The Aftermath
By the end of autumn 1944 more than a third of the supplies arriving on the European continent were being shipped to the French ports of Toulon and Marseilles, greatly easing the logistics crunch on the continent. Food, ammunition, clothing, fresh troops, and most importantly to the Allied spearheads, gasoline were replenished through the French Mediterranean ports, easing the strain on the smaller northern ports. This badly needed materiel helped the Americans contain the German Ardennes offensive that December, and push it back in January. Operation Dragoon also helped ensure that there were sufficient men in position on the continent for the Allies to react to the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge.
The French Army emerged as a potent fighting force, despite the nearly insufferable de Gaulle, who claimed the victory as a triumph of French arms, ignoring the contributions of VI Corps and the other Allied units which took part. “As we had intended it to be the Allied battle for France was also the battle of Frenchmen for France,” de Gaulle wrote. The French had proven they had recovered from the debacle of 1940 and that their men and arms were a match for the enemy troops they encountered, and the fierce door to door fighting in the cities demonstrated that their colonial troops were well trained and determined combatants.
Lucian Truscott was promoted to head the newly formed Fifteenth Army in October of 1944. Truscott had misgivings about halting Operation Dragoon early, concerned that so many of the battle hardened German troops had managed to extricate themselves from his attack. In December Truscott was transferred to the command of Fifth Army in Italy, where he remained for the clearing of German troops in Italy in 1945. Despite Operation Dragoon capturing over 100,000 prisoners, Truscott considered the failure to trap the Germans in France and annihilate them via attrition to be a failure of Operation Dragoon.
Histories of the Second World War often ignore Operation Dragoon, or give it a paragraph or two, focusing on the operations in Northern Europe and the Eastern Front. Because of the speed with which it was completed many assume it was an easy operation against unprepared troops. In fact, the fighting up the rugged terrain of the Rhone Valley was as fierce as in any of the theatres of the war. The Germans executed a textbook fighting retreat against the Americans and French troops, consolidated most of their forces, and withdrew to strong defensive positions by the time the operation was ordered to a halt. It was a German defeat, but it was not a crushing Allied victory. More hard fighting lay ahead.
Operation Dragoon was the last of the seaborne invasions executed in the European theatre, and it clearly benefited from the lessons learned at others such as Salerno, Anzio, and Normandy. There were still casualties suffered as a result of accidents with gliders, collisions between ships, and communication breakdowns in the field. But compared to the earlier invasions they were minimal. The execution of the battle plan went like clockwork, its biggest problem became the success it achieved placing it too far ahead of schedule for the logistics to keep up. General Jacob Devers assumed command of Sixth Army Group (including the troops of Dragoon) following the operation and wrote that it would “…go down as a classic for surprise, exploitation, and results.”
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Operation Dragoon: The Allied Invasion of Southern France”, by William Breuer, 1996
“Crusade in Europe”, by Dwight David Eisenhower, 1948
“The History of the French First Army”, by Jean De Lattre de Tassigney, 1952
“Dogface Soldier: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott Jr.”, by Wilson A. Heefner, 2010
“The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation”, by Richard Vinen, 2007
“U. S. Warships of World War II”, by Paul H. Silverstone, 1965
“The Second World War Volume 4: The Hinge of Fate”, by Winston Churchill, 1950
“Summit at Tehran”, by Keith Eubank, 1985
“Southern France”, by Jeffrey J. Clarke, US Army Center of Military History, October 2003