The Suicide Raid: the Canadians at Dieppe, August 19th, 1942

In the early morning of Wednesday, August 19th, 1942, a 200 vessel convoy containing 5,000 Canadian troops approached the French port of Dieppe. In the next few hours the Canadian force would be destroyed. The bodies of more than 900 Canadian men would be scattered along the water front and their vessels and equipment left burning and smouldering on the blood-stained beaches. The Dieppe Raid is one of the most bitter and controversial episodes in Canadian history. That it is Canada's worst military disaster is beyond doubt. But what makes the sacrifice more painful is the lingering question - was it worth it? Were the "lessons" learned from the failure of the Dieppe Raid critical to the Allied victories later in the war or were the important "lessons" strictly a cover-up by the Generals of a poorly planned and poorly executed operation? To understand the Dieppe Raid it is necessary to see the world as it was in 1942. The Second World War had been raging for three years and it appeared that Germany and its Axis allies would win. Since 1939 Hitler's armies had conquered all of Europe and inflicted major defeats on the soldiers of the British Empire in France, Norway, Greece, Crete and North Africa. German submarines were sinking Allied shipping seemingly at will. In 1941 Russia was forced into the war on Britain's side, but the seemingly invincible German Army smashed Joseph Stalin's huge but inefficient Soviet Red Army. Within six months the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow. The Soviets had suffered terribly, and were desperate for assistance. They needed the British (and at the end of 1941, also the United States) to relieve some of the overpowering German pressure and start a Second Front by invading Europe.

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