Dieppe merged thread (70th Anniversary, historical debates, etc.)

[mariomike]

Topic: "Dieppe merged thread (70th Anniversary, historical debates, etc.)":
http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/107000.0

Dieppe may rate its own mega-thread:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=001303416948774225061%3Aqhcx9pz3dku&ie=UTF-8&q=dieppe&sa=Search&siteurl=www.google.com%2Fcse%2Fhome%3Fcx%3D001303416948774225061%3Aqhcx9pz3dku&ref=&ss=1896j875596j6#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=dieppe

 

[exspy]

This very interesting piece from today's National Post include a frank discussion on a challenge that plagued most armies in the early years of the war - the dead wood that accumulated in the officers' mess in peace time and rose to the top by seniority. I had heard comments re the CO of the RHLI and route marches from other sources.

It appears that the lesson from Dieppe that is so clearly illustrated from this story did not permeate the rest of the Canadian Army in England.  The same thing happened with the 1st Infantry Division in Sicily and the 3rd Infantry and 4th Armoured Divisions in Normandy.  Lots of unit and formation commanders were replaced within the first months, if not weeks, of active combat.

I would hold McNaughton and Crerar responsible for this.  It was their duty to prepare the Canadian Army for war, and they had plenty of time to do it.  Montgomery held many exercises in England preparing his forces for the invasion which should have shown up the deficiencies in the Canadian Army's leadership, but these deficiencies appear to have been passed over.

I'm sure these exact problems also occurred in other armies during the War, but with four years to prepare for combat in Sicily and more for Normandy, I don't see how there can be an excuse for keeping the incompetent in command.

Cheers,
Dan.

 

[Old Sweat]

This very interesting piece from today's National Post include a frank discussion on a challenge that plagued most armies in the early years of the war - the dead wood that accumulated in the officers' mess in peace time and rose to the top by seniority. I had heard comments re the CO of the RHLI and route marches from other sources.

It appears that the lesson from Dieppe that is so clearly illustrated from this story did not permeate the rest of the Canadian Army in England.  The same thing happened with the 1st Infantry Division in Sicily and the 3rd Infantry and 4th Armoured Divisions in Normandy.  Lots of unit and formation commanders were replaced within the first months, if not weeks, of active combat.

I would hold McNaughton and Crerar responsible for this.  It was their duty to prepare the Canadian Army for war, and they had plenty of time to do it.  Montgomery held many exercises in England preparing his forces for the invasion which should have shown up the deficiencies in the Canadian Army's leadership, but these deficiencies appear to have been passed over.

I'm sure these exact problems also occurred in other armies during the War, but with four years to prepare for combat in Sicily and more for Normandy, I don't see how there can be an excuse for keeping the incompetent in command.

Cheers,
Dan.

There was a wholesale clearing of deadwood in England, including several division commanders, but there is only so much one can do in training. The difficulty came because the army did not see early action, unlike in the First World War. In that war the four divisions were introduced to battle one after the other over a period of a bit less than two years and there was time to develop formation commanders and to sort out the staff work.

In the case of the Canadian Army in Normandy, none of the original three division commanders was all that good. Keller of the 3rd Division was wounded in Totalize before he might have been sacked and Kitching of the 4th Armoured was relieved once the Falaise Gap was closed. The only thing, in my opinion, that saved Foulkes of the 2nd Division from the same fate was the relief of Burns, the commander of the 1st Canadian Corps, in Italy, whom he replaced. As for the nine brigade commanders, one was fired for refusing to continue to serve under Keller's command and at least two were wounded and one was killed in action. Another, a regular signals officer, was discreetly kicked upstairs and posted to a staff job in Canada after the Normandy campaign. (My sequences may be a bit out, as I am writing this from memory.) Still, it was not a very flattering picture of our selection and training of senior commanders in the long years waiting for action.

 

[George Wallace]

There was a wholesale clearing of deadwood in England, including several division commanders, but there is only so much one can do in training. The difficulty came because the army did not see early action, unlike in the First World War. In that war the four divisions were introduced to battle one after the other over a period of a bit less than two years and there was time to develop formation commanders and to sort out the staff work.

In the case of the Canadian Army in Normandy, none of the original three division commanders was all that good. Keller of the 3rd Division was wounded in Totalize before he might have been sacked and Kitching of the 4th Armoured was relieved once the Falaise Gap was closed. The only thing, in my opinion, that saved Foulkes of the 2nd Division from the same fate was the relief of Burns, the commander of the 1st Canadian Corps, in Italy, whom he replaced. As for the nine brigade commanders, one was fired for refusing to continue to serve under Keller's command and at least two were wounded and one was killed in action. Another, a regular signals officer, was discreetly kicked upstairs and posted to a staff job in Canada after the Normandy campaign. (My sequences may be a bit out, as I am writing this from memory.) Still, it was not a very flattering picture of our selection and training of senior commanders in the long years waiting for action.

Were a lot of those firings/sackings/transfers not more due to the interference/micromanaging of these commands by Simmons?

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

Action has a tendency to reveal weaknesses in a host of aspects, with the capability of leadership being one of the big ones. I think that the Canadian Army in WW2 figured that since Canada had done so well in WW1 that it would simply carry over. Our tiny Permanent Force between the wars, however, was not larg enough to generate the right base of officers. I think that it was also too focused on technical aspects.

Canada, and I believe that McNaughton was heavily involved in this, was also insistent on committing troops en masse and not in smaller groups. This meant that the majority of Canadian troops were green even in 1944. The Dieppe raid was seized upon by the Canadians in part to see some action.

I wonder if the Canadian Army's performance in Normandy would have been different if a Division had been committed to the North African campaign. I think that participation in Torch could have been realistic. The US Army learned its own weaknesses in that campaign. A Canadian division committed to North Africa in 1942 could have been pulled back to England in mid 1943 and then its veterans would have been ready for the Normandy campaign.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

If anyone wishes to refresh memory on this, I have always found that, while incomplte on each individual, J.L. Granastein's book "The Generals - the Canadian Army's Senior Commanders in the Second World War" presented a good summary of who did what, where, when and how it ended up for them.

 

[Old Sweat]

Were a lot of those firings/sackings/transfers not more due to the interference/micromanaging of these commands by Simmons?

The original round of firings was done in 1942 based on the recommendations of Montgomery, who had been invited to take a look at the army by Crerar with that aim in mind. Simonds removed several commanders in early 1944 so he could fill positions with people such as Kitching, Booth and Wyman he brought back from Italy. In action Simonds was at first reluctant to fire people such as Keller, and was supported in this regard by Crerar. One source reported that on his deathbed Simonds said that he still was concerned that he had erred in replacing the commander of 9 Brigade and not Keller. He later fired Kitching, who was a close friend, and might have axed Booth had he not been killed in action during Operation Tractable.

By the way, Roberts was not sacked as a result of Dieppe. He was replaced in command of the 2nd Division for his poor performance on a later major exercise in the UK. I suspect he might have been under the gun because of the raid, and the exercise settled the matter, but that is just my opinion.

I second Oldgateboatdriver's recommendation re "The Generals."

 

[Old Sweat]

Action has a tendency to reveal weaknesses in a host of aspects, with the capability of leadership being one of the big ones. I think that the Canadian Army in WW2 figured that since Canada had done so well in WW1 that it would simply carry over. Our tiny Permanent Force between the wars, however, was not larg enough to generate the right base of officers. I think that it was also too focused on technical aspects.

I think you are right on both counts here. A senior German general opined that our population was too small to develop the number of potential senior officers required for a major war.
Canada, and I believe that McNaughton was heavily involved in this, was also insistent on committing troops en masse and not in smaller groups. This meant that the majority of Canadian troops were green even in 1944. The Dieppe raid was seized upon by the Canadians in part to see some action.

Mackzenzie King was reluctant to commit troops to North Africa because of the potential adverse political reaction from not using troops to defend the UK.

I wonder if the Canadian Army's performance in Normandy would have been different if a Division had been committed to the North African campaign. I think that participation in Torch could have been realistic. The US Army learned its own weaknesses in that campaign. A Canadian division committed to North Africa in 1942 could have been pulled back to England in mid 1943 and then its veterans would have been ready for the Normandy campaign.


I think the original plan was to bring the 1st Division and 1st Armoured Brigade back to the UK after Sicily for just that purpose. However this did not happen.

While there certainly were instances where we could have done better in Normandy, in my opinion our performance was not as bad compared to the Americans and the British as has been claimed. Again, in my opinion much of the criticism started when the perfromance of Montgomery and the British Army began to be questioned in the seventies, and much of it was an attempt to shift attention away from them.

 

[a_majoor]

I watched the documentary "Dieppe Uncovered", which is committed to the thesis of the raid being the cover for an intelligence operation aimed at 4 wheel "Enigma" devices. There were certainly a lot of moving parts for this (as revealed in recently declassified archival material). OTOH there was a book many years ago called "Green Beach" which claimed the purpose of the raid was to serve as cover for the capture of a German radar installation, and of course the usual reasons such as a dress rehersal for D-Day have been raised over the years.

I tend to agree with the initial assessment; the raid came first and others (perhaps several others) included themselves in the raid for their own reasons. It is in fact quite possible for both hypothesis (capture German Naval intelligence and German radar technology) to be true, given the scale and size of the raid, and the presence of the US Rangers might hint at yet another "add on" mission.

 

[Old Sweat]

I agree with the points Thuc made. Without reading the documents Prof O'Keefe cites and putting them in context I really can't come to a conclusion. It may well be that this intelligence requirement influenced the decision to assault the town by a frontal landing instead of coming in from the flanks. That is, however, quite different from being the reason behind the choice of Dieppe.

There is one factor that suggests to me that the desire to capture the code machine influenced the plan, as did the plan to sieze some radar equipment inland from Green Beach. The ground plan and the choice of objectives seem to me to have been designed by a committee without due consideration of military considerations in a number of instances. Two Canadian infantry brigades were virtually destroyed in a morning because of a thoroughly bad estimate and plan conceived by enthusiastic amateurs who had never really mounted anything larger than a battalion landing up to that time.  That in itself hints that getting into the naval HQ was not the overriding aim, because there probably were better ways to do it.

There probably is a lesson there for the proponents of large headquarters and targeting committees and decisions based on PowerPoint and all the rest: STOP!!

 

[TangoTwoBravo]

The Canadians were involved because they wanted action. Combined Operations wanted to do something. They wanted to see if they could take a port and hold it. For the Canadians the raid was an answer looking for a question. The Royal Navy's refusal to risk cruisers in the channel to support the landings should have cancelled the mission. This also shows that the raid was not really a priority for anyone outside Combinded Operations and the enthusiastic 2nd Division aching for action.

The tactical plan was wildly optimistic. Going through the various objectives I was struck that the planners seemed to discount the German defenders. They figured that surprise would allow the attackers to simply overwhelm the defenders. The plan was, however, very detailed. The Canadians knew about the condition of the beach and outfitted the lead tanks of each wave with a bobbin system to overcome it. They knew about the concrete walls blocking the exits and had sappers tasked the deal with them. Unfortunately the sappers were on foot and were unable to get through the storm of fire. The tactical planners were, therefore, working very hard but without practicality.

I am extremely skeptical about the secret squirrel explanations for the raid. Commandos could have pulled that off on their own.

 

[R.C.]

An excellent documentary aired yesterday on the History channel called Dieppe Uncovered. Recently declassified documents reveal intelligence-gathering to be the primary objective behind the landing at Dieppe...specifically, a four-rotor Enigma machine recently developed by the Germans, which was to replace the old three-rotor Enigma. British intel had found that German Naval intelligence was housed in a building not far from the port at Dieppe.

The documentary puts to rest the theories that Dieppe was some sort of trial run for later operations, or simply an attempt at seizing a port, or an attempt to establish a second front in continental Europe at the request of the Russians.

Definitely worth a watch, if you get a chance.

http://www.history.ca/ontv/titledetails.aspx?titleid=274917

Apologies to those who had already mentioned this documentary -- I did not realize I had not scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the page and inadvertently missed the last few posts.  :yellow:

 

[Old Sweat]

Many of us watched the documentary, but do not accept the premise behind it, as a read of this thread will show. There were too many other factors involved ranging from the Green Beach theory from the book by James Lessor through the claim that the raid was designed to lure the Luftwaffe into a massive air battle (which it won, by the way) and included an attempt by the British to show the Americans a second front was impossible and a demonstration to draw Germans away from the Eastern Front. It merely could have been because Combined Operations Command had been created to conduct raids and it had to keep carrying them out, at lesst in its own corporate mind, or it would lose influence. The Enigma issue may have played a part, but it is unlikely it drove the operation, other than perhaps in the choice of the site.

What I am saying is there would have been a large raid in the summer of 1942, whether the target was Dieppe or someplace else. In fact the place selected was limited by too many factors to list, but the range of the RAF fighters and the vulnerability of the navy including its amphibious element ranked high among them.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

The Germans went to great length to protect those machines. I'd have to guess that in the event of a full scale attack, like Dieppe, a machine that close to the front would've been bundled into a fast car and driven at speed as far as possible from the action.

I don't believe the action, as close as it was, would've required any coded messages of signifigance. The machine would have been idle for the taking. I don't think the Germans would've been willing to take that chance.

Just my  :2c:

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Germans went to great length to protect those machines. I'd have to guess that in the event of a full scale attack, like Dieppe, a machine that close to the front would've been bundled into a fast car and driven at speed as far as possible from the action.

I don't believe the action, as close as it was, would've required any coded messages of signifigance. The machine would have been idle for the taking. I don't think the Germans would've been willing to take that chance.

Just my  :2c:

Oddly the machines, per se were not the holy grail. The Brits had them (one? a few? several?) since before the war started. What the folks a Bletchley Park, Dilly Knox, Alan Turing, et al, needed was decoded traffic which they could use to "reverse engineer" the key settings.

My guess is that the Germans must have known (or strongly suspected) that the Enigma machine, itself, was in allied hands, courtesy of the Poles who had captured one in 1939 and, later, through other losses. These machines were, after al, carefully guarded. But I'm also guessing that the Germans were overconfident in the technology and, seriously, underestimated the skill-sets and synergies found at Bletchley Park.

A three rotor Enigma machine

   

Alan Turing                                            Dilwin "Dilly" Knox

 

[R.C.]

British intelligence, as noted by Prof. O'Keefe in the documentary listed above, had suspected they'd be able to land their hands on a four-rotor Enigma machine at Dieppe. The allies, with assistance of Turing et. al., had been very successful in obtaining information coded using the three-rotor Enigma machine, but the Germans had begun replacing those machines with four-rotor machines, effectively leaving Bletchley Park blind (in terms of their ability to decode messages). A four-rotor machine was obtained some time later however.

The three-rotors are nicely visible in the photo posted above. Each rotor had 26 selection points, exponentially increasing the decoding difficulty.

 

[Old Sweat]

I just watched the program again and had also done some research. The point of contention is whether the raid would have been carried out or not if the enigma machine had not been changed.

Here is a time line I constructed from my research and the program:

1 Feb. Germans adopt four rotor machine for U Boats.

4 Apr. Combined Operations Command planners discuss a list of seven potential targets and Captain Hughes-Hallett selects Dieppe.

5 Apr. Topographical Analysis Committee issues analysis of Dieppe. Note: the possibility exists that this team had collected data on several potential targets - perhaps even the seven candidates noted above - as part of the planning process by Combined Operations.

14 Apr. Chiefs of Staff Committee accept Dieppe as tactically feasible.

16 Apr. Two outline plans considered. One is for an attack on the flanks and the other for a frontal with subsidiary assaults on the flanks. The latter plan is accepted. The record of the discussion is sketchy, however according to the Canadian official history, the British Army opted for the frontal, while the Combined Operations staff had reservations about it and preferred the flank assaults. While Hughes-Hallett was not at the meeting, this suggests the capture of the enigma et al was not being considered.

And the rest of the battle procedure carried on down the route to Dieppe.

The plan to sieze the 'booty' in the harbour and the naval headquarters was overly complicated and every thing had to work exactly as designed and be completed on time for it to succeed. Leaving that aside, it is my contention that there would have been a raid in the summer of 1942 even if the Germans had not introduced the four rotor enigma. Professor O'Keefe has done an impressive job researching the primary source material and building his case from it. The fact still remains that we cannot say there would not have been a raid in any case.

Edit: Additional material on 16 Apr added in yellow.

 

[exspy]

Very interesting points have been made about the reasons for the Dieppe raid in this thread.  From what I've read here, and from the interpretations of the evidence that have been cited, I would have to agree with the theory that there is no secret to Dieppe.  It was simply a raid organized by Combined Operations for their own ends using Canadian troops who were available because of theirs.  It does not seem that either the British Army, the RAF or the RN had the least little interest in it.  Radar and Ultra notwithstanding, the raid would have occurred somewhere on the coast of France during the summer of '42, badly planned, with huge casualties.

Mountbatten's folly, I should think.

Cheers,
Dan.

 

[charlesm]

I was in Dieppe 3 weeks ago and the town had lots of information on Operation Jubliee. They had kiosks setup where each unit came ashore with a story about each unit. Had a lot of canadian flags flying. It was very nice to see.

But when you are on the beaches lookinng at the town and you see the cliff's on either side, I have to wonder who really thought this through?

 

[a_majoor]

In the end, a lot of this theorizing has more to do with the human tendency to look for patterns in large amounts of material, and for survivors to try to answer the question of "why"?

No one likes to believe that they have carried out a difficult task or made a great sacrifice for nothing, and Dieppe certainly would seem to have been a very pointless expenditure of blood and treasure. I will not attempt to argue for reasons why or why not (since I am totally unqualified to do so anyway), but stories like "Dieppe Uncovered", "Green Beach" and so on are attempts to rationalize the disaster by assigning it a greater purpose.

I don't believe (like many people here) that these operations were the prime factors behind the Dieppe raid, although I can accept that once the plan was in motion, clever and ambitious people such as the ones depicted in the documentary quickly siezed on it as a means to carry out plans of their own. With a divisional sized force in play, it would be quite easy to slip in one or even several commando units to carry out secondary actions under the cover of the raid, and so there is no reason not to believe that the attempted raids on Naval HQ and the radar station were not planned and partially executed under cover of the larger mission.

Professor O'Keefe has done a marvelous job of uncovering new material and filling in many blank spots about the raid, and we should all give thanks and wish him well regardless if we agree or disagree with his conclusions.