Allied Alternatives to Operation Dragoon?

Two months after Overlord, the Allies landed ~200k soldiers in southern France that could perhaps have found better use elsewhere. Churchill as always wanted to attack the Balkans instead. Alternatively, it might have been possible for these forces to attack the Netherlands in an amphibious Market Garden to help speed the advance into Germany. Was the German presence in south France enough to warrant its own invasion, or was this a way of politically appeasing the French?
 
Nope, nothing to do with the French. It had been long in the planning, and Churchill had little say in the matter, it was all down to the US.
It did give the Allies another secure port, and as far as the US was concerned it gained some benefit from being in the Med!!
 
Two months after Overlord, the Allies landed ~200k soldiers in southern France that could perhaps have found better use elsewhere. Churchill as always wanted to attack the Balkans instead. Alternatively, it might have been possible for these forces to attack the Netherlands in an amphibious Market Garden to help speed the advance into Germany. Was the German presence in south France enough to warrant its own invasion, or was this a way of politically appeasing the French?

The point of DRAGOON was not to defeat the German forces in that area, but to gain control of it. This would secure the southern flank of the drive against Germany, and also gain control of an additional major port to supply the Western Front. (Marseille provided 1/3 of Allied supply landings in the theater.)

The one "appease-the-French" aspect of it was that the French Army was then largely deployed in Italy. The French wanted to get in on the liberation of their homeland, and the easy way was a landing in the south. (There were also American troops in the Med that the Allies wanted to bring to the Western Front; same thing.)
 
Top