How the French and British prepared “Operation Dragoon”

This military operation is much less well known than the Normandy landings, yet it played a role in the Allies’ final offensive against the German army.

More than two months after the commemorations in Normandy, France is preparing to celebrate the 80th^e anniversary of the landing in Provence, also known as “Operation Dragoon”, Thursday, August 15. This operation is part of a whole: initially, it was to take place at the same time as “Operation Overlord” in Normandy on June 6, 1944, but it was postponed by more than two months because the Allies did not have enough ships and troops at the time.

Finally, from August 15, 1944, the Allies lined up 100,000 Americans, Canadians and British. To these must be added 250,000 French who made up what was called “Army B”, led by General de Lattre de Tassigny, which would later become the French “First Army”. Among the men of “Army B”, there were a very large number of soldiers from the French colonies, from North Africa, from black Africa, but also from the colonies of Asia.

The Allied ships left from Italy, Corsica, Algeria and Tunisia. Among them were landing ships. On D-Day, the Allied forces landed on dozens of kilometers of the Var coastline. Facing them, the German forces were composed in particular of former Soviet soldiers captured and re-enlisted, less well armed and less motivated. For example, in the Maures massif, the Allies faced men from Armenia, which was part of the USSR.

The landing went rather well, to the extent that the losses of Allied soldiers were ten times less on the first day of the landing than in Normandy. It must be said that the operation benefited from a lot of intelligence work beforehand. The Allied command had planned 40 days to conquer Provence, it was done in two weeks. The Allies targeted several objectives in Provence: the ports of Toulon and Marseille and the national road 7 to access the Rhone valley.

By taking the ports of Toulon and Marseille, the Allies were able to bring reinforcements and equipment to French soil: by the end of 1944, more than 40% of the equipment needed by the Allied armies had passed through Marseille. The landing in Provence made it possible to liberate the south of France and the Alps more quickly, without waiting until 1945. And then, with the massive presence of French soldiers, this landing also allowed France to be more strongly associated with the Allied offensive and, later, to be able to sit at the “victors’ table” of the war.