The Dieppe Raid in its Proper Context


As a result of the increased effectiveness of German submarines during 1942, British convoys to Russia had to be suspended during the Spring.(6) This obviously infuriated Stalin, and as the situation in Russia worsened in summer 1942, and as Stalin began to make more and more demands for the British for help and assistance, Churchill felt the need, with all the desperation of a cornered animal, to do something.(7) That something became Dieppe.

Thus, his gesture to the Soviets, to domestic public opinion, to the Americans, to any who said that Britain wasn't pulling "its fair share," was Dieppe. And it worked. Not the immediate battle/raid; that was an abysmal failure. But the battle/raid managed to stop Stalin and the Americans from carping, and quieted public opinion for the remainder of the war: at least Churchill was doing SOMETHING. And, perhaps more importantly, it distracted Hitler. He removed several divisions from the Russian front, where they could have been used to conquer Stalingrad, and instead used them to defend France against the invading armies that weren't coming. It also created an image of inferiority of the Allies in Hitler's mind. On D-Day, he was convinced that the Allied invasion was just another Dieppe-style raid, which easily could have been squashed like in 1942. But this time it wasn't, and the Allies won the crucial element of surprise. Perhaps Dieppe was a lost battle, but one that proved instrumental in winning the war.

Footnotes:

(1) John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy, (NY: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 123.

(2) Brian Loring Villa, Unauthorized Action: Mountbatten and the Dieppe Raid, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 248.

(3) Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, (NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1991), p. 719.

(4) Villa, pp. 51, 55.

(5) Ibid., p. 59.

(6) Gerald Jordan, et. al., Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, (NY: Crane Russak, 1977), p. 201.

(7) Ibid.

For more about Dieppe, check out the college paper that this article is based on. .

The copyright of the article The Dieppe Raid in its Proper Context in Modern British History is owned by Joseph Sramek. Permission to republish The Dieppe Raid in its Proper Context in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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