King's College London

The ill-fated Dieppe Raid was a bitter and costly defeat for Canadian and Allied forces. Seventy years on the raid continues to command both academic and popular interest. Contemporary commentators and some historians have argued that the raid provided many useful lessons for the successful Normandy landings in June 1944. Very little, however, has been written about the German view of the raid. What did Hitler, the Wehrmacht, and the German people think of the raid and its outcome? How was it portrayed in the Nazi controlled media, and what impact did it have on German strategic thinking in the summer and autumn of 1942? Drawing extensively on contemporary German sources, this article demonstrates that the German view of the Dieppe raid differed greatly from the more familiar AngloCanadian narrative.