THE PROVENCE LANDINGS - The Second World War in Colour

The Provence landings of 15 August 1944 were the best-organised and most successful amphibious operation of the entire war, from Operation Torch on the African coast to Overlord on the shores of Normandy.

It must also be recalled that both operations — Overlord in Normandy and Dragoon in Provence — had been conceived by the Americans as two phases of a single manoeuvre aimed at driving the Germans from French soil. They had even considered that the Provence landings might take place before those of Normandy, or that the two might occur simultaneously. The resounding success of Operation Dragoon was, paradoxically, at the root of the "memorial marginalisation" to which it has since been consigned. As if a brilliant victory with relatively few casualties were somehow less glorious than a victory accompanied by a slaughter.

These landings were also the rebirth of a victorious French army which brought together, under the political authority of General de Gaulle and the military authority of General de Lattre de Tassigny, all the elements of a fighting France scattered by the defeat of 1940 — the Free French, the Armée d'Afrique, resistance fighters, STO escapees, volunteers, and others. An army which, having landed on beaches as celebrated as those of Cavalaire or Saint-Tropez, liberated Toulon and then Marseille amid indescribable jubilation, before advancing alongside its American counterpart up the Rhône valley at such speed that it overturned all plans.

As for the ultimate importance of the Provence landings in Allied strategy, let us give the floor to General Eisenhower: "Nothing during this period assured us of more decisive advantages, or helped us more to accomplish the total defeat of the enemy, than this secondary attack advancing [from the Provence coast] up the Rhône valley."