In 1942, a full two years before D-Day, thousands of men, mostly Canadian troops eager for their first taste of battle, were sent across the Channel in a raid on the French port town of Dieppe. Air supremacy was not secured; the topography of the town and its surroundings - hemmed in by tall cliffs and steep beaches - meant any invasion was improbably difficult; the result was carnage, the beaches turned into killing grounds even as the men came ashore, and whole regiments literally decimated. Why was the Raid ever mounted? Was the whole thing even, as has been darkly alleged, expected and even intended to fail, a cynical conspiracy to prove to the Americans, at the expense of so many Canadian lives, the impracticability of staging the Normandy landings for another two years? Robin Neillands goes behind the myths to tell what really happened, and why.

'A lively and readable account' Spectator 'A fine book ... well-written and well-researched' Washington Times In less than six hours in August 1942, nearly 1,000 British, Canadian and American commandos died in the French port of Dieppe in an operation that for decades seemed to have no real purpose. Was it a dry-run for D-Day, or perhaps a gesture by the Allies to placate Stalin's impatience for a second front in the west? Historian David O'Keefe uses hitherto classified intelligence archives to prove that this catastrophic and apparently futile raid was in fact a mission, set up by Ian Fleming of British Naval Intelligence as part of a 'pinch' policy designed to capture material relating to the four-rotor Enigma Machine that would permit codebreakers like Alan Turing at Bletchley Park to turn the tide of the Second World War. 'A fast-paced and convincing book ... that clears up decades of misinformation about the ignoble raid' Toronto Star

In August 1942, Allied forces mounted an attack on the German-held port of Dieppe; titled Operation Jubilee, it represented a rehearsal for invasion. The amphibious attack saw over 6,000 infantrymen, predominantly Canadian, put ashore, tasked with destroying German structures and gathering intelligence. The doomed raid was an abject failure, and became Canada’s worst military disaster. Eyewitness at Dieppe is a long-overdue reissue of New Zealand-born writer Wallace Reyburn’s dramatic account of the raid. He was with the first soldiers clambering ashore, and aboard the last ship returning to England after six hours of carnage. Awarded an OBE as the only war correspondent to witness the street fighting first-hand, Reyburn was fortunate not be numbered among Dieppe’s dead, suffering just a minor wound inflicted by mortar shell fragments. His book, Rehearsal for Invasion was a wartime bestseller. Accompanied by freelance journalist Ross Reyburn’s new foreword on his father’s account, this new edition tells us more about Wallace’s intriguing life and details the shortcomings of his father’s book, dictated by wartime censorship corrected in the post-war years through a withering condemnation of raid’s mastermind Lord Mountbatten.

The only war correspondent who accompanied the Allied Dieppe raid tells the story of the brave, heroic but ultimately futile assault landing which would lay the foundation for the success in Normandy two years later. Alexander Berry Austin was a noted war correspondent who worked for the London Herald during the Second World War. He was exceptionally dedicated and would often “embed”, to use a modern term, with Allied units during the most dangerous and demanding fighting including the Battle of Britain, the Dieppe raid, the Allied landings at Bizerte and the Salerno landing during which he lost his life to a German landmine. During the preparation for “We Landed At Dawn” he trained extensively with the elite Commando units that were due to make the ambitious invasion attempt.

A battle summary of Britain’s raid on the French port town of Dieppe during World War II. Winston Churchill was under pressure. The Soviets felt that they were fighting the Germans by themselves. Stalin demanded Britain open a second front to draw German forces away from the east. Though the advice Churchill received from his staff was that an invasion of France would not be possible for at least another year, the British Prime Minister knew he had to do something to help the Russians. The result was a large-scale raid upon the port of Dieppe, chosen as it was thought that the success of any invasion would depend on the capture of a major port to enable heavy weapons, vehicles, and reinforcements to be landed in support of the landing forces. It would not be the second front that Stalin wanted, but at least it would demonstrate Britain’s intent to support the Soviets. Plus, it provided a rehearsal for the eventual invasion. The raid upon Dieppe, Operation Jubilee, was eventually scheduled for 19 August 1942. The assault was the most ambitious Allied attack against the German Channel defenses of the war so far, involving some 6,000 infantry, 237 naval vessels, and seventy-four squadrons of aircraft. Though the debate surrounding Jubilee’s purpose and cost has raged in the years since the war, many vital and important lessons were learned. All these factors are covered in this official battle summary, a detailed and descriptive account of the Dieppe Raid, which was written shortly after the war and is based on the recollections of those who were involved.

With its trademark "you are there" style, Mark Zuehlke's tenth Canadian Battle Series volume tells the story of the 1942 Dieppe raid. Nicknamed "The Poor Man's Monte Carlo," Dieppe had no strategic importance, but with the Soviet Union thrown on the ropes by German invasion and America having just entered the war, Britain was under intense pressure to launch a major cross-Channel attack against France. Since 1939, Canadian troops had massed in Britain and trained for the inevitable day of the mass invasion of Europe that would finally occur in 1944. But the Canadian public and many politicians were impatient to see Canadian soldiers fight sooner. The first major rehearsal proved such a shambles the raid was pushed back to the end of July only to be cancelled by poor weather. Later, in a decision still shrouded in controversy, the operation was reborn. Dieppe however did not go smoothly. Drawing on rare archival documents and personal interviews, Mark Zuehlke examines how the raid came to be and why it went so tragically wrong. Ultimately, Tragedy at Dieppe honors the bravery and sacrifice of those who fought and died that fateful day on the beaches of Dieppe.