The Battle of Dieppe

From the high chalk cliffs that loom above the French port of Dieppe, one can gaze down upon beautiful white sand beaches, and crystalline water. This would not have been the case on August 19, 1942. Looking onto the beaches at that time would have revealed smoking wreckage, bombshell craters, and above all the thousands of corpses of the men who died during the disastrous Dieppe raid. Over sixty percent of the six thousand men, mostly comprised of Canadians, were killed or captured. The Dieppe raid was doomed to fail, and the British High command should have known.

Britain's outlook in 1942 was anything but bright. The war was going poorly in both western and eastern Europe. Hitler's forces plowed through Russia, capturing and killing hundreds of thousands of Russians. Britain was under constant threat of air raids, and their position in the Middle East looked grim.

English: Location of Dieppe scene of the Dieppe Ra...

No. 3 Commando returning to Newhaven after Dieppe ...

IWM caption : THE DIEPPE RAID, 19 AUGUST 1942 Lt C...

They had neither the men, nor the resources to launch a full scale attack on the Third Reich, yet this is exactly what they did when they launched the Dieppe raid, codenamed Jubilee.

Britain was receiving tremendous pressure from its allies to open up a "second front" to relieve the ever-mounting threat on it's Russian allies. Hitler had over two hundred divisions of men in Russia, and only forty-six in Europe. Stalin, the Russian leader complained the Soviet army was "doing all the work." Britain's new ally, the United States, sided with the Russians and demanded a full-scale attack. Besieged from all sides, and concerned about alienating the United States, Britain agreed to launch a full-scale attack, even though they had neither the manpower nor the resources to do so successfully.

Due to a shortage of men, Britain had to use troops that were inexperienced, or inadequately trained in...