World War II Day by Day

Côte d’Azur on the French Mediterranean • August 15, 1944

The Allied assault on German-occupied Southern France orig­i­nally was to have kicked off simul­ta­ne­ously with the Allies’ June 6, 1944, inva­sion of North­western France (Oper­a­tion Over­lord)—the intent being that the Germans would think twice before sending rein­force­ments from Southern France to the Normandy beach­heads and that, with any luck, the enemy would be trapped between 2 invading Allied armies in a classic pincer move­ment. How­ever, a world­wide shortage of suffi­cient landing craft, together with Over­lord planners upping the number of parti­ci­pating divi­sions in the Normandy inva­sion from 3 to 5, forced Gen. Dwight D. Eisen­hower, Supreme Allied Com­mander, to extend the start date for Operation Anvil, renamed Operation Dragoon, by 6 weeks.

On this date, August 15, 1944, the Allied invasion of Marshal Philippe Pétain’s Vichy France began with a para­chute jump of 9,000 U.S. and British infan­try­men. (Late the night before and into the next day com­mandos of First Special Service Force neu­tralized German coastal defense bat­teries oppo­site the Allied landing areas and sea lanes.) The jump by the 1st Air­borne Task Force, which secured the area north­west of the landing beaches, was quickly followed by an aerial bom­bard­ment by the first set of 1,300 Allied bombers, a naval bom­bard­ment, glider landings, and an amphib­ious assault by a mixed force of Amer­i­cans and French­men. Within hours of the landings, the inva­sion force (troops, vehicles, and tanks) was twice the size in men alone of the opposing German Army Group G, which was poorly equipped, stretched too thin, and woe­fully under­strength. (There was only 1 army, the 19th, in Army Group G!) Many of the German defenders were either older Wehr­macht (armed forces) replace­ments or Central and Eastern European Volks­deutsche (ethnic Germans) and Ost­legionen (foreign legion-types). With few excep­tions German resis­tance to the Allied inva­sion was negli­gible. Many defenders, especially non-German servicemen, quickly surrendered.

After nightfall on August 16/17 Army Group G head­quarters realized the impos­si­bility of its land (83,000–100,000 in the assault zone), naval (45 small ships), and air (200 air­craft) forces ever expelling the Allies from their Medi­ter­ra­nean lodg­ment. By then Allied units had pene­trated 20 miles/­32 kilo­meters inland in some sectors. The defenders there­fore decided to sacri­fice the port cities and their garri­sons at Toulon (liber­ated by a mixed force of U.S. and French sol­diers on August 27 with a loss of 17,000 German POWs) and Mar­seille (mostly liber­ated by August 27 with a loss of 11,000 POWs) to buy time for a fighting with­drawal up the Rhône River valley. How­ever, in both Toulon and Mar­seille German demo­li­tion engi­neers succeeded in rendering the port facilities momentarily useless.

Pursuing the enemy continued as one Rhône town and city after another fell (Lyon, Dijon), and in a time­span of 40 days most of France had been liber­ated. On Septem­ber 10 Dragoon units were able to estab­lish con­tact with units from Gen. George S. Patton’s U.S. Third Army. Slowing almost to a crawl due to over­stretched Allied supply lines from the coast of Southern France, the pursuit of the enemy ended later in the month when Army Group G—reduced by half now—reached the sanc­tuary of the Vosges Moun­tains near the French fron­tier, leaving more than 130,000 German troops trapped behind Allied lines, 7,000 dead on the battle­field, and 20,000 wounded. Even­tually, the southern route opened by Opera­tion Dragoon became a signifi­cant source of supplies for the Allied advance into Germany, providing between 30 and 40 percent of the total Allied requirement.

Operation Dragoon: The Allied Liberation of Southern France, August–September 1944

Above: Over the course of the monthlong southern offen­sive (August 15 to Septem­ber 14, 1944), the Allies drove 400 miles/­644 kilo­meters north­ward into France, liber­ating 10,000 square miles/­25,900 square kilo­meters of terri­tory while inflicting 143,250 German casual­ties. Launched with reluc­tant British parti­ci­pa­tion, Opera­tion Dragoon provided crucial support to the main Allied thrust into Nazi Germany across the Rhine. Dragoon remains one of the most success­ful air-land-sea opera­tions of the war, although it has been over­shadowed by the larger operation in the north of France, Oper­ation Over­lord, the Allied invasion of Normandy 2 months earlier.

Left: Men of the 45th Infantry Division land at Sainte Maxime, sit­u­ated in the middle of Opera­tion Dragoon’s 5 inva­sion beaches, August 15, 1944. The 45th Infantry Divi­sion was 1 of 3 assault divi­sions (the other two were the 3rd and 36th) to land on the French Riviera (Côte d’Azur). The 3 divi­sions were part of VI Corps coming under Gen. Alexander (“Sandy”) Patch’s U.S. Seventh Army.

Right: Members of the 30th Infantry, 3rd Infantry Division board ten LCIs (Landing Ships, Infantry) and one LST (Landing Ship, Tank), July 24, 1944, near Naples, Italy, for a practice landing in anticipation of the upcoming invasion of Southern France.

Left: 3rd Infantry Division disembarking from LCI 188 at Cavalaire-sur-Mer, between Toulon and Italy, August 15, 1944. The 3rd Infantry Divi­sion was one of the few U.S. Army divi­sions that fought on all Euro­pean fronts, seeing combat in North Africa, Sicily, Italy (Salerno, Cassino, and Anzio), France (Rhône Valley, Vosges Moun­tains, and Stras­bourg), Germany (Nurem­berg, Augsburg, and Munich), and Austria for 531 consecutive days.

Right: Capable of carrying 150 tons, the LCT (Landing Craft, Tank) in this photo is shown unloading tanks and tank destroyers for the 36th Infan­try Divi­sion at Saint-Raphaël, the eastern­most inva­sion beach, August 15, 1944. The divi­sion encoun­tered only light oppo­si­tion in their landing sector. The 36th’s rapid advance opened up the Rhône River Valley.

Operation Dragoon: Allied Invasion of Southern France