Ancient history

Balance sheet


Much of the goal that "Dragoon" set was reached. Once the wounds of the war had healed, Marseilles and Toulon were able to muster huge quantities of equipment and reinforcements. Fourteen American divisions landed in the port of Marseilles alone over the next few weeks; some days, we reached 17,000 tons of material unloaded. "Dragoon" brought a reinforcement of 10 additional divisions for Eisenhower's fall campaigns. prisoners during their breakthroughs towards the "Overlord" - thus sweeping away a third of the German forces occupying the south of France. Their own losses amounted to 3,000 Americans and 1,144 French killed; the Americans had 4,500 wounded and the French 4,346.
The fact remains that the strategic cost of "Dragoon" was considerable for the Allies. It was what Montgomery called the "ball and chain from the south", crippling Allied operations in the north and possibly ruining the chances of ending the war in 1944 rather than 1945. Montgomery and those who disliked "Dragoon" would have preferred to maintain the feeling of uncertainty created by an unattacked South of France.
Once this region had been definitively lost, the Germans were able to devote all their energy to the resistance more North. They could even afford to transfer two strong Panzergrenadier divisions from Italy to France for this purpose. At the same time, Hermann Goering's Panzer Division was withdrawn from Italy and sent to Poland.
The Allied campaign in Italy was not completely compromised, as some may have believed, but it was certainly prolonged because of the sacrifices in men and material made to support "Dragoon". The Allies did not reach the northern Italian frontier until the war was over.
The political consequences of "Dragoon" were as Churchill had predicted. As he had foreseen, the Russians, who occupied 80 percent of Berlin at the end of the war, had a free hand in Eastern Europe; Europe found itself divided into two blocks of rival ideologies. Today, more than thirty years after these events, the "iron curtain" has still not lifted.