The "Dieppe Uncovered" program last night was really interesting. Kirant is correct. There is new information recently made public which sheds light that the main objective of the raid was intelligence. The journalist did a pile of research and a thorough job connecting the dots. The quick version is:
- British Intellligence, of which Ian Fleming (the James Bond author) was a key member, had established a team of special ops forces to obtain intelligence through special raids on German areas.
- In 1942 The Germans came out with a new Enigma decoding device which The Allies were unable to break. this caused a huge increase in successful U boat attacks which had a major impact on The Allies efforts.
- British Intel discovered Dieppe had a reasonably large German naval HQ and suspected they would have Enigma machines or at least decoding records.
- In order to get in and out with the intelligence without alerting the Germans they devised plans to make the intelligence grab as part of a larger operation to hide the true reason for the attack.
- As for the attack, the objective was for forces to gain control of the entrance to the harbour where a ship containing the intelligence force was to sail in, attack German HQ, collect the intell, and get out while the beach attack was ongoing.
- Due to a rather flawed plan, the harbour was never controlled and the ship was prevented from entering the harbour on repeated attempts.
- As a result of the failure of the attack, it is suspected British Intell floated out a number of reasons for the attack to try and cloud the real reason. It's said even the Germans didn't understand why the raid took place as it wasn't really going to be successful as a way of holding a position on mainland Europe.
I think the new information makes the raid more than just a stupid attack that sent many men to their death. They died for an effort which, had it succeeded, altered the war substantially and potentially saved many lives. I'm not doing the show justice, it's very much worth a watch. Fascinating stuff.
__________________
|