We needed Marseilles as a port, especially since we were very late in capturing Antwerp.
So southern France proved vital to continuing operations in the West.
The rest is history. Imagine if the allies did not kiss Stalin's butt and give half of Germany and Eastern Europe to the maniac? Stalin and the Soviets murdered more people than Hitler and the Nazis. Communism should have been destroyed just as Nazism was. It is hard to comprehend that one reason that we invaded France was for the benefit of Stalin opening another front.
In 1944 1/3 of supplies to the front were processed through southern France. It was a vital operation obtained at a low cost.
>>Churchill saw it as a waste of resources. The cigar-smoking statesman favoured renewing the offensive in Italy or landing in the Balkans.
Churchill called Italy the “soft underbelly” of the axis, and I suppose it looked like that on a strategic map. But tactically, it was a fortress, with lots of mountains and rivers well-suited to defense. The Balkans had similar rough terrain. And how an attack either place was to slow the Soviets makes no sense.
Dragoon may not have been as successful as just reinforcing Overlord and, especially, the 3rd Army. But the logistics probably weren’t there for that, and I’m sure Eisenhower wanted the ports of the Riviera as a hedge vs. the limited logistics at the channel ports. Remember that the temporary invasion beach harbors with their Mulberries were used for 10 months because the German destruction and mining of ports like Cherbourg and Antwerp was so effective.
No. The Dragoon invasion force was four divisions and a bit. There may have been 580,000 troops that landed in southern France and then went to the fighting in the north during the entire war, but the article makes it seem like they landed all at once. Bad writing.
It’s amazing how intelligent you can be with the benefit of perfect hindsight, eh?
Yawn. More armchair revisionism.
Blame FDR and Truman for giving the Russians carte blanche with Eastern Europe
Aside from need the ports in southern France, where could those forces have been better deployed?
Italy is mountainous and easy to defend even against vastly superior forces. Would pouring more troops into Italy have made any real difference,
The balkans? Supporting it would have been a logistical nightmare. Secondly, what would we have gained? Yugoslavia is mountainous and thus not easily passable. What’s the big prize to be gained? Greece? The Brits got that anyway. Bulgaria? Yugoslavia went nonaligned under Tito anyway. We were not going to be able to sweep through the Balkans, up the Hungarian plain and into Poland ahead of the Soviets. That’s a pipe dream. Much as I admire Churchill, I don’t think he was being very realistic here.