank crew member became a casualty. Overall, 60% of the invading force was marked as casualties.
The All Lies Invasion
The plan had been for just 10% casualties. In his report, Lord Louis Mountbatten wrote that the planning had been excellent, air support faultless and naval losses extremely light.
He added that of the 6,000 men involved, two-thirds had returned to Britain. German losses were 500 dead and very few prisoners of war.
Murder of German POWs
RIGHT: Book Burning. The All Lies Invasion by Mike Walsh is just one of thousands of true history books removed by Amazon and LULU book publishers.
That so few German troops had been taken prisoner might have had something to do with an Allied predisposition to casually shooting prisoners.
Ross Munro witnessed one such incident when Canadian troops shot eight German prisoners-of-war.
NOTE: This story is an excerpt from THE ALL LIES INVASION by Historian Michael Walsh. The tell-tale multi-story illustrated book was removed (book burning) by Amazon. Send us your comments
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Categories: World War II
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
Books at Christmas such as D-Day through German eyes photobook, Luftwaffe in color, Waffen-SS in action on Eastern Front, were my favorite as a lil’ shaver.
I’ve read Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer at least three times.
I love his driving around and seeing Gauleiters as the walls closed in.
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Mountbatten f’d the Canadians royally, as was usually the case in these wars, they used the “colonials” as shock troops with little care to their survival. You might like looking at the WW1 battle on July1st that almost wiped out the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, which at the time, was not yet part of Canada, but a British colony on its own. A sad irony, our national holiday is July1st, so a day of celebration is also a day of sorrow in Newfoundland. Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, was at the famous Caribou monument, the symbol of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.
As for Dieppe again, Mountbatten was ill equipped to plan such a raid, although they did learn some things about raids, but it was at much too high a price, and I have to laugh at the idiocy of Col Mac Gregor when he talks about the raid, he makes it sound like the British were hesitant to do it, but the Canadians “made” him let them do the raid. Not the first time he’s been ignorant of Canadian military history.
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