Winston Churchill and Mackenzie King by Terry Reardon

Author:Terry Reardon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2012-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Canadian prisoners of war in German custody in Dieppe after the disastrous raid, August 19, 1942.

Library and Archives Canada PA 200058

Churchill’s official statement was given in the House of Commons on September 8, 1942. “The military credit for this most gallant affair goes to the Canadian troops, who formed five-sixths of the assaulting force.... The raid must be considered as a reconnaissance in force.... We had to get all the information necessary before launching operations on a much larger scale.... I, personally, regarded the Dieppe assault, to which I gave my sanction, as an indispensable preliminary, to full-scale operations.”[9]

However, Churchill remained concerned with the operation. In a minute to his chief of staff, Major General Ismay, on December 21, 1942, he stated: “‘Although for many reasons everyone was concerned to make this business look as good as possible, the time has now come when I must be informed more precisely about the military plans.’ At first sight, he said, ‘it would appear to a layman very much out of accord with the accepted principles of war to attack the strongly fortified town front without first securing the cliffs on either side, and to use our tanks in frontal assault off the beaches.’ The Prime Minister wanted Ismay to ascertain the facts, after which he would decide whether to hold a more formal inquiry.”[10]

Ismay’s response included a detailed report from Mountbatten, which lay overall responsibility for the raid on Montgomery, although when it was conducted, “Monty” was in the Middle East.

While that satisfied Churchill at the time, when he came to comment on the operation in the third volume of his war memoirs he brought up the matter again. There he stated that there must have been two plans: one for Rutter and one for Jubilee. Churchill wanted to know who had authorized Jubilee, noting that, as stated, by that time Montgomery had left the scene.

Ismay, who was assisting Churchill with his memoirs, was not able to find documentary evidence, and surmised that for secrecy reasons nothing was put in writing. Ismay, however, wrote to Churchill: “I can now recall the fury of General Nye, then vice chief of the Imperial General Staff [in the absence of Brooke, who was accompanying Churchill in Cairo], who had no idea that the operation was on until reports started to flow in from the scene of the action.”[11] Ismay went on to state that Churchill must have approved the action before leaving England two days before, as he cabled from Cairo using the code word for the Jubilee operation.

However, Brian Loring Villa, in his Unauthorized Action: Mountbatten and the Dieppe Raid, questions Ismay’s statement: “The files he consulted contained another telegraphic exchange that occurred two days earlier than the cable he cited. Churchill’s cable from Moscow on the 15th was not about Jubilee but rather about Rutter; he was answered by Ismay, who corrected him saying, in an unpardonable breach of security, that the name had been changed to Jubilee, and that it was now scheduled to take place on or about the 17th of August.

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