Guelton, Frédéric Le Débarquement de Provence

La Seconde Guerre mondiale en couleur

The landing in Provence on 15 August 1944 was the best organised and most successful amphibious operation of the entire war, from Operation Torch on the African coast to Operation Overlord on the Normandy coast. However, it should be remembered that the two operations, Overlord in Normandy and Dragoon in Provence, were conceived by the Americans as two parts of a single manoeuvre to drive the Germans out of France. They had even planned for the landing in Provence to take place before the landing in Normandy, or even for both to take place simultaneously. Paradoxically, the masterful success of Operation Dragoon was the reason for the marginalised memory to which it has since been relegated. As if a brilliant victory with relatively few casualties were less glorious than a victory accompanied by a bloodbath! This landing also marked the rebirth of a victorious French army, which, under the political leadership of General de Gaulle and the military leadership of General de Lattre de Tassigny, united all the elements of a fighting France that had been scattered by the defeat of 1940, including the Free French, the African Army, the Resistance fighters, those who had escaped from the STO, volunteers, etc. An army that landed on beaches that have become as famous as those of Cavalaire or Saint-Tropez, and in an indescribable atmosphere of jubilation liberated Toulon and then Marseille, before marching up the Rhône valley with its American counterpart at such speed that it threw all plans into disarray. As for the ultimate significance of the landing in Provence for the Allies' strategy, we leave it to General Eisenhower to say: Nothing at that time gave us more decisive advantages or contributed more to the complete defeat of the enemy than this secondary attack, which led (from the coasts of Provence) up the Rhone Valley.