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Posted on 08/19/2003 12:01:01 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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19 August 1942 From the moment of the German attack against the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941, and from that of the United States' entry into war the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on 7th December 1941, the war became worldwide. In France, as in the whole of Europe, in order to face the war effort, Hitler's Germany imposed compulsory work service. While the "Todt Organisation" was building the Atlantic Wall, and was establishing Europe as a fortress, the "Third Reich" government intensified the implementation of Hitler's totalitarian and racial programme. Following the "Nacht und Nebel" decree in December 1941, which foresaw the putting into solitary confinement and the deporting of the enemies of the New Order, the Wannsee conference finalized the ultimate solution to the Jewish problem. On 16th July, the "Vel d'Hiv" raid on Paris illustrated the repressive and antisemitic collaboration policy of the Vichy Government. In April 1942, after the allied raid on St Nazaire,the British and American allies again took up the project of awide-ranging raid on a French harbour on the Channel coast. This raid was intended to test defences and to prove to the Soviets, who were asking for the establishment of a second front, that it was not easy to grab a foothold on the French coast. The Allied High Command chose Dieppe for two main reasons; the size of the township, and the distance, which were both compatible with the available means of transport, making uninterrupted air-cover easy.  The concrete barriers, wire fencing, and other obstacles on the beach show how well the Germans fortified the Dieppe beach. Several hundreds of miles of beaches were fortified in the same fashion as the Germans saw their greatest threat of Allied invasion to be from the sea. (L/O 54162 and DVA 734 and #1 and 8160: Dieppe #2) The operation was to last twelve hours, a frontal attack taking place on the beach at Dieppe, after landings on both sides at Pourville and Puys, thus neutralizing the defences overlooking the main beach. The long-range batteries at Varengeville and Berneval also had to be destroyed before the landing in Dieppe. The aim of the raid was to destroy the German coastal defences, the port structures and all the strategic buildings (petrol storage depots, radio and radar stations, headquarters, airfield).  Canadian tanks got bogged down on the pebbled beaches at Dieppe and very few ever made their objective of getting up the cliffs and into the town. (DVA 736) Over 6.000 men were to land, among them 4.965 Canadians from the 2nd Division (including the crews of 50 Churchill tanks) and 1.200 British men belonging to the Commandos and the Royal Marines. 250 boats effected the transport (duck-boats, destroyers, gunboats, patrol boats, landing-craft...). Around 1.000 aircraft (fighters, bombers) were used to support and defend the landing force.  The aftermath of the Dieppe Raid. (R.20A and DVA 735) In August 1942, the area of Dieppe was under the responsability of the 302nd Division of the Wehrmacht. About 2.500 men, highly trained and equiped (571st Regiment of Grenadiers, artillery units, Flak units and Kriegsmarine units), were present at each of the different landing-points. Important fresh troops could be sent for at short notice. The defensive fortifications were already dangerous, and the fire-power significant (automatic weapons, mortars, medium and heavy guns, long-range coast batteries). The German airforce, although less extensive, was still very dangerous and had the advantage of being close to its home-base. During the evening of 18th August, the naval forces of Operation Jubilee got under way from several ports on the south coast of England. The different groups accomplished a trouble-free sea-crossing until, suddenly, several miles off the coast, the left wing flotilla, which was carrying the 3rd British Commando unit, unexpectedly ran into a small German convoy sailing from Boulogne to Dieppe. It was 3.45am. The ensuing battle completely upset the planned attack on Berneval, and alerted part of the enemy defence. Yet, a small group of commandos still managed to neutralize the battery for an hour and a half.  1874 Canadians were taken prisoner by the Germans at Dieppe. (R.16 and DVA 735) At 4.50am, at the other end of the operation zone, the 4th Commando got a foothold on two areas along the coast, in order to catch the battery at Varengeville in a pincer movement. It was a complete success. The battery was destroyed and the commandos re-embarked at 8.15am with scarcely any human loss. At Puys, the Royal Regiment of Canada landed at 5.06am, later than planned, and in broad daylight. The German defence was on the watch, overlooking the attackers who tried in vain to get over the high concrete wall enclosing the small beach, under heavy fire with no shelter. In less than an hour, of the 600 men who had landed, the Canadians had lost 225, those left were either wounded or made prisoner; only about sixty made it back to England.  German soldiers round up Allied prisoners following the Dieppe Raid.. 1, 874 Canadians were captured during and after the assault. (R.24 and DVA 735) The South Saskatchewan and Cameron Highlanders landed at Pourville at 4.50am, easily invading the village. The German defence became progressively firmer and although soldiers managed to advance as far as Petit Appeville in the valley and as far as two-thirds of the way up the slopes leading to Dieppe, they could not carry any further and had to fall back late in the morning, re-embarking with heavy losses (151 dead, 266 made prisoner and 269 wounded).  At 5.20am, after a too-short preliminary bombing, the first two assault waves of the Royal Hamilton and the Essex Scottish got a foothold on the beach at Dieppe. The tanks of the 14th Canadian Army Tank Regiment, which should have protected them, landed fifteen minutes later with great difficulty and could not efficiently support the foot-soldiers advancing on the exposed esplanade, where a hell-fire showered them from the cliffs and the houses on the seafront. Even those who managed to reach the esplanade could not then get over the concrete walls barring every entrance to the town centre. The casino was occupied by some men from the Royal Hamilton. Several small groups even managed to get past the first rows of houses and to enter the church St Rémy.  On the east side of the beach, the men of the Essex Scottish, even more exposed, were very quickly stopped by intensive German gunfire (the troops having been defeated at Pourville and especially at Puys, the Germans had held on to their whole fire power). The Allied Command, based on the HMS Calpe, seeing nothing happening on land because of extremely thick smoke, and being badly informed because of failing transmissions, sent in fresh back-up troops, men from the Mount Royal Fusiliers and the Royal Marines Commandos. They landed on the beach amidst great confusion with no hope whatsoever of improving an already jeopardized situation. The murderous battle went on until the end of the morning, the order to draw back being given around 11am, to the survivors who tried to re-embark on the boats which had returned to pick them up. Of the 2.000 men who had landed, 400 were dead, and only 400 succeeded in regaining England. At about 1 pm, the battle was nearly over. Operation Jubilee ended with dramatic results: the allies counted 1.380 dead (913 Canadians), 1.600 wounded and over 2.000 made prisoner. The air battle was just as disastrous. The Royal Air Force lost 107 aircraft; the Germans about forty. In the area of Dieppe, among the civilians, the count was 48 dead and 100 wounded. The Germans had 345 dead or missing and 268 wounded. Thus, in less than ten hours' battle, almost 1.800 people lost their lives, which shows clearly the murderous intensity of the Battle of Dieppe.  The result and ensuing debates could not live down the sacrifice of those who fought and the enemy was the first to admit that the disaster was not of their doing; "the huge number of prisoners may seem to question the value of the Canadian and British units involved in the raid. Far from it. The enemy soldiers, mostly Canadian, proved their skill and courage everywhere it was possible to fight. It was not their lack of courage, but the fact that we concentrated our defensive artillery fire and our heavy infantry weapons so much that stopped the enemy gaining ground" (extracts of reports written by the majors of the 81st Corps and the 302nd German Division).  Dieppe Cemetery, France. (#7 and 197 .07 6 160 and 95 and 78-cen) The sea-battle off Berneval breaking the surprise effect of the raid could not in itself explain the failure of Operation Jubilee. In fact, the reasons for this failure lie mainly in the underestimation of the enemy forces, the lack of effective air and sea support before landing, the use of inadequate equipment and the lack of information being other aggravating factors. Military defeats are always controversial subjects, especially when loss of human life is involved. Operation Jubilee did not escape this rule and although the lessons learnt brought valuable indications for the preparation of Operation Overlord, the South Normandy landing on 6th June 1944, many wondered at the relevancy and usefulness of Operation Jubilee as far as future operations were concerned.  A plaque on the wall of Canada Square, Dieppe, France. Commemorating the Canadian soldiers who died on the beach of Dieppe on August 19, 1942. Photo by J.Ough, NFB, April 1972 (LO 49297 and #8 and 5) Two years after the raid on Dieppe, the Canadians landed in Juno, at dawn on 6th June 1944, participated in the Battle of Normandy and on 1st September 1944, the 2nd Canadian Division liberated Dieppe.
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Darksheare ==> 
In the summer of 1940 Britain faced a hostile coast from the Arctic Circle to the Spanish border. It appeared inevitable that Germany would use its control of the French Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk to invade Britain. That autumn, however, the Royal Air Force defeated the German air force in the crucial battle for air supremacy over the British Isles. Consequently, Adolf Hitler delayed and then shelved plans for the invasion.
By 1942, fearing an Allied invasion in the west while embroiled in war with the Soviet Union in the east, Hitler endeavoured to create the “Atlantic Wall”, or “Fortress Europe”, by encrusting the Atlantic seacoast with concrete and steel defences.
The foundations for some of the largest German coastal artillery emplacements along the French coast were laid as early as 1940 in the Pas de Calais region, a mere 40 kilometres across the English Channel from Dover. These gun positions originally were intended to support a German invasion of Britain. Subsequently, they fired on Allied shipping in the Channel and regularly shelled Dover, Folkestone and elsewhere along the British coast.
The Germans could not fortify the whole of the western European seaboard with such large and heavily-armed installations. The main portion of the Atlantic Wall stretched some 2000 kilometres from Denmark to the Spanish-French border. German military engineers built observation bunkers at wide intervals all along the coast. Lookouts in these bunkers could give warning of an Allied attack and direct naval, air and mobile land forces to the scene. Some 15,000 bunkers and other installations protected harbours and points along the shore where there were important facilities or likely landing spots. Barbed wire, minefields and other obstacles provided the first line of defence against Allied infantry and tanks. Small bunkers containing machine guns or light artillery covered these positions and protected the long-range artillery batteries. These batteries received a two-metre thick protection of steelreinforced concrete to protect them against Allied naval and air bombardment. Hitler personally Division, suffered appalling casualties in a futile attempt to storm ashore in the face of withering fire from expertly-sited German positions. The failure of this operation underlined the need for lavish fire support – from the air, from the sea, and from special armoured vehicles put ashore with the infantry – if an invasion was to succeed. On the German side, the raid spurred greater construction efforts. By 1943, 250,000 workers poured up to 800,000 tons of concrete monthly into sophisticated fortifications, some of immense proportions. In the period 1942-1944, the Germans used over 17 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.2 million metric tons of steel for the Atlantic Wall. “I am the greatest fortress builder of all time”, boasted Adolf Hitler, who never once visited the Channel fortifications.
Fortunately for the Allies, the sheer scale of the project exceeded German resources. Berlin’s other priorities, especially the Eastern Front and air defence of the homeland against bombers, siphoned off enormous quantities of material and labour which might otherwise have been used on the Atlantic Wall.
Now look at what Hitler said of the brave Canadians--a tribute to their valor from the black hole of inhumanity itself!
But when Canadian vanguards with a small English tail as appendage come to Dieppe and manage to hang on there-one may say painfully-for nine hours-to be destroyed in the end-that is an encouraging, an astonishing sign of the inexhaustible, victorious power which is the British Empire's own! In contrast to that, what is our air force, what is the performance of our infantry, what is the performance of our tank arm, what by comparison is the accomplishment of our engineers, our railway construction troops and so forth, of our whole gigantic traffic system which has opened up and re-built half a continent in a few-one may even say months? That is nothing!
The attack on the Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941 and the unexpectedly strong resistance put up by the Red Army forced the German High Command to transfer increasing numbers of troops away from the Western front, considerably weakening it in the process. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, fears of an Anglo-American landing intensified, and in the same month, Hitler reinforced his system of defence by ordering the construction of the Atlantic Wall. This gigantic project, entrusted to the Todt Organization, was begun in 1942 but had still not been completed by 1944, despite the efforts of Field-Marshal Rommel, who had been made responsible for the entire sector between the Netherlands and the Loire at the end of 1943.
The project involved building 15,000 structures along the entire coast of the North Sea, the English Channel and the Atlantic. This required the labour of 450,000 workers (both voluntary and impressed) and the use of 11 million tonnes of concrete and 1 million tonnes of steel for the reinforcing rods.
Despite the image that German propaganda sought to project, the “Wall” was not a continuous obstacle. It could basically be said to be composed of four types of structure: the fortresses, the coastal batteries, the close beach defences and the obstacles erected either on the beaches themselves or inland.
Close defensive structure overlooking Ravenoville beach(Manche)
Field-Marshal Rommel inspects a beach bristling with obstacles
Czech hedgehogs
Nutcrackers (those aren't frisbees or hockey pucks)
Placing a charge on a Belgian Gate
Tetrahedra
Antitank walls
Remains of “dragon’s teeth” on the beach at Ouistreham
In context, the Brits now ban guns and prosecute their citizens who defend themselves against home invasions.
The Canadians routinely thumb their noses at us to the point at which it is suggested Chretien and Clinton arranged the blackout.
The important Daschlesque Diplomacy of Neville Chamberlain gave the Nazi war machine the hudna or "we get strong to kill you in your sleep".
The West, ostrich-like, was in denial as the NYTimes whitewashed Stalin's slaughter of tens of millions with his engineered famine.
Roosevelt the Communist bath house towel server smiled as Hitler and Stalin signed their Friendship Pact.
Now we are racing down the bomb run of the Appeasement Theme Park--
A modest proposal: Make the heads of Syria and Iran an offer they cannot refuse.
Or we wind up having to fight a Stephen King nightmare of one Dieppe after another.
I read that Hitler speech, long winded SOB wasn't he, sort of like one of our Ex-Presidents.
My mom told me about his speeches, he was a speaker who could work a crowd into a frenzy. Great writeup and pictures of the Atlantic Wall. Fortunately, it was more propaganda than reality. Only certain spots of the coast were heavily protected. Funny that the Germans learned nothing about fixed defenses from the French Maginot Line.
"Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man."
- General George Patton Jr
Like most of the college English required reading.
On the left is Ross Munro of the Canadian Press, featured in the Dieppe raid, and for whom a journalism award is named.
On the right is Ross H. Munro, from British Columbia who co-authored The Coming Conflict With China, which I think is really smashing.
I haven't established a genealogy.
As for Hitler's speeches, he filled a nietzsche in the German psyche caused by smoldering imperialism dashed with reparations and depression.
I'm sure he was using amphetamine, and didn't need the History Channel to tell me so.
Goering was a cocaine abuser like traitorrapist42.
And like 42 Hitler was elected.
But Hitlery carried 42's juevos in the translucent plastic file cabinet.
Hitlery's propaganda was cited as classic, worthy of study, by ChiComs in the late '90's.
The Germans apparently withdrew some of their guns to the interior.
You've often cited Hitler jumping the gun before Doenitz got his U-Boats.
Apparently Speer planned a later start-date for the war as well.
Accounts of Stalin's shock and withdrawal into autistic stupor indicate he, too, was not prepared.
Hitler micromanaged the design of the Atlantic Wall according to one account--yet blitzkrieg was his success story, while Maginot West was his Achilles' Heel.
For sheer longwindedness the Cucaracha Cubana is top banana:
Reach out, reach out and touch some one. . . .
But no-o, they have to throw in all the "you know"s.
And I am sick and tired of being told I am somehow unpatriotic just because I betrayed the world's premier democracy to the Butchers of Beijing!
Who Us?
Maybe someday we can find the other version to this tune.
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