Operation Dragoon Read online

  Despite de Gaulle’s and his generals’ demands for French preeminence, experience dictated that American forces should conduct the initial assault in the south of France with the French Army following up in the second wave. In the event, the invasion was conducted in an exemplary fashion in the face of minimal resistance; the liberation of the major cities of Marseilles and Toulon was achieved way ahead of schedule; and Hitler’s Army Group G was put to rapid flight. The situation seemed highly promising. However, subsequently there were bitter battles with the tough German rearguard as it sought to hold France’s southern cities and cover the withdrawal. There was to be no repeat of the dramatic encirclement of the Falaise Pocket in Normandy.

  Pushing past the mountains that border south-eastern France, the invasion force found itself held up at the strategically crucial Belfort Gap, the gateway to Germany, until the end of the year. By then the conflict had taken on a different complexion with Eisenhower’s broad-front strategy and the general Allied push to and across the Rhine, Germany’s last major defensive barrier. In the meantime de Gaulle was left in control of Paris and much of France, and the Allies never did break free from Italy before the war ended, leaving Stalin a free hand in eastern Europe and the Balkans.

  Churchill had been right all along, although Eisenhower, great statesman that he was, ultimately had the good grace to admit that he had been wrong. This, though, never made up for the fact that Dragoon should never have taken place.

  Anthony Tucker-Jones

  December 2008

  Chapter One

  Pleasing Stalin – the Balkans or Southern France

  In August 1944, just over two months after the momentous D-Day landings in Normandy, a little-known ‘other D-Day’ took place in the south of France. The acrimonious argument over the validity of this operation was so extreme that it threatened to bring down the British government. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American Allied Supreme Commander, described the row with Britain’s wartime leader as ‘one of the longest sustained arguments that I had with Prime Minister [Winston] Churchill throughout the period of the war’.

  Eisenhower was an experienced commander. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, he had joined the General Staff in Washington where he served until June 1942 with responsibility for war plans. After serving as deputy chief in charge of Pacific Defense, he was appointed chief of the War Plans Division. He then served as Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of the Operations Division under US Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. In November 1942 he was also appointed Supreme Commander Allied Forces in the North African theatre of operations. In February 1943 his authority was extended across the Mediterranean to include General Montgomery’s British 8th Army. After the capitulation of Axis forces in North Africa, Eisenhower remained in command of the renamed Mediterranean Theater of Operations. In December 1943 it was announced that he would be the Allied Supreme Commander in Europe.

  Allied successes against the Axis forces had gathered considerable momentum following Operations Torch (the Anglo-American landings against French North-West Africa in November 1942), Husky (the capture of the Italian island of Sicily in July 1943) and Avalanche, the subsequent invasion of southern Italy (in September 1943). The proposed invasion of southern France, supported by Eisenhower and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was initially dubbed Operation Anvil and was designed to complement Operation Sledgehammer (which later became Overlord), the attack on northern France. The idea was to divide German defences in France and prevent their forces moving north to oppose the primary cross-Channel invasion that would herald the opening of the Second (or Western) Front.

  While Roosevelt supported the US War Department’s view that the quickest way to defeat Adolf Hitler was to invade France via the English Channel, he was under constant pressure from Congress and the public to divert greater resources to the Pacific War. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 General Alan Brooke, Chief of the British Imperial General Staff, touched a raw nerve when he accused Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief of the US Fleet and Chief of US Naval Operations, of favouring the war against the Japanese. The pair almost came to blows and Eisenhower reflected:

  It developed that General Brooke, Chief of Staff of the British Army, had never really liked the Overlord idea. At times during the two-day conference, he seemed to be reflecting the Prime Minister’s thoughts. He came to see me privately and argued that all Allied ground troops should stay in the Mediterranean, chipping away at the periphery of the Axis Empire.

  The dispute over the Pacific came about because Admiral King and General Marshall had prevailed upon the Combined Chiefs at the Conference to agree to a series of operations against the Gilbert Islands and the Japanese-mandated Marshall and Caroline Islands. Initially it was planned that operations would commence against the Marshalls, but the threat posed by the major Japanese naval and air bases at Truk persuaded the Americans to opt for the Gilberts first.

  Following the Casablanca Conference it was agreed that 80,000 American troops would be shipped to Britain by the spring of 1943, in order to implement an invasion of France dubbed Operation Roundup. However, only 15,000 men had arrived by the appointed time, and while the Americans were accusing Churchill of dragging his feet over his commitment to scheduling the Second Front, they were not in a position to push the pace. Eisenhower had drawn up the plans for Roundup before assuming the mantle of Supreme Commander, and along with Sledgehammer it was never really more than wishful thinking in 1942–43.

  In the event, a critical lack of landing craft meant that these plans were shelved in favour of Operation Torch in late 1942. Despite the lessons of the Dieppe Raid, this operation had to rely on securing the ports to land heavy equipment rather than bringing it ashore across the beaches.

  Constructing such craft in large numbers was a major undertaking, and in 1942 landing ships and landing craft were only available as prototypes. Purpose-built landing craft did not begin to appear in the Mediterranean until mid-1943. However, once in full swing the American shipyards alone were eventually to produce over 66,000 landing vessels of all types.

  What next?

  Following the Torch landings, defeat of the Axis forces trapped in Tunisia was never really in doubt, although it took six months to secure North Africa. By the time of the Axis surrender there in May 1943 Churchill was preoccupied in Washington at the Trident Conference. At Casablanca no agreement had been reached over operations following the invasion of Sicily. Now Churchill wanted to invade Italy, and while Eisenhower anticipated Sicily being in Allied hands by mid-August, he was uncertain what do with the massive Allied forces in the region.

  It was agreed that seven divisions (four American and three British) were to be withdrawn from the Mediterranean to the UK by early November 1943. This would leave twelve divisions in the region, plus four French divisions then being equipped and two Polish divisions in Iran, which, having escaped the clutches of Stalin, were desperate to strike a blow. It seemed ridiculous to suggest that the powerful Allied forces in North Africa and indeed in the UK should kick their heels until Roundup, which was unlikely to be mounted in the spring of 1944.

  While no one questioned Eisenhower’s position, in Washington General Marshall knew that he was not in a position to end operations in the Mediterranean once Sicily had been invaded. Churchill had three times the number of men, four times as many warships and was equal in the air to the Americans, so there could be no denying British dominance in the Mediterranean. Marshall tacitly gave agreement that planning should be conducted for a follow-up attack across the Straits of Messina on to the toe of mainland Italy and for an invasion of Sardinia. Churchill and Brooke were understandably pleased.

  Brooke and Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Morgan, the senior planner for the invasion of France (now dubbed Overlord), estimated that it would require an initial landing of five divisions, with a follow-up force of ten. This meant that the provision of landing craft would have to double
over the next eight to ten months or Overlord would be logistically impossible. But when such requests reached Admiral Ernest King, who was preoccupied with the war against Japan, they were given little priority. King would eventually bend to General Marshall’s requests, but at the time he could see no point in tying up assets in the Atlantic while the British dithered over a cross-Channel invasion. At the Trident Conference the Americans got confirmation of the proposed assault on the Japanese-held Gilbert and Marshall Islands.

  When Churchill and Roosevelt attended the Quebec Conference in August 1943, Italy and France were foremost in everyone’s minds. This was more than a simple conference of war leaders, though. Known as Quadrant, it was in fact a series of technical staff conferences designed to thrash out future strategy. Churchill stated:

  I emphasised that I strongly favoured Overlord in 1944, though I had not been in favour of Sledgehammer in 1942 or Roundup in 1943. The objections to the cross-Channel operation were, however, now removed….

  As to Italy, the Chiefs of Staff proposed that there should be three phases in our future operations. First, we should drive Italy out of the war and establish airfields near Rome, and if possible farther north. I pointed out that I wanted it definitely understood that I was not committed to an advance beyond the Ancona–Pisa line [encompassing the German Trasimene and Gothic Line defences]. Second, we should seize Sardinia and Corsica, and then press hard against the Germans in the north of the peninsula to stop them joining the fight against Overlord. There was also Anvil, a projected landing in southern France in the neighbourhood of Toulon and Marseilles and an advance northwards up the Rhône valley. This was to lead to much controversy later on.

  Churchill always saw Overlord as a diversion from the main agenda in the Mediterranean, where he believed the Allies should concentrate their efforts on recapturing the Dodecanese, taking Rome and bringing Turkey into the war, thereby securing the right-hand flank. He wanted Overlord delayed, although this did not tie in with Stalin’s demands (he had been promised a Second Front since 1942), and Allied resources diverted from the Pacific.

  This was the line Churchill took with Roosevelt at their Cairo Conference just before meeting Stalin in Tehran. The Cairo Conference (codenamed Sextant) between the British and American leaders and their senior staffs took place on 22–26 November 1943. The delegations then flew to Tehran to meet with Stalin from 28 November to 1 December, returning to Cairo to complete Sextant from 3 to 7 December.

  On his arrival in Cairo Churchill thought he was going to spend the next three days lobbying for landing craft to conduct another amphibious assault in Italy, where things were not going well for the Allies. Despite the Italian surrender on 3 September 1943, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring had pulled off an audacious and daring coup and seized power. Following the Allied landings at Salerno on the 9th Kesselring had stabilised the situation. The Allied planners realised belatedly that they had lost a golden opportunity by not forcing a landing just south of Rome.

  Hitler rapidly took over not only most of Italy, but also the Italian-occupied zones in Albania, the Balkans, Greece and Yugoslavia, thereby securing his potentially exposed flank. In view of Rommel’s defeat at El Alamein, the subsequent Torch landings and the Germans’ expulsion from North Africa and Sicily, Hitler must have been quietly pleased with himself for retrieving such a disastrous situation.

  Churchill’s generals saw Anvil as an unwelcome and unwanted distraction. General Harold Alexander in Italy wanted to press on northwards overland, while General Maitland Wilson, the Allied Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean, wanted to launch a seaborne attack at the head of the Adriatic followed by a push eastwards to Zagreb, then a thrust towards Austria and the Danube. Roosevelt and the American Chiefs of Staff had to endure Churchill’s and the British chiefs’ determined lobbying for a commitment to this Adriatic operation.

  Nevertheless the Americans were not receptive to anything that would disrupt the war in the Pacific or the opening of the Second Front. It seemed to them that Churchill always had just one more operation in mind. Also, in order not to give the impression that the British and Americans were ganging up on the Soviet Union, while in Cairo Roosevelt deliberately kept Churchill at arm’s length. Conveniently, the American President’s time was taken up by talks with the Chinese nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who was also fighting the Japanese. Churchill began to fret that the campaign in Italy would be prejudiced in favour of liberating France, by the inevitable diversion of resources.

  Even as late as 1943 the Americans were demonstrating a rather simplistic approach to defeating Nazi Germany, which would be epitomised by Eisenhower’s broad-front strategy in the latter half of 1944. ‘Our Chiefs of Staff are convinced of one thing,’ Roosevelt told his son Elliot in the margins of the Tehran Conference. ‘The way to kill the most Germans, with the least loss of American soldiers, is to mount one big offensive and then slam ’em with everything we’ve got. It makes sense to me.’

  The British Prime Minister also feared for the future of Europe if Stalin became a dominant power, while in contrast Roosevelt believed in his ‘Good Neighbour’ policy. The Americans saw it as inevitable that once the Axis powers were defeated the Soviet Union would come to dominate Europe, and thus felt that every effort should be made to retain her friendship. Roosevelt somewhat naively believed that if he was honest and open with Stalin, then the Soviet leader would reciprocate. In addition, the US Chiefs of Staff saw no military utility in commitments in south-eastern Europe, especially the Balkans.

  Stalin’s Second Front

  Stalin had been invited to Casablanca, but refused to attend. Roosevelt, who was keen for the Allied leaders to meet before the opening of the Second Front, put forward Cairo, Basra and Beirut as possible venues, but Stalin rejected them all. It was he who finally suggested Tehran, having been advised that the Soviet Embassy there was probably one of the most secure outside the Soviet Union. Iran had been forced into becoming an ally after British and Soviet troops invaded in 1941 to secure the country’s oilfields for their war effort.

  It was this meeting that established the status of the ‘Big Three’, though in reality Churchill was soon made to feel out of place. After his cold-shoulder treatment in Cairo, Roosevelt now further alienated Churchill by staying at the Soviet legation in his effort to cultivate Stalin’s friendship.

  By this stage of the war the Soviet leader was desperate for a Second Front to be opened in the west to alleviate pressure on the Red Army. The latter had taken a massive beating from Hitler’s armed forces and although it had achieved some notable successes, these had been at enormous cost in manpower and resources. Secretly Stalin may have suspected that the Western Allies had lost their nerve following the disastrous Dieppe Raid the year before. Why else were the Allies preoccupying themselves in French North Africa, Sicily and Italy? All these operations had done little or nothing to help the Red Army. To Stalin’s way of thinking, only an attack on Nazi-occupied France would properly distract Hitler.

  Stalin wasn’t wrong. The Allies, particularly Churchill, were indeed haunted by his disastrous Dieppe Raid codenamed Operation Jubilee. Conceived as a way of testing German defences prior to reopening the Second Front, it took place on 19 August 1942. It may have provided vital lessons in amphibious warfare and combined operations, but they were gained at an appallingly high cost. In total the Canadian Army lost 906 killed, the Royal Marine Commandos lost 270 killed, wounded or captured, and the Royal Navy lost 550, as well as a destroyer and numerous landing craft. The RAF fared no better, losing 106 aircraft and 153 aircrew. In their mopping-up operations the Germans took 2,195 prisoners, in return for 591 casualties and 48 aircraft shot down. The outcome of Operation Jubilee firmly convinced the Germans that they could contain and defeat an Allied amphibious assault on French soil.

  Nor had previous British amphibious attacks on Nazi-occupied Europe been a great success. Norway was a prime example, and of course the figure of
Winston Churchill loomed large in that fiasco. This ill-fated operation in mid-April 1940 had been designed to prevent Hitler importing iron ore from Sweden via Narvik in Norway. The failure to secure proper integration of the three services at the executive level was primarily to blame. Certainly the British had no combined operations headquarters, resulting in the Army and the Royal Navy issuing independent and often contradictory orders during the battle.

  As First Lord of the Military Co-ordination Committee Churchill had directed the Norwegian campaign in a singularly narrow manner, dominated by his personal preference for the Royal Navy. His attitude had belittled and undermined the whole process of combined operations. In the opening stages of the Norwegian campaign the Navy, more concerned with catching German battlecruisers, had immobilised the expeditionary force for five days after putting back to sea with all their equipment still on board. To make matters worse, the transport ships had been loaded economically not tactically, and there were no landing craft, no infantry support weapons and no snow gear. The Allies lacked coherent air support and as a result were severely harried by constant German air attack. The British force of 20,000 men suffered 2,060 casualties; the French committed 11,700 men and suffered 530 casualties; and the Norwegians lost 4,000 men. While the Germans lost 5,300 men, they had maintained control of Norway and the vital shipping lanes.

  The French blamed the British for the disaster, and they were right to do so. Churchill and his staff had learned the fundamental lessons of integrated combined operations the hard way and at the expense of neutral Norway. Two years later Churchill launched his first major raids on occupied France, one at Bruneval to capture a radar station and another at St Nazaire to destroy the dry dock. While both were deemed a success, the latter saw 185 British troops killed and 200 captured from a raiding force of just 611 men. None of these operations boded well for Overlord, or indeed Anvil.