Operation Dragoon Read online

  ‘Each of us must one day reach the end

  of worldly life; let him who can win

  glory before he dies; that lives on

  after him, when he lifeless lies.’

  Beowulf

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

  Pen & Sword Military

  an imprint of

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd

  47 Church Street

  Barnsley

  South Yorkshire

  S70 2AS

  Copyright © Anthony Tucker-Jones, 2009

  ISBN 978 1 84484 140 6

  eISBN 9781844685325

  The right of Anthony Tucker-Jones to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

  Typeset in Ehrhardt by Phoenix Typesetting, Auldgirth, Dumfriesshire

  Printed in the UK by MPB Books Group

  Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation,

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  Contents

  Introduction

  List of Plates

  Chapter One: Pleasing Stalin – the Balkans or Southern France

  Chapter Two: De Gaulle – ‘he is a very dangerous threat to us’

  Chapter Three: Churchill and Monty take on Ike

  Chapter Four: Ike says ‘No’ to Churchill

  Chapter Five: The Second Front – Blaskowitz’s Lost Divisions

  Chapter Six: Dragoon Hots Up

  Chapter Seven: Dragoon – ‘irrelevant and unrelated’

  Chapter Eight: The ‘Champagne Campaign’

  Chapter Nine: De Gaulle Stakes his Claim – the Liberation of Paris

  Chapter Ten: The Battle of the Belfort Gap

  Chapter Eleven: Lorraine and the Southern Push to the Rhine

  Chapter Twelve: Churchill and Monty were Right

  Annexes

  1. Allied Forces Committed to Operation Dragoon, 15 August 1944

  2. Allied Order of Battle, 1945

  3. German Forces in the South of France

  3.1 Order of Battle, 15 August 1944

  3.2 Order of Battle, 31 August 1944

  3.3 Order of Battle, 16 September 1944

  3.4 Order of Battle, 20 January 1945

  4. Units lost by Army Group G to the Battle for Normandy

  5. French Unit Histories

  References

  Bibliography

  List of Plates

  Winston Churchill.

  General Montgomery.

  Montgomery and Eisenhower, the architects of Overlord.

  General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French.

  General Mark W. Clark, commander of the US 5th Army in Italy.

  Eisenhower and other Allied commanders visiting the Normandy beachhead.

  General Truscott was obliged to set up Task Force Butler to provide armoured support for Dragoon.

  Churchill with General Bradley in Normandy.

  USAAF bombers systematically struck the French and Italian Mediterranean coasts in the build-up to Dragoon.

  In both Normandy and the south of France Allied airborne forces were assisted by the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) directed by Gaullist General Koenig.

  Part of the invasion fleet gathering in the Mediterranean.

  The cruiser USS Philadelphia pounds German coastal batteries from the Gulf of St Tropez on 15 August 1944.

  American assault boats on the Riviera beaches.

  Resistance on the Riviera beaches was light, but there were still casualties.

  On the first day of Dragoon some 94,000 men and 11,000 vehicles poured ashore.

  German troops evacuating the south of France.

  A wrecked German panzer in southern France.

  French troops with a captured Pak 40 anti-tank gun in liberated Toulon.

  German troops withdrawing over the Rhône.

  Allied armour and Free French forces pushing towards Paris.

  De Gaulle and General Leclerc were adamant that French troops should take the credit for liberating Paris.

  Just over a week after Dragoon, elements of Leclerc’s French 2nd Armoured Division slipped into Paris on the evening of 24 August.

  A French tank destroyer engages German troops on the streets of Paris.

  A French woman being escorted to an uncertain fate. Throughout France retribution against those who had collaborated with the occupiers was swift and often brutal.

  The retreating Army Group G, reliant on horse-drawn transport, was constantly vulnerable to Allied air attack.

  A devastated column of German horse-drawn wagons and lorries outside Montélimar.

  French Minister of War André Diethhelm, General de Lattre de Tassigny and Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, Minister of the Interior, reviewing French troops in Marseilles.

  The Allies received a warm welcome in Paris.

  General Patton, commander of the US 3rd Army.

  German troops captured by the French 1st Army in Alsace.

  Eisenhower in jovial mood.

  The French Army was able to take the credit for liberating the key cities of Paris, Marseilles and Toulon.

  Events in the Falaise area during the second half of August and the subsequent liberation of Paris made Dragoon a pointless exercise.

  The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill saw Operation Anvil/Dragoon as a waste of vital military resources. He threatened to resign over it and drove the Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower to distraction.

  General Montgomery’s meeting with Churchill in Marrakech on 31 December 1942 sowed the seeds of British opposition to the proposed Allied invasion of southern France.

  Montgomery and Eisenhower, the architects of Overlord, pose for the cameras. For seven months in 1944 Ike endured unrelenting pressure from Monty and Churchill as they sought to strip away resources from Anvil/Dragoon, to divert the invasion or to cancel it altogether.

  President Roosevelt did not trust General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, who was determined to manoeuvre himself into such a position that he would be hailed the saviour of France. The invasion of the Riviera was vital to de Gaulle’s plans.

  General Mark W. Clark (far right), commander of the US 5th Army in Italy, saw Dragoon as ‘one of the outstanding political mistakes of the war’.

  Eisenhower (standing, centre) and other Allied commanders visiting the Normandy beachhead. Operation Dragoon was originally supposed to coincide with Overlord.

  Due to events in Normandy and following a row with General de Lattre over the French Combat Command Sudre, General Truscott was forced to set up Task Force Butler to provide armoured support for Dragoon.

  Churchill with General Bradley in Normandy. On 7 August 1944 Winston spent the entire day lobbying Eisenhower to shift Dragoon to Brittany. Ike said no until he was ‘practically limp’.

  During the prelude to th
e Riviera invasion USAAF bombers, such as these Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, systematically struck the French and Italian Mediterranean coasts.

  In Normandy and the south of France Allied airborne forces were assisted by the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) directed by Gaullist General Koenig.

  The gathering of the invasion fleet in the Mediterranean and the preliminary bombing of Marseilles and Toulon soon alerted Generals Blaskowitz and Wiese to the prospect of an assault on southern France.

  The cruiser USS Philadelphia pounding German coastal batteries from the Gulf of St Tropez on 15 August 1944.

  American assault boats on the Riviera beaches. There were not enough landing craft to conduct Dragoon in parallel with D-Day, thereby ruining any diversionary value the operation may have had.

  Although resistance on the Riviera was light, there were still 480 casualties.

  On the first day of Dragoon some 94,000 men and 11,000 vehicles poured ashore.

  Once the German 7th Army and 5th Panzer Army were trapped at Falaise in Normandy, it became imperative for Hitler to evacuate southern France as quickly as possible.

  Apart from the 11th Panzer Division, General Blaskowitz had few armoured units in southern France. Most of his assault gun battalions were sent north to Brittany and Normandy.

  French troops manhandle a captured Pak 40 anti-tank gun in liberated Toulon; this ‘fortress’ city yielded 17,000 German prisoners.

  It was vital that General Blaskowitz held the Rhône crossings to ensure the escape of his 1st and 19th Armies. He conducted a remarkably orderly withdrawal.

  Allied armour and Free French forces pushing towards Paris, making the Riviera invasion completely irrelevant to the liberation.

  De Gaulle and General Leclerc (left) were adamant that French troops should take the credit for liberating Paris, despite the fact that the Americans, British, Canadians and Poles had borne the brunt of the Normandy fighting.

  Just over a week after Dragoon, on the evening of 24 August elements of Leclerc’s French 2nd Armoured Division slipped into Paris.

  A French tank destroyer engages German troops on the streets of Paris. The German commandant initially refused to surrender, resulting in needless bloodshed.

  Throughout France retribution against those who had collaborated with the occupiers was swift and often brutal. This French woman is escorted to an uncertain fate.

  The retreating Army Group G, reliant on horse-drawn transport, was constantly vulnerable to Allied air attack. Blaskowitz’s troops suffered 28,000 killed and wounded in southern France.

  A devastated column of German horse-drawn wagons and lorries outside Montélimar. Blaskowitz’s forces held the town until 28 August, when General Otto Richter was captured.

  The fruits of victory. French Minister of War André Diethhelm, General de Lattre de Tassigny and Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, Minister of the Interior, review French troops during the liberation ceremony in Marseilles on 29 August.

  Although dubbed the ‘Champagne Campaign’, the Allies’ liberation of southern France was still a bloody affair. The Americans and French sustained about 10,000 casualties.

  General Patton’s US 3rd Army linked up with General de Lattre’s forces on 12 September, three weeks after the German defeat in Normandy. This was just in time for the German counter-attack in Lorraine.

  Forlorn German troops captured by the French 1st Army in Alsace. In total General Blaskowitz lost perhaps half of his 250,000 men in southern France.

  Eisenhower in jovial mood. Despite his heated arguments over Dragoon, Ike kindly described Churchill as ‘a cantankerous yet adorable father’. However, there could be no hiding the clear shift in the balance of power in the Anglo-American alliance.

  Ultimately the only people who benefited from the invasion of southern France were de Gaulle and Stalin. In particular, the small French Army was able to take the credit for liberating the key cities of Marseilles, Paris and Toulon.

  Events in the Falaise area during the second half of August and the subsequent liberation of Paris made Dragoon a pointless exercise. With the benefit of hindsight, Churchill felt his belief that Allied resources would have been better employed in Italy and Burma was vindicated.

  Introduction

  To some people, Operation Dragoon – the Allied landings in the south of France – was just a sideshow that needlessly supported the crucial D-Day landings in Normandy, which opened the long-awaited Second Front. In addition, the resulting diversion of men and equipment hampered the struggling war effort in Italy and Burma, thereby distorting the Allies’ wider strategic effort. Furthermore, the liberation of Paris and the political controversy surrounding the French and American armies’ expulsion of th on there overshadowed a much bigger row over the liberation of the major Mediterranean ports of Marseilles and Toulon.

  In reality this other D-Day was of considerable significance, which went far beyond its military contribution to the liberation of France, for the political ramifications were to be far-reaching and helped put at centre stage the leader of the Free French, General Charles de Gaulle. The debate about the need for Dragoon pitted not only the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the American Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight Eisenhower, but also de Gaulle against the pair of them. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery branded Dragoon one of the great strategic mistakes of the war.

  Indeed, it was over Operation Dragoon that ugly national self-interest finally bubbled to the surface and it was only Eisenhower’s supreme diplomacy that prevented the Allies falling out amongst themselves. Publicly America was the arsenal of the free world, but behind the scenes President Franklin Roosevelt was adamant that he would do nothing to restore British or French imperial status once Nazi Germany was defeated. In particular he could not help but feel that France considered her colonial possessions more sacrosanct than the need to resist Nazi Germany. He also made a pact with Soviet leader Marshal Stalin not to meddle in the Balkans. And he promised Stalin an operation to support Overlord: and that is what Stalin got.

  Dragoon was in fact the culmination of the Allies’ little publicised and frankly embarrassing war against Vichy France, the repugnant pro-Nazi regime that administered the unoccupied zone in the south of metropolitan France as well as France’s numerous colonial possessions. Charles de Gaulle and his Free French had such little legitimacy and political appeal that most French troops rescued from Dunkirk and elsewhere chose to be repatriated rather than join him. The upshot was that first Britain and then America had to fight a lengthy war against Vichy France’s overseas interests to secure Allied positions in the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Churchill’s attack on the French fleet after the fall of France further stymied de Gaulle’s appeal and his initial efforts to secure French West Africa for his cause ended in farce off Dakar.

  To make matters worse, behind the scenes Churchill and Roosevelt did not hold de Gaulle in very high regard, and in light of his limited political appeal they believed that the Vichy generals were the true power brokers. One such was Admiral Jean François Darlan, who held sway in French North-West Africa, where most of the Vichy forces were deployed. In fact, Roosevelt and Eisenhower did not altogether trust de Gaulle’s political intentions and had little desire to assist pro-Gaullist forces to install him in power once the Second Front was opened. Indeed, after the Allies’ invasion of French North-West Africa and Darlan’s subsequent assassination, de Gaulle had himself declared head of the provisional French government and began to look at the French mainland with an acquisitive eye. His first action was to call on America to rearm the shambles that was the French Army. It is notable that most French forces subsequently remained tied up in Italy; only a single division was involved in the Normandy campaign, and additional French colonial divisions were not released from Italy until Dragoon was given the go-ahead at the last minute.

  Other players had a vested interest in the Second Front being opened at two points. Whil
e Roosevelt and Eisenhower were committed to honour their Tehran pledge to Stalin for an invasion in the south of France, Churchill saw it as a needless diversion of precious resources from the main event in Italy. It had been a hard slog up the Italian peninsula following the landings there in September 1943 and Churchill was determined not to relinquish his long-cherished ambition of forcing a route through Italy and Austria into the heart of Hitler’s Reich. Such a move would have also helped to curb Stalin’s ambitions in central and eastern Europe. Churchill’s vehement opposition to Dragoon was such that he lobbied against it for a month and then threatened to resign, which could have brought down the British government. A terrible row ensued between him and Eisenhower, much to the latter’s dismay.

  Eisenhower’s problem was that resources were so limited that Dragoon could not be conducted at the same time as Overlord, and therein ultimately lay the flaw in its strategic utility. During June and July 1944 Eisenhower, busily directing the campaign in Normandy, was caught in the middle of all these competing interests and thus dithered over his commitment to Dragoon. On 15 August 1944 Hitler, facing defeat in Normandy, signalled a general retreat from France and yet Eisenhower pressed ahead with Dragoon that very day.