Feature

both British and German sources, that to

Canadians would be mollified. Were they?

the Contrary, the origins and objects of the Perhaps there are some Canadian

Taid are very poorly spelled out. To Preserve the secret, there has been a dearth of detailed accounts of the Preliminary conversations. Historians are Still forced to base their thoughts on a few accounts in the memories of the main Protagonists,”

There is another quite interesting point that comes to the surface. Churchill very nearly was removed as prime minister during a stormy session of Parliament in Which British MPs reflected the anger felt from both U.S. and Canadian high

Iplomatic circles. _ The Canadians of the time were Justifiably boiling. Perhaps they remembered that Churchill seemed to €xcel in sending others into the breach as fannon fodder in service of the King. And I Wouldn't be surprised if in that aforementioned Parliament session, the World “Gallipoli” was raised — where Churchill sent Australian and New

faland lads to their deaths in the tens of thousands in an operation about as well planned as Dieppe. He was kicked from the British government for that, not to return until World War II started.

My hunch is one can only understand the Dieppe Raid in its broader context, in fonjunction with Churchill’s still and well- known reluctance to open the Second Front in Europe in the war against the

azis. As should be well known, there Was strong pressure from Stalin to do so to help relieve the Soviets of fighting the Nazis Virtually alone in Europe.

At the time of the Dieppe Raid the Nazi offensive in Stalingrad was in full Swing. Sevastopol had fallen and the Nazis had defeated the Soviets at Kharkov In May, taking 240,000 prisoners. Some U.S. and British military analysts, Considered the “optimists,” tended to think that the Soviet Union would not Survive the end of the year. Others Predicted the USSR would collapse by October,

Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov had been in London in May pressing the British to open an offensive, but he was resisted. Certainly the Soviet requests were being actively repeated in July and August Ge" and had some support from the

Under such circumstances, Churchill

€8an to take Lord Mountbatten’s Cavalier suggestion of the Dieppe raid More seriously. I cannot speak much about Mountbatten, my knowledge of Whom is scanty, but I do not think it a radical statement to say that Winston

hurchill, while he had a number of glaring shortcomings, was no idiot.

The Dieppe raid was heavy on symbol and light on substance. It would give the 'Mpression that the British had tried to act, to respond especially to Soviet ©oncerns, but would do it in such a Manner that it produced a situation of no tangible strategic military importance.

My hunch continues that a failed raid — and the more badly failed the better — would strengthen Churchill's argument that the time was not ripe for a Major Allied offensive against the Nazis in

Tance or Belgium. The bigger the Dieppe fiasco, the easier it would be to argue for Postponing a major offensive. That is Pretty much how old Winston played his Cards after the raid.

What better way to ensure the result that by sending a large, unwieldy

anadian raiding force to pebble beaches atound Dieppe with a task akin to Walking on water: to scale the chalk cliffs Or penetrate the narrow passages between t €m. Later the fluff and necessary rationales could be added about the testing ground for D-Day and after “nough water had gone under the bridge,

documents yet to be released on the

question.

If the issue is still alive, a good deal of credit goes to the French people in the Dieppe region who refuse to forget how much Canadian blood flowed along its beaches and streets. It’s not for nothing that a Canadian in Dieppe in August has trouble paying for his drinks in local bars.

A failed raid — and the more badly failed the better — would strengthen Churchill’s (r) argument that the time was not ripe for a major allied offensive against the Nazis in France.

And the exchanges and general relations between Dieppe and Canada are well- developed. So the memory of the 1942 raid, and the heroism and sacrifice of the Canadians here is appreciated, even cherished.

Is it too much to ask that the remaining clouds over the causes of the Dieppe raid be cleared up? This is more than an obscure, historical question. How many lives would have been saved if the Second Front had been opened two years earlier? It is impossible to tell. But I keep thinking of little town with names like Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald where production lines were really humming in 1943 and 1944 until the whole system of death collapsed caught in the press of a two- front. offensive from east.and west.

In the not so distant past, I worked under an administrator — the west’s version of an eastern European bureaucrat — whose actions were predicated upon the firm belief that people’s memories work in such a way that they will forget an earlier scandal as new crises emerge. This skewed view of human potential did indeed prove true to the degree that under its influence he was able to pretty well wreck the fine educational institution where I worked for 15 years. But it doesn’t always work and in fact, and as events take on greater, more universal importance, the opposite seems to be more the rule than the exception: history suggests that people remember and insist on knowing the truth many years after events, and that the pain of social tragedies lives on long after the events themselves.

Look what emotions, 50 years later, are alive concerning the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the first days of World War II. Recently, the Soviet Union and Poland have had the courage to take an honest look at what now cannot be denied were Soviet executions of Polish officers in the forests of Katyn, Poland in 1939.

It is in the same spirit that the case of the Dieppe raid should be re-examined. Coming from a country with its share of skeletons in the closets still to be uncovered, I’m not trying to single out any one country or social system. There should be glasnost across the board. Among the many historical incidents the British should be held accountable for, is the August 1942 Dieppe raid. It is unfortunate the Mountbatten and Churchill cannot be hauled from their graves and held accountable.

Possibly my hunches about the Dieppe raid are off the mark and that rather. than fitting into the context of the Churchill- Stalin-Roosevelt tug-of-war over the

Second Front that it was a simply a case of a rather developed level of military short-sightedness and ineptitude.

Certainly, | make no claims on being a historian nor military analyst. I’m just someone sitting in a bar in Puys drinking a beer beneath a sheer vertical chalk cliff some 50 feet from a memorial dedicated to some brave and unfortunate soul from the Royal Regiment of Canada. I’m looking out at my kids enjoying

themselves playing with flint pebbles on the beach on a slightly windy late afternoon in August in a quiet place where people gather moules among the rocks wanting to make sense out of yet another one of history’s many little ripoffs and knowing that in some file cabinet in London are the answers to-questions that people living in Montreal, Calgary and Saskatchewan have been asking for 47

vears.

Pacific Tribune, September 25, 1989 « 7