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

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.

This collection points out the very real and substantial evolution of tactics that went on in response to new warfare and how this had a real effect on the positive performance of the British Army from 1916 onwards.

The Allied landings at Dieppe in German-occupied France in August 1942 are one the most famous amphibious operations of the Second World War and many books have been written about them, mostly from the Allied point of view. The German side of the story has been neglected, and that is why Graham Thomas’s fresh account is so valuable. He reconstructs the immediate response of the Germans to the landings, gives a graphic detailed description of their actions throughout, and looks at the tactical and strategic lessons they drew from them. Each phase and aspect of the action is depicted using a broad range of sources including official reports, correspondence and recollections – the preliminary British commando attacks on the gun batteries, the landings themselves, the German defenses and preparations, and their counter-attacks, and the associated naval and air campaigns. The result is a finely balanced and incisive reassessment of this remarkable operation. It also offers the reader an engrossing account of one of the most dramatic episodes in the war in Western Europe.

A study of the early history of the U.S. Army Rangers describes the formation of the elite, specially trained commando teams and their first foray into combat, taking part in a combined Allied assault on the German-held French port of Dieppe, a deadly raid that marked the first American blood spilled on European soil during World War II.

From the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestselling American Sniper comes a remarkable true story of heroism and sacrifice in World War II. In the darkest days of 1942, an Allied force set out to capture the Nazi-occupied French port of Dieppe. More than two years had passed since the British had been humiliated at Dunkirk, and nearly nine months since the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The Germans held the continent in a death grip. Now, some six thousand British and Canadian troops were attempting to gain a foothold on Hitler's domain. Joining the crusaders were fifty hand-selected, specially-trained soldiers from a new commando unit. These were to be the first Americans to fight in Europe, and they would become known as the U.S. Army Rangers. The mission was doomed, but the bravery the Rangers displayed proved that Americans were every bit as tough as their allies and enemies. Drawn from firsthand accounts and historical documents, this is an unforgettable story of the forging of an American legacy that still endures today. “[A] carefully researched and brilliantly executed narrative of the modern Rangers’ baptism in blood.”—America in WWII