{"id":91076,"date":"2024-08-16T04:00:57","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T08:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=91076"},"modified":"2024-08-15T16:06:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T20:06:04","slug":"operation-dragoon-was-described-by-adolf-hitler-as-the-worst-day-of-his-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/08\/16\/operation-dragoon-was-described-by-adolf-hitler-as-the-worst-day-of-his-life\/","title":{"rendered":"“Operation Dragoon … was described by Adolf Hitler as the worst day of his life”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The “other” D-Day landing in France that few people know much about: Operation Dragoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Southern France, 15-28 August 1944.
West Point Military Atlas<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Often referred to as “the other D-Day”, Op Dragoon ran until 14 September 1944 and was a pivotal turning point in the Second World War.<\/p>\n

Op Dragoon was a huge and complex operation by land, sea and air that liberated nearly two-thirds of France by linking up with troops from the Normandy invasion on 11 September and pushing the German forces right back to their frontier.<\/p>\n

It also secured the ports of Marseilles and Toulon so Allied troops could flood into France. <\/p>\n

This was a bitter blow for Hitler, who during conversations with his generals that were discovered in records written in shorthand, said: “The 15th of August was the worst day of my life”. <\/p>\n

Dr Peter Caddick-Adams, a military historian and defence analyst, spoke to BFBS Forces News<\/em> about Operation Dragoon, a largely French\/American operation with support from countries including the UK and Canada.<\/p>\n

He said: “It set the victory over Germany firmly on its way — and the end of the Second World War couldn’t really have been achieved without Operation Dragoon. <\/p>\n

“This is the D-Day that you’ve never heard of.<\/p>\n

“Originally there was planned to be two invasions of France on the same day — in Normandy and on the south coast of France along the Riviera. <\/p>\n

“It was found that we didn’t have enough landing craft to do both at the same time simultaneously.”<\/p>\n

It also didn’t help that Winston Churchill was against the idea and tried to cancel the operation.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister wanted the Italian campaign to remain dominant and was worried Dragoon would take troops and other resources away from Italy. <\/p>\n

However, despite his best efforts, the Americans and French prevailed and Operation Dragoon went ahead. <\/p>\n

Initially, the operation was given the codename Anvil, because Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, was originally going to be called Sledgehammer. <\/p>\n

The plan was for Germany’s armed forces to be smashed between the hammer and the anvil.<\/p>\n

Churchill never changed his opinion about the operation despite its eventual success, as Dr Caddick-Adams explained: “At the last minute Churchill had the name changed to Dragoon and, legend has it, because he felt he was being dragooned into an operation that he didn’t want to undertake”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “other” D-Day landing in France that few people know much about: Operation Dragoon. Often referred to as “the other D-Day”, Op Dragoon ran until 14 September 1944 and was a pivotal turning point in the Second World War. Op Dragoon was a huge and complex operation by land, sea and air that liberated nearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1117,1118,7,5,13,230],"tags":[1519,864],"class_list":["post-91076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france","category-germany","category-history","category-military","category-usa","category-ww2","tag-operationdragoon","tag-winstonchurchill"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-nGY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91076"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91081,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91076\/revisions\/91081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}