Secret Mission of Dieppe

The podcast discusses the failed raid on Dieppe during World War II. The raid resulted in many Canadian casualties and was seen as a massacre. However, it was later revealed that the raid was actually a cover for a secret mission to steal an Enigma machine and German war operations material. If successful, it could have had a substantial impact on the war. This new information changes our understanding of the event and provides some consolation to the veterans. Hi, and welcome back. If you've been following my podcast, Canada in WWII, you know that we've been talking about the failed raid on Dieppe that took place on the morning of August 19, 1942. Last time, I spoke a lot about its contribution to the D-Day landings that occurred two years later. You know that when we typically talk about Dieppe, we credit the raid with leading to a number of strategic and tactical innovations that led to the successful D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, along the coast of Normandy. And while this is true, it's little consolation to the few remaining Dieppe veterans who saw their comrades fall to German bullets and artillery shells. The raid, which resulted in 3,300 Canadian casualties, including 913 deaths and another 2,000 taken prisoner, demonstrated to the Allies the futility of attacking a heavily fortified and well-defended port. But for Canadian veterans who took part in the disaster, codenamed Operation Jubilee, there has always been a feeling that they were needlessly sacrificed, with no real understanding about why they were taking part in what was clearly a massacre. Even as the dead and wounded piled up on the beaches, and it became increasingly clear that objectives would not be met, more and more troops were sent in to add to the carnage. It wasn't until August of 2012 that military historian David O'Keefe finally gave the remaining veterans of the raid an explanation of why so many of their comrades had to die. It was to capture parts of a newly created four-rotor Enigma machine, along with German codebooks and setting sheets located in Hotel Modern. It took more than 15 years of meticulously going through once-classified and top-secret files for O'Keefe to uncover this truth, a truth that would fundamentally change our understanding of this pivotal chapter in Canadian history. O'Keefe's painstaking research found that the raid was actually the cover for a secret mission organized by British naval intelligence in connection with the Joint Intelligence Committee to steal an Enigma machine and a safe full of German war operations material. Had the raid been successful, O'Keefe believes that it would have had a substantial effect on the war, as the Allies would have been able to decipher German secret messages as early as the summer of 1942. Given this new information, we will never be able to look at Dieppe the same way, but we at least now know that there was somewhat of a silver lining to Canada's darkest day.